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Consolidating Data Centers
Many organizations are looking to consolidate multiple data centers into one site. These consolidations range from simple city-wide consolidations to complex region-wide consolidations. Most companies are being driven toward data center consolidation because of the dramatic drop in the cost of telecommunication wide area network lines, the huge disparity of IT wages between certain regions of the world, and the high real estate costs of large cities (especially in New York, London, and Tokyo). For those considering simple local-site consolidations, consolidation offers cost savings and enables disaster recovery initiatives.
If your organization is seriously looking to consolidate a data center, carefully consider the goals for consolidation. Shutting a data center is a huge task, and before you even start down the path, it is vital that you can articulate and defend your reasons for doing it. Further, once a data center is shut down, the costs of reopening it can be enormous. From there, data center consolidations are similar to other types of consolidation, except that assessment (especially application, networking, and physical planning) and implementation become much more complex.