Well does data centre location matter? Choosing a data centre to host a business’s data is no small undertaking. Where data is stored is of high importance for number of reasons. Data is digital information stored on computer servers and when accessed is carried across networks. Even though data is not physical – the infrastructure and power needed in the process of storing and transferring are. Where data is stored and accessed is affected by the following factors; Local Infrastructure, Power Resources and Geographical Location.

Latency and Speed of Data

Physical location plays a very important role in data speeds and latency. For example; Say your company is based in the UK that services customers locally. Storing your data on servers located aboard like the US means that the data must travel across the Atlantic whenever its accessed by your customers. The data accessed will not reach a customer chosen device as quickly as it would if your data centre is in the UK. Annual surveys show constantly that internet users are more likely to drop from sites with a slow page load. People want instant access to data – they don’t want to wait for data to travel when accessed.

SEO Benefits

Search engine ranking with any browser whether its Chrome or Bing is partially tied to physical location of data. It’s best to keep data as close to home as possible unless most of your customers are located abroad. An In-house data centre is an excellent solution if your customers and business is in the UK. If your business is located mainly in the UK, you will benefit hugely from an SEO standpoint by making sure your data is stored locally.

Data Protection Laws

With the recent news of data protection that is changing companies all over Europe, UK based companies are now required to provide full protection to all customer data that is collected either online or in store. In some cases, certain country laws require that certain kinds of data be hosted domestically. In some cases, hosting data in a certain country is not appropriate if the data is accessed by users in another country. All business always needs to take data protection laws seriously and be careful when making decision. 

Government Access to Data

A last point to consider about is government access to stored data. A UK company collecting and storing data that is sensitive – data that they don’t want government looking into – would be very unwise to host that data in the US for example. The US government has a lot more access to data than the majority of Europe.  Data centre pricing may be less expensive in the US, but it can be also riskier as well. At INFINITI we pride ourselves on expertise and cost efficient solutions - get a free quick quote!

There are several more additional factors to consider that are of less importance; Local Tax Structures, Access to Utilities, Network Activity, Local Infrastructure and Accessibility of skilled Professions like us!. All these factors combined make it very clear that the physical location of your data centre is of great importance.