As in residential and commercial real estate, location plays a crucial role in creating data center value. Beyond the usual considerations that go into selecting a data center location—such as land costs, access to utilities, the local political climate and an area’s vulnerability to floods, fire, earthquakes and other types of disasters—lies the far from trivial matter of network requirements. Given the importance of fast, responsive and reliable data communications in today’s business world, network service is often the overriding consideration when choosing a data center site.

Network service means different things to different enterprises. An organization that’s primarily interested in giving end-users access to enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications, for instance, can generally locate its data center almost anywhere, since latency and other time-critical network factors usually aren’t a major concern. The same isn’t true, however, for enterprises that literally stake their commercial existence on applications that demand lightning fast response times, such as the tools used by financial traders. These applications typically demand network latency levels of 5 milliseconds or less, a rate that isn’t generally achievable if the traders are located something like 2,500 miles away from the application and its data.

Traditionally, latency concerns have been addressed—usually not completely satisfactorily—with network optimization practices, such as more efficient routing techniques. But a more practical solution, one that takes advantage of new data center design techniques, is for enterprises to simply open a secondary site that’s located closer to their latency dependent end users, such as employees, customers or important business partners.

A New Approach

In the days when nearly all enterprises operated a single data center located inside a central headquarters building or another nearby brick and mortar structure, the concept of location flexibility barely existed. Since a single data center must serve many masters, it didn’t make sense to relocate an entire facility just to help some users, particularly if others would be negatively affected by the switch.
Today, thanks to the rising popularity of data center outsourcing, and particularly modular data center offerings like i/o ANYWHERE™, enterprises can easily deploy one or more secondary data centers and, by placing the modular structures in strategic locations, significantly improve latency rates to end users located with the service radius of the new sites. When approached as a service, a secondary data center can be rolled out quickly (often within a matter of weeks) at a cost that’s usually only a fraction of the expense of building a traditional data center. Best of all, the modular secondary facility can be placed almost anywhere, allowing the enterprise to fully maximize its coverage radius.

Finance industry players aren’t the only organizations that can benefit from secondary data centers. Any enterprise with a business-critical application that requires low latency can benefit from the approach. Organizations that have built their businesses on the Web—including content distributors, social media networks, travel reservation services, consumer financial services and online retailers—all need to provide fast, responsive and reliable service to users who may be scattered around a continent or the perhaps even around the entire world. Sagging response times and stuttering streams caused by latency raises the likelihood of frustrated users and lost revenues. A secondary data center effectively and affordably solves these problems.

When planning a secondary data center, it’s important to ensure that the new facility includes a full complement of integrated network systems that provide access to an array of telecommunications carriers. i/o ANYWHERE™, for example, includes direct fiber backbone connectivity to AboveNet, AT&T, Level3, Qwest and TeliaSonera. It also makes sense to turn to a provider that uses enterprise-grade networking equipment that provides fault-tolerant network connectivity. Other features to look for include an integrated power/cooling infrastructure, remote support, management services, easy expandability, an ability to support any type of hardware and a 100% uptime service level agreement (SLA).

Final point

Years ago, most businesses were able to meet their IT needs with just a single mainframe computer. Yet over time it was discovered that a decentralized approach using multiple network servers not only created greater efficiencies, but opened doors to using computer technology in new and innovative ways.

Today, the data center is undergoing a similar revolution. For a growing number of enterprises, having multiple data centers located close to end users not only creates a foundation for more responsive services, but enables the adoption of profitable new business practices and revenue streams.

You look for certain things when selecting a data center provider, such as location, services, redundancy, uptime and security. These are among the major considerations. But there are also many smaller details—often overlooked, sometimes completely forgotten—that can mark the difference between a highly successful data center deployment or one that’s continually plagued by inefficiency and failures.

Here are some of the key points to think about:

Ownership: You should know something about the organization you’re planning to work with. Is the data center provider publicly owned or venture supported? How long has it been in business? Is it in good financial condition? What sort of satisfaction grades is it earning from its current customers?

