The companies that produce, transport, manage and support energy products and services are turning to data centers to streamline their operations.

Challenge
Like most other enterprises, energy businesses need a data center that can seamlessly support every facet of their daily operations, including websites, e-mail, HR and payroll operations, and benefits administration. These companies also expect their data center to provide an array of industry-specific services, such as site and equipment monitoring, production and distribution automation, asset tracking, research and development tools, and business analysis reports.

As the recent catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico illustrates, a single error made by an energy enterprise can lead to widespread, long-lasting and even deadly consequences. Preventing mistakes is a priority for all energy businesses. Powerful server installations, running sophisticated automation and analytics software, help firms monitor and study production, transportation, and other key data for danger signs. Operating on tight production and delivery schedules, energy firms also are concerned about achieving 100 percent system uptime, maintaining high efficiency levels, keeping IT costs under control, and ensuring equipment and data security. Further, since energy is one of the world's most closely regulated industries, industry players need data center-based applications and services to make sure they are meeting stringent government compliance mandates covering pollution, transportation, pricing, HR, and dozens of other issues.

Since energy firms engage in a wide range of business activities, the industry utilizes virtually every conceivable type of data center resource and service - often pushing technologies and processes to their ultimate limits. Therefore, abundant processing, storage, memory and bandwidth resources are top requirements for energy companies, as well as the power, cooling, access control, and other resources needed to support such demanding systems.

Energy businesses, like most other enterprises, are looking to virtualization and server consolidation to provide increased data center flexibility and operational efficiency, leading to lower costs and improved performance. Emerging cloud computing-based tools, for example, promise to give scientists supercomputer-level research capabilities at a fraction of the cost of comparable systems based on traditional technology.

Solution
Working on technology's leading edge, top energy companies require a data center partner that understands their unique needs and challenges. IO designs, engineers, and delivers data center as a service and provides a range of data center solutions ranging from colocation to modular data centers to high-capacity network services. And, with a 100% uptime Service Level Agreement, energy companies can feel confident that their data center operations will be always available and always-on.

Learn more on how IO can help.