back to all
prev
58 of 147
next

HOW BUILDING YOUR OWN DATA CENTRE CAN SAVE YOU MONEY 

Dropbox’s 2015 reverse migration proved that building your own data centre can actually save you money. After making the decision to reduce its dependence on Amazon Web Services, they built their own computer network and shifted onto machines designed by their own engineers. Dropbox reported a reduction in operating costs of $74.6 million within the first two years. 

When Dropbox first began considering its effort to move the cloud in-house it predicted a time when it could no longer scale its services to match customer demand, despite Amazon's promises that its cloud resources were infinite. Between February and October of 2015 Dropbox successfully relocated 90 percent of an estimated 600 petabytes of customer data to its in-house network of data centres.

Dropbox does still use AWS for the remaining 10 percent of its storage needs, as although the company operates three data centres in the U.S. it has none in Europe, so still uses AWS to serve European customers.

Its move out of the cloud was not widely considered a journey from which the rest of the IT world could learn any particular lessons, however, five years on, many organisations (including those outside of the IT industry) are discovering that limits to infinite scalability in the public cloud do exist and that there could well be several valid reasons for building your own infrastructure.

Drawbacks associated with cloud data hosting

Whilst your specific environment will determine the risks that apply directly to you, there are some general drawbacks associated with cloud based hosting that may help sway your decision to bring it in-house.

  • If you store and retrieve very sensitive data, you might not be able to maintain it in the cloud. 
  • Compliance requirements could also limit your storage choices.
  • If some of the technology you currently rely on is proprietary, you may not be legally able to deploy it to the cloud.
  • Some operations can suffer from added latency when using cloud applications over the internet.
  • If your hardware is controlled by someone else, you can lose transparency and control when debugging performance issues.
  • Once locked in with a cloud platform or vendor, it might be difficult to leave or move between platforms.
  • Downtime. It happens, but you might not want to feel like your availability is controlled by someone else.

When company growth reaches a certain point, it makes sense to build your own data centre(s) and to bring the cloud in-house. Amazon, Google and Microsoft can keep cloud prices low, thanks to economies of scale, but they aren't selling their services at cost. So if you're big enough, you can save tremendous amounts of money by cutting out the cloud all together.


Fast Free Data Centre Construction Quote!

               

If you're considering data centre construction, why not take a moment to fill out our data centre construction fast quote form.

It only takes a few seconds to complete, and you'll receive budget pricing in a straight forward itemised format to support your business case or capital funds request for your data centre construction build.                  

           
            Free Quote!          

You can read more about what factors you should consider when building your own data centre here.

Have any questions or comments, or would like to know more about the 
article and how we can help please contact us on 01993 774444 or email us enquiries@infiniti-it.co.uk


back to all
prev
58 of 147
next