Charlotte Colocation Provides Bottom Line Cost Savings

The extended lull in the economy has resulted in the need for businesses to place their entire operations under the microscope in an effort to examine every aspect of their business with the hope of identifying wastefulness.  Unfortunately, many organizations have already proceeded down this path since the beginning of the recession.  Standard changes range from cancelling unnecessary services and prohibiting overtime, to reducing purchases and trimming staff.  Companies realize that if they weather this environment, they will emerge from these dark business days as a lean and efficient operation poised for profit.  Typically, many businesses look anticipatorily toward their IT operations with high expectations that savings of sizeable proportion are awaiting discovery, but how legitimate is their belief?

Caveat Emptor

The Latin phrase often quoted in real estate meaning “buyer beware” can also be applied to an “ax/pen-wielding” CFO headed toward the company org chart section labeled: IT Department.  Just as purchasers of real estate should be well aware of the permanence of their actions, those who hope to achieve significant savings via trimming an IT staff should realize how grave and lasting their actions can be on the company operations if they make the wrong decisions.  In this scenario, management “buys” into the idea that reducing head count in the back office will be a rewarding move that will reduce waste and increase productivity.  While some cuts can be of value, managers need to understand in advance how the business operations will be affected by any reductions in staff.  There are savings in most cases, but it takes a sagacious eye to understand them clearly.

Which Came First, the Business or the Technology?

Unlike the chicken and the egg, this answer is simple; however, a paradigm shift has occurred since the days of ledger books and file cabinets, and the technology behind every business can be a competitive advantage or an Achilles’ heel.  Many companies have become “information dependent” and their very ability to create revenue is directly related to the company’s software, hardware, and the individuals that use and maintain them.  Without a competent staff in the front and back of the house, a company’s future is in peril.  Making cuts without a holistic understanding of a company’s structure can be as dangerous to a company’s future as trying to pet a wild skunk; the affects may linger long after the initial realization that it was a bad idea.

Many companies don’t pay attention to the total cost of ownership (TCO) that goes hand in hand with operating and managing a company’s infrastructure.  Cuts can be beneficial to both the bottom line and end users, and knowing how to implement them intelligently can be best learned from looking at companies that have embraced the power of intelligent outsourcing.

Can You Hear Me Now?

As annoying as that Verizon commercial was, it drove home the point that a phone is only as good as the network that it leverages.  The same can be said about company networks.  The most advanced internal software applications and end user appliances (tablets and smartphones) are only valuable if they can connect to the company network.  Disaster Recovery Planning and Business Continuity Planning exercises seem to be time-consuming activities to most people for good reason, they are.  They are also the primary reason that organizations are able to stay in business during business disruptions.  The key to a surviving in a tough economy isn’t simply cutting costs, it is cutting costs while remaining competitive.  So while trimming an IT staff may look promising for cost savings, too many cuts could easily disrupt a company’s fluid daily operations.

Addition through Subtraction

The key element to this approach is knowing what to subtract.  The approach that many successful companies are taking is to outsource (subtract) the activities that can be economically delegated to companies who specialize in them.  A prime example in this category is network maintenance.  The day to day network maintenance in an organization is the most time and resource intensive activity that an IT staff grapples with, and as a result of these routine tasks, many “revenue generating” opportunities are relegated and deprioritized.  The ability of outsourcing firms to competently managed these tasks is the result of their model which is based on leveraging economies of scale to make their services affordable.

Managed services, including infrastructure monitoring and maintenance, is a service that can be accurately performed by third party firms, regardless of the physical location of the equipment being managed.  In an ideal situation, the equipment is located in a data center in a colocation arrangement and the client tasks the staff at the data center to oversee most or all of these repetitive tasks.  The staff at the data center can handle any tasks from software patches and server reboots, to switching out hard drives and configuring new servers.  Colocation facilities also have levels of redundancies unmatched in most office complexes including redundant power (UPS and onsite generators), redundant internet service providers, and multiple layers of physical (biometric access and video monitoring) and network security.

Companies searching for ways to reduce costs and simultaneously increase the productivity of their IT staff can leverage colocation facilities and managed services to realize substantial savings.  Beyond the hard cost savings earned via transferring routine tasks to a skilled staff, companies also greatly mitigate the risk of lost revenue due to downtime from power and telecom outages that do not affect Charlotte colocation service providers.