Fuel Access: Backup generators kick in whenever the local power grid completely fails. But generators need fuel for continued operation. To ensure full power redundancy you need to know how much fuel is available at the data center, how long this supply will last at full load and what arrangements the data center provider has made for continuing fuel deliveries in the event of an extended outage.

Leak Detection: Fire is certainly a major data center threat, yet water can cause as much damage—and just as many headaches—as flames. Leaking condensation pans, exterior walls and humidification lines can all go unnoticed below a raised floor. Fortunately an under floor leak detection system can assist in notifying when a leak does occur to properly respond in enough time before critical equipment becomes damaged or electrical wiring shorts out. When evaluating a data center provider, ask what sort of leak detection technology it uses.

Certification: Certified systems, designs and practices indicate that the data center provider is committed to the highest levels of quality. SAS 70, for instance, is one of the most stringent standards for auditing service companies. Any data center provider that has SAS 70 certification has worked hard to achieve this goal. There are also other important types of certification. Tier Certification, for example, is a vendor-neutral, third-party certification for system and operational sustainability delivered by the Uptime Institute Professional Services.

Compliance: If your organization operates in a regulated industry, such as healthcare or finance, you’ll want to make sure that the data center provider can offer an environment and infrastructure that meets all of your regulatory mandates.

Local Threats: Most organizations looking for a data center provider are at least marginally aware of major local threats, such as earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes and blizzards. But a variety of other potential dangers often fall under the radar, such as civil disturbances, river and tidal floods, runaway vehicles and pests that can foul equipment and/or eat away at wiring. Think of your worst fears and then discuss them with the data center representative.

Competence: A data center provider’s competence, its ability to do things right and to support its customers’ needs and goals, is an intangible yet crucial part of the service it offers. Ask the data center provider about the people it employs. What types of skills and experience they have? Then think of several specific problems and challenges and ask the data center representative how the company would handle these challenges. If you don’t like the answers you’re hearing, you’ll probably want to look for another provider.

Physical Access: You’ll need to get people and equipment to the data center. Is the facility located along a major highway or a narrow country road? Can it easily receive shipments from delivery services? Is there on-site office and meeting space? Are there loading bays? How about freight elevators? Who will be in charge of moving equipment within the data center?

Bottom line: These are just a few of the commonly overlooked points you need to consider when evaluating data center providers. For a detailed checklist that you can use during your search to compare up to three providers, download this handy data center checklist.

Telepresence marks the next step beyond videoconferencing and webconferencing. The technology provides an immersive meeting experience featuring ultimate levels of video and audio clarity.

In a telepresence session, participants are life-size. Every sound, gesture and facial expression helps support natural communication in high-definition video and high-fidelity sound. Telepresence combines realistic and reliable video and audio with interactive functions, remote controls, content sharing, presentation capabilities, spatial audio and unified messaging, to make the telepresence experience “just like being there.”

Once the stuff of science fiction, telepresence is already being adopted by businesses in sectors ranging from retail to manufacturing to finance to utilities. The technology joins an enterprise’s existing communications portfolio—including VoIP, conferencing, messaging, enterprise social technology and mobile applications—to help team members boost performance, increase their interaction with the outside world, increase sales, protect investments and create rich collaborative experiences.

When used in conjunction with the services provided by a next-generation data center, telepresence helps adopters:

Save time: Telepresence reduces the need to travel. By doing so, the technology relieves an onerous burden from key employees, making them more productive and significantly improving their quality of life.

Accelerate decision making: With telepresence, you can bring decision makers dispersed across different regions and organizational units together to synchronize and commit on strategies and business objectives.

Boost innovation and customer satisfaction: By using telepresence to collaborate interactively with business partners and customers, you’ll gain the ability to create new business processes, develop fresh revenue opportunities and develop new levels of customer satisfaction and innovation.

