As a quarter of all servers worldwide are now outsourced – what does this mean for the data centre market?

The exponential growth in data centre outsourcing, although initially fuelled by emerging data centre economies, is now impacting on mature markets including the UK. Research by DCD Intelligence estimates just over 20 per cent of all racks in the UK are now outsourced and predicts that this will have reached 28 per cent by 2016.

Companies are realising that, despite traditionally regarding it as a risky option, outsourcing mission-critical IT assets to a colocation provider is in fact a viable alternative to building their own datacentre facility. Driven by the need to reduce operational expenditure, problems involved in future capacity planning and the need to improve efficiencies, the perceived risk associated with outsourcing has diminished in recent years.

In order to reflect the changing nature of the UK data centre industry, this year a dedicated stream on outsourcing has been added to the agenda at DatacenterDynamics Converged London. Aimed at companies either currently outsourcing all or part of their portfolio as well as those considering doing so, the stream, running over 2 days, covers issues such as the legal implications of housing assets with a third party, financial considerations that need to be assessed, pricing of colocation services and the applicability of the cloud to data centre owners and operators.

Nicola Hayes, managing director of DCD Intelligence, comments: "As the data centre market evolves and outsourcing plays an ever larger role it is important that companies understand the issues involved in all forms of outsourcing applicable to data centre operations. The key factors to be considered will vary depending on the vertical in question and sessions include several specific to particular industry sectors."

Nicola will be opening the stream with a session looking at the factors driving growth in data centre outsourcing and offering insight gained from the latest DCD intelligence research on the topic.

DatacenterDynamics Converged London will take place on November 20th and 21st at the London ExCeL and will feature more than 2,000 delegates and a range of leading industry speakers.