Banking and financial institutions undertake cost controlling exercises including re-evaluation of business processes and internal positioning for greater efficiencies at lesser costs. The most commonly focused infrastructure for implementation of cost controls is associated with technology intensive IT department.
Significant concerns that need to be dealt with
One should thoroughly understand relationship between internal and external interconnects as well as dependencies between applications to avoid catastrophic repercussions of moving IT facilities such as data centers.
In addition to the risk factors mentioned above, the insurance and financial sectors present additional requirements such as risk based approach, management of financial risks, and zero impact for business drive. One must evaluate five vital aspects while moving data centers including timeline, resources, costs, risks, and oversight.
The first and foremost concern that needs to be addressed is how far it is essential to move the data center even if an organization has a concrete plan to execute the process of moving in a cost efficient and risk free manner. This is due to the fact that one is not supposed to implement a total relocation that can impact continuity of online operations
Therefore replication of data center facility can be a more viable option as far as the continuity is concerned. However this option is highly cost intensive and may not be economically feasible for majority of enterprises.
You should also understand importance of oversight because it is possible to miss the big picture while segregation of duties and responsibilities is being carried out. This may lead to gap failures. It is significant to maintain the seamless relationships between silos including network, SAN, and server in order to avoid gaps.
In order to achieve a unified effort to sort efforts and issues, you need to bring all technology owners on a common platform by conducting a strategic planning meet. You should be able to have proper control backed by a centralized oversight to take disruption in your stride without letting things go out of your hands.
Benefits of second facility
If an organization is having an additional facility of a data center, then the second resource can be used as a pivot for ensuring functionality. In this manner, you can expect to relocate data center facility within reasonable time-frame by leveraging available manpower and other internal resources.
It is necessary to procure physical resources by investing in swing gear for populating the new facility with necessary equipment. The investment is also useful in demonstrating resilience of the enterprise, which is a must-have for achieving regulatory compliance.
Prior setting up of the new location to enable a better migration of services and applications is necessary for prevention of risks. This requires an in-depth review of applications as well as hardware essentials to gain an integrated picture of the overall needs and wants.
It is necessary to free up physical resources, optimize current deployments, and enable application velocity for securely and strategically migration of capacities at other location. This can also facilitate huge savings by avoiding significant investments in procurement of swing gear for enabling relocation.
Importance of manpower
The last but not least factor that needs to be focused at while planning relocation of a data center facility is the experience and efficiency of the existing personnel for undertaking an exercise of such magnitude and gravity. Every individual member of the staff needs to have a proper understanding of the importance and urgency to migrate the data center facility to another location.
It must be appreciated that the entire gamut of migration needs to be executed without impacting the current operations. This calls for the highest level of people’s involvement. The strategy to employ current manpower to move facilities is to facilitate existing operations. Dedicated employees with a thorough understanding of organization’s priorities are able to complete the new project within timelines without any hassles.
In conclusion
It all boils down to designing of an integrated approach and a unified involvement of all heads of technologies to facilitate movement of the data center facility without any downtime and gaps between different silos. Presence of an additional data center facility can be of great advantage to ensure flawless transition. In addition to this the new data center location must be prepared to mitigate risks during movement of applications and services.
Interesting Topics To Read:-
Why Data Center Infrastructure In India Need DDoS Protection
Data Centers play a vital role in today economy