Reinforce teamwork: Telepresence cuts through geographical boundaries to unite people regardless of their physical location. The technology helps individuals located at subsidiaries, regional offices and other disparate locations feel as valued and involved as their headquarters counterparts. In challenging economic times, high enterprise-wide morale can help any company function more productively and cost-effectively.

Improve sales conversion rates: Telepresence can provide a consistency in remote relationships by offering anytime face to face contact. Sales representatives can use teleperesence to seal deals quickly and resolve last-minute hangups interactively and convincingly.

Streamline employment interviews: Flying employment candidates to job sites is expensive and time consuming. Telepresence lets hiring managers interview and vet prime employment prospects conveniently, efficiently and cost effectively.

Accelerate strategic projects: Allowing project team members located at various sites to routinely meet and collaborate in a real world-like setting helps participants resolve difficult issues, brainstorm new ideas and reach timeline goals on schedule.

System components: Telepresence systems, including cameras, displays, speakers and other hardware and software components, are available from several vendors, including Cisco Systems and Polycom. Prices can run from several thousand dollars to upwards of a quarter-million dollars. Basic components include at least three 1080p High definition 65-inch (or larger) displays, several high-definition cameras, multiple microphones and speakers, special lighting arrays, a pair of 1Gb Ethernet ports in the room and approximately 2 to 3 Mbps of bandwidth per active screen.

Most telepresence systems are designed to integrate with other communications and collaboration applications, including existing video and web conferencing technologies, unified communications systems and various Web 2.0 technologies. Communications integration means that participants can work face-to-face in the virtual meeting room while also inviting in colleagues who are limited to phone- or web-based conferencing systems.

Network requirements: Telepresence performance and reliability requires the use of a data center offering full system support, including advanced global networking capabilities. For enterprise-quality telepresence the transport network needs to support stringent SLA metrics. Cisco recommends service with a one-way network delay of less than 150 milliseconds, peak-to-peak delay variation (jitter) of under 10 milliseconds and less than .05 percent packet loss.

Telepresence also requires ample, high-quality and reliable bandwidth. While a voice conference call between two enterprise sites typically requires approximately 100 Kbps of bandwidth, a telepresence session at 1080p resolution video needs about 15Mbps of bandwidth—150 times more bandwidth than a standard voice call. Even more bandwidth is necessary if a company or department decides to interconnect three or more conference rooms.

High-quality network service is necessary to prevent a telepresence session from descending into Max Headroom performance territory. The network needs to be able to recognize telepresence traffic, assign it the highest priority and dynamically allocate sufficient bandwidth as needed.

Security is another important telepresence concern. To keep sessions safe and tamper free, Cisco recommends the use of network-based session border control, Network Address Translation (NAT)/firewall traversal, support for encrypted sessions (media and signaling options), Inter-VPN reachability, route authentication, management and access security and enterprise call admission control.

Bottom line: With business becoming increasingly global, and travel getting more expensive and cumbersome, telepresence’s popularity is soaring. According to a December 2010 study by Wintergreen Research of Lexington, Mass., worldwide telepresence sales will reach $6.7 billion by 2016.

There’s a reason why telepresence technology sales are soaring, even in challenging economic times. It’s because, for a growing number of businesses, telepresence isn’t only “just like being there,” it’s actually better.

Software as a Service (SaaS) provides numerous opportunities for independent software vendors (ISVs) and other types of software developers. SaaS has come a long way from its early years when product selection was limited to a handful of HR and CRM solutions. Today, a wide range of business and IT applications can be supplied as SaaS solutions, enabling the technology to play an increasingly important enterprise role and to move into larger and more strategic deployments.

SaaS has successfully shed its reputation as stripped-down software for the budget conscious business. Today’s leading SaaS applications are the equal of their premise-based counterparts in every respect. In fact, a large number of SaaS offerings, thanks to their integrated networking capabilities, are actually more powerful and capable than many traditional software products. This attribute is the result of soaring SaaS product sales, which have encouraged software vendors, including many of the industry’s biggest players, to focus more of their R&D efforts on SaaS applications.

