The Top 5 Benefits of Running Your IT in a Virtual Data Centre (VDC) Environment

The Cloud Industry Forum’s 2017 research report found that 88% of UK organisations have now adopted cloud services to some degree, with 67% planning to deeper their cloud commitment in the next 12 months.  Further analysis shows that the numbers keep on getting bigger every year as IT decision makers and business leaders overcome their inertia and embrace new ways of consuming technology.  The question is, why?

The CIF’s research found the top three reasons for initially adopting cloud services to be flexibility of delivery (74%), operational cost savings (72%) and scalability (65%).

A common starting point for cloud computing adoption is Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), where the entire hardware environment for your IT systems is managed and delivered for you over the internet.  Delivered in the form of a ‘Virtual Data Centre’ (VDC), this capability can easily extend to more sophisticated Platform as a Service (PaaS) offerings, which encompass more application-centric controls, operating system licenses and other toolsets – typically in support of internal software and web development.

VDCs are proving a popular choice for organisations, