Answering the Call: Best Practices for Modular Data Center Deployment in the Telecom Industry
Date posted: October 20, 2014 Posted by adminNot so long ago, the telecommunications industry consisted only of landlines for telephones and fax machines. Today, fax machines are nearly obsolete and telephones have expanded to include mobile capabilities, texting, music and video streaming, photo sharing and more. Rapid widespread adoption of these technologies has all but bullied the data center community into seeking out additional storage capacity and developing new technologies to handle the additional demands of data-hungry consumers.
Moreover, many telecommunications companies’ market share depends on their ability to deliver quality data quickly and with extensive coverage geographically. As the number of mobile device users grows, expansion of data storage capacity must keep pace in order for telecommunications companies to stay competitive. While the concept of modularity isn’t new, its application with respect to designing and building data centers has only taken hold in the IT industry in the last few years.
Understanding the benefits of modularity and how they apply to your data center requirements is the first step towards expanding your market share value and preparing for future demands.
1. How modularity benefits telecommunications companies
There’s nothing like a little healthy competition to get the strategic juices flowing and for the telecommunications industry, a company’s market share is driven by its ability to deliver fast and reliable data across the widest reach. By going with a modular data center design, companies can get a stronger handle on their bottom line by anticipating costs more accurately. This translates to lower costs to their customers, which is always good news for business.
Factory-built data centers avoid the typical field-built interruptions that come as a result of weather and delayed deliveries. Additionally, because factory built data centers use a repetitive design and build process, construction issues are extremely limited and quality of the build is more highly insured. This means that your initial quote will be on point at the time of billing, allowing you to better plan for your company’s expenses.
2. Expanding with modularity
Utilizing some form of modularity can assist in driving down anticipated overall costs but building a full “modular” data center may not always make sense, especially if you are only looking to add additional infrastructure to an existing facility. That said, the cost savings you are looking for may be found in modularizing your mechanical and/or electrical infrastructure. By doing this, modularity will allow operators to build out their capacity without interruption to any existing operation. Modularity can be integrated into an existing field-built facility without an exterior shell or can be individualized as its own factory-built scalable modular plant. Keeping up with the speed of data transmission is the key to any telecom data center. Having additional planned electrical capacity will allow facility operators the luxury of staying current without losing efficiency. Modular naturally supports this challenge.
3. Planning for future demand
As we keep flying higher into “the cloud,” it’s hard to completely understand what the future data center will look like. With increasing technology advancements and more of the world becoming connected, the challenges we will face make it imperative that we are prepared for future demand. Having an option driven by modularity that will allow for consistency and scalability is paramount with transitioning to these future requirements. Have a plan and understand that it may change a few times. Understand that the demand of our customers will put a strain on our facilities but will also put a bulge in our bottom line.
If you need help evaluating whether or not a modular solution or the components of one might be right for your needs, contact Data Centers Delivered today or browse our website to see previous projects we’ve completed. We’ve partnered with several businesses to help them answer why modular data center design solutions make sense for their operations. We can help you too.