For SaaS adopters, the technology provides multiple benefits, including:

Rapid Deployments: The technology typically arrives as a ready-to-go, preconfigured solution that the adopter can turn on within days or weeks after spending only a minimal amount of time on testing and configuration procedures.

A Shallower Learning Curve: SaaS applications frequently inherit their user interfaces from familiar web programs, giving users a familiar, natural and more intuitive experience.

Extensive Platform Flexibility: Since SaaS applications are generally web-based offerings, they can be accessed from any connected computer or mobile device—any time, anywhere.

Easier and Cheaper Upgrades: SaaS products typically include seamless and automatic upgrades as part of the ongoing subscription plan. Because these upgrades happen more frequently and more incrementally than on-premise solutions, customers enjoy reduced testing and user acceptance and training costs.

Simplified Compliance: For a government-regulated businesses in fields such as finance and health care, SaaS can save both time and money by cutting red tape. In a regulated industry, much time is spent validating and updating software, a process that doesn’t add any business value. SaaS drops much of the time-consuming validation work onto the software provider, meaning that the customer doesn’t have to validate the software, only the way it’s being used.

Lower implementation costs: No license fees mean lower initial costs. Allowing the SaaS provider to manage the underlying application infrastructure also means lower outlays for hardware, software and the people needed to manage it all. In fact, for most adopters, SaaS implementation costs are significantly lower than for on-premise implementations. According to Forrester, the Cambridge, Mass.-based technology research firm, many businesses report typical implementation costs of .5x to 1x the first year subscription fee, compared with 1x to 5x the license cost of on-premise software.

ISVs and other organizations looking to jump on the SaaS bandwagon need a data center that can help them deliver their applications to users reliably, securely and cost effectively.

To achieve all of their technical and business goals, SaaS providers of all types and sizes should look for a data center partner that has the technologies and physical facilities necessary to run a global infrastructure. Your partner should also posses an extensive set of development and knowledge capabilities to ensure the fast, affordable and reliable deployment of your applications.

Here are the key data center attributes any SaaS provider needs:

Quality Hardware: For SaaS hosting, high quality hardware is essential, including fault tolerant servers, preferably with redundant, hot swappable components. The use of high availability clusters in load balancing configurations is also desirable.

Connectivity: The number, size and quality of backbone data pipes is critical to SaaS delivery success. Access to multiple network providers is another requirement for running a reliable application service. Meanwhile, smart routing technology can reduce costs to the data center while maintaining optimal connectivity. To support peak demand requirements, the network provider must have excess capacity or upstream connections allowing bursting.

High Availability: Your IT infrastructure needs to be ready for a disruptive event, whether a hurricane or a power outage caused by a backhoe. Look for a data center partner with safe, secure facilities featuring reliable and redundant power, cooling and other support resources.

Security: State of the art virtual and physical security is vital to ensure safe and continuous software service. Many SaaS offerings also store customer data, which makes the use of rock-solid security technologies and practices even more important.

Cloud Access: SaaS’s future lies in cloud computing, so your data center partner should be able to support all of your initiatives in this key area.

Scalability: As your customer base expands, your data center partner should be ready and able to quickly meet your needs for extra space and services.

Support: Your data center partner should be responsive to your needs and willing to work with you to find imaginative and cost effective solutions that will enable you to meet your technical and business goals.

Learn more about i/o’s Data Center as a Service (DCaaS™)

A growing number of businesses are facing the need to securely retain larger amounts of data over longer periods of time. New regulatory mandates, increasing litigation risks and evolving business requirements all mean that companies now must keep a wide range of data intact and available for many years—forever, in some cases.

Improved and lower cost archival technologies are making long-term data storage more convenient and affordable. Yet many challenges still remain. Exactly what data needs to be stored? Where should it be kept? How can it be protected? These are just a few of the questions businesses ponder when thinking about long-term data storage.

To determine if your organization’s’ storage practices are keeping pace with evolving real world needs, consider these points:

Media Matters: Long-term storage media choices boil down to three different formats: magnetic tape, magnetic disks (i.e. hard drives) and optical discs. Out of these choices, tape presents the lowest media cost and the greatest long-term stability, with optical being the most expensive and least stable long term storage technology. Research firm Clipper Group in 2008 estimated that tape storage is about 23 times less expensive than SATA disk archiving solutions. Meanwhile, magnetic disk’s energy costs were up to 290 times higher than tape.

Keep or Delete?: Most businesses generate a great deal of data, ranging from the vital to the trivial and everything in-between. Complying with storage mandates without wasting money by permanently archiving valueless data requires creating a detailed storage policy.

Some storage choices are essentially no-brainers. You’ll certainly want to retain all of your transaction data, customer and employee records and internal and public emails. Data generated by research projects and business partners also needs to be archived. All other types of information should be assessed on a case-by-case basis. The final storage policy should be distributed to the IT staff members in charge of long-term storage initiatives as well as the various departments responsible for creating and managing vital data, such as fiance, human resources and legal.

Dealing With Duplicates: Deduplication technology, which relentlessly scours storage systems for duplicate files, shrinks storage capacity requirements. The technology can pay for itself over the long term by freeing up bandwidth, speeding backups and trimming media and storage device expenses.

Providing a Suitable Environment: Archived data should be placed in a safe, controlled environment that will protect the media against physical threats, such as fire and floods. It’s also a good idea to store copies of critical files at one or more secondary locations. Alternatively, copies can be stored in the cloud, as long as appropriate security and data integrity measures are taken.

Ensuring Security: Inadequate security can place your business in direct violation of storage mandates, resulting in a variety of compliance headaches leading up to legal action and penalties. Lax safeguards can be very costly over the long term. The Ponemon Institute, an information management consulting firm, reports that data breaches cost organizations an average of $200 per compromised customer record.

Efficient Records Management: Simply saving data isn’t enough; your archive also needs to be quickly and easily accessible for both internal and external information requests. Records management software, available from a variety of vendors, helps data center team members manage tape, disk and other types of storage devices from a single, convenient screen. Most records management offerings also provide built-in diagnostic, reporting and troubleshooting capabilities. These features ensure that storage technologies are prepared to supply data 24×7.

Make Regular Assessments: Periodically check your long-term storage system to ensure that it’s keeping pace with business and regulatory needs. Also make sure that your storage media isn’t becoming obsolete, More than one business has been shocked to discover that its data, carefully stored on quality media in a pristine environment, was still unreadable because it was written in a format no longer supported by modern devices. Whenever new storage technology is deployed, convert critical legacy data into a compatible format.

With 2010 just about over, it’s time to look forward to next year and the opportunities and challenges the upcoming 12 months will present. As always, data center technologies and data practices are evolving rapidly, making it essential for executives and managers to monitor changes in a variety of different areas.

To help you along, here’s a quick overview of the trends you’ll want to keep an eye on as we march into 2011:

Virtualization: There aren’t many data centers left that haven’t already accomplished some level of server consolidation. Savings in floor space and support costs makes adopting the server virtualization something close to a no-brainer. Yet in these difficult economic times, many enterprises are now looking to extend virtualization’s benefits to other areas. That’s why 2011 will see more businesses virtualizing storage, network components, desktops and other basic technologies and platforms.

Cloud Computing: Like virtualization, cloud computing is already a well established data center trend. Cloud computing makes IT applications and other resources instantly and dynamically available, regardless of location. The technology also makes it possible to quickly and efficiently create, configure, provision and add computing power in support of IT and business services. Additionally, cloud computing can enhance SOA, information management and service management initiatives. For all of these reasons, and more, cloud computing will continue to be a major data center trend during the upcoming year.

Data Center as a Service (DCaaS™): More businesses in 2011 will begin viewing their data center as an infinitely scalable and always available service. This approach makes sense from both technical and business perspectives. By treating its data center as a service, a business can free its IT and network operations from geographical limitations, eliminate the need for major upfront infrastructure investments, more easily project future costs and evaluate different configurations within a flexible, reliable and efficient environment. There are many other benefits, too.

Lower Spending: No matter which direction the economy heads in next year, IT organizations will spend less on servers, storage and other systems as a percentage of their operational budget. Thanks to declining hardware costs, outsourcing and better utilization of assets through virtualization and other strategies, businesses stand to get a bigger bang for their IT buck in 2011.

Mainframe Migration and Consolidation: Mainframe computers continue to play an important role in many data centers, particularly in facilities used by government agencies and businesses in fields such as banking, finance and insurance. Yet time is finally catching up with big iron. Mainframes’ remaining cost and performance benefits are rapidly diminishing, particularly in data centers where the machines are used in association with other classes of servers. Therefore, for many current mainframe users, 2011 will be the year when they begin migrating their mainframe applications to other server platforms or, at a minimum, start planning a mainframe server consolidation strategy.

Data Center Outsourcing: Interest in outsourcing data center operations, completely or partially, will increase as today’s challenging economy forces enterprises in virtually all sectors to continue paying close attention to budgets and overhead. As 2011 arrives, CIOs and IT managers need to be aware of new and evolving options for outsourcing and carefully investigate the pros and cons of providers and their service offerings.

Network Services Outsourcing: Non-carrier-aligned data network services outsourcing is a strategy that’s certain to gain momentum during the next 12 months. Better network availability, more carrier choice, enhanced routing flexibility, improved QoS and lower costs are just some of the reasons why more businesses will turn to independent network services providers during 2011.

Data Center Automation: Data center automation is becoming a high-priority issue for a steadily rising number of enterprises. The appeal is two-pronged: automation improves service levels while freeing funds for reinvestment in critical infrastructure areas. With the proliferation of low-cost servers, 24/7 operational demands and data center consolidation, integrated service management automation is becoming an essential tool for streamlining operations and ensuring reliability. Automation is also vital for fulfilling the promises of virtualization, SOA and other data center services and platforms that are the hallmarks of an adaptive, flexible enterprise.

With 2010 nearly over, now is a great time to step back and evaluate how your data center performed during the past year. Many things, both good and bad, can happen to a data center over a 12 month period. A comprehensive analysis and assessment will help you improve reliability, boost productivity and stay in full control over critical data center resources and functions.

A data center assessment, even one that’s conducted informally, will allow you to identify, evaluate and resolve vulnerabilities before they can develop into major headaches. An annual assessment will also help you determine whether current facility services are being maintained at peak levels and if any changes are necessary to keep operations humming along during the upcoming year.

Here are the areas you should investigate:

Location. While data center locations tend to remain fixed for years—sometimes even decades—evolving technologies and business practices gradually build the case for moving to a new location. There are many reasons why you may want to consider relocating your current data center, including moving to a safer, more efficient environment, lower costs, better support and enhanced network access. Depending on what you discover, your year-end assessment could turn out to be the launching point for a new and better data center.

Power. Increasing equipment density drives the need for more efficient and reliable power delivery. Check to make sure that current energy needs are being met and that your facility’s existing power resources are ready for whatever demands you anticipate during 2011. Also, with energy costs expected to rise over the next year, now is a great time to make sure that your data center isn’t wasting power. Beyond using energy-efficient servers and related IT equipment, your data center should be taking advantage of variable frequency chillers, pumps, cooling towers and air handlers to reduce energy consumption.

Cooling. Excess heat can take a heavy toll on tightly packed hardware, so check that thermal hot spots aren’t leading to premature equipment failure. If your business isn’t already taking advantage of heat-beating technologies like efficient high-density racks and thermally-configured colocation cabinets, as well as cool innovations like LED lighting, now is a good time to think about making changes.

Network Support. Are you network goals being met in terms of performance and quality? If you’re using multi-homed blended bandwidth, you’re already set for optimal performance. Otherwise, check your logs to make sure that your network provider is living up to its promised performance and quality guarantees.

Fire Suppression. Fire risk increases in lockstep with rising IT density levels. With more resources being packed into ever tighter spaces, even a small fire can have devastating consequences. Check now to see if your facility’s existing fire suppression systems are keeping pace with the extra demands being placed on them.

Security. The bad guys are always working on new ways of outwitting physical and logical security measures. Your assessment should check for any apparent security gaps and whether overall protection measures are still being maintained at state-of-the-art levels.

Redundancy. There’s a tendency to forget about backup systems until the very moment they’re needed. Your year-end assessment should include a redundancy survey of all critical areas, including power, cooling, networks, fire suppression and security.

Support. Are you receiving all the support you need from your facility operator? Have you been let down in any significant way over the past year? If you’re not satisfied with the operational and/or technical support you’re receiving, now is a good time to make your views known.

Conclusion. After completing your assessment, be sure to record any discovered deficiencies and note what remedial actions need to be taken. Make sure that your findings are reported to the appropriate individuals both inside and outside of your business.

Data centers located in earthquake zones require business continuity contingencies that go far beyond the measures used to protect systems and data from more commonplace threats, such as fire, weather and crime.

While a powerful earthquake is rare, its impact is swift and usually devastating. An earthquake can, without warning, transform a functioning data center into a pile of rubble within minutes. While no amount of planning, preparation or construction can guarantee that a data center will withstand a major earthquake, you can increase your survival chances by taking the following steps:

Understand the Risk: The interesting thing about earthquake zones is that there are more of them than you may think. While the entire West Coast, southern Alaska and most of Hawaii are well known seismic hotspots, there are also many other high risk locations. Surprisingly, areas of Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Illinois, Kentucky and South Carolina are as vulnerable to a devastating earthquake as the coastal regions of California, Oregon and Washington. Meanwhile, portions of New York, New Hampshire, Utah, Idaho and several other states are moderately vulnerable to earthquakes. If you haven’t already checked a seismic map to see how your location rates, make it a point to do so.

Building Considerations: Building construction plays a crucial role in data center earthquake survivability. While no building can ever be made entirely “earthquake proof,” a structure that meets current local seismic building codes is more likely to come through a big shock intact than an older, pre-code building. Many data center operators actually strive to exceed code requirements by reinforcing their buildings with extra support columns, isolation joints and other protective construction techniques.

Inside the Data Center: Even if a data center’s building survives an earthquake in good shape, the fragile, sensitive equipment located inside the structure may not fare nearly as well. To ensure that servers and related hardware remain steady and in place during a seismic event, many data center operators “harden” their facilities by installing isolation systems that essentially decouple the data center from the surrounding seismic environment. Such measures, while highly expensive, are essential for protecting valuable gear in earthquake zones.

Public Infrastructure Considerations: Even if your carefully planned and constructed data center survives the quake with only minor damage, there’s still a strong chance that the surrounding public infrastructure will be devastated or, at best, severely disputed. Utilities, roads and other vital resources may remain unavailable or highly restricted for weeks or months, making it impossible to resume normal data center operations. Many employees, meanwhile, may be unable or reluctant to report to work as they focus on helping their families survive the crisis.

Stay or Move? Realizing that it’s impossible to completely earthquake-proof a data center, a growing number of businesses are deciding to deploy or back up their critical IT operations in locations with little or no seismic activity. Such places really do exist. One example is Central Arizona, including the IT- and network-rich cities of Phoenix and Scottsdale. According to the Greater Phoenix Economic Council, the local area rarely experiences major earthquake or tremor activity. In fact, there have been no deaths or injuries from earthquakes in Arizona during the last century.

Today’s networked world allows a data center to be fully and efficiently managed from almost anywhere. If an earthquake or other disaster knocks out local network access, cutting the data center link, automated services and on-site management will keep operations running normally until your disaster management team arrives to take control.

Bottom line: An earthquake can strike at any time, but your data center doesn’t have to be exposed to this terrible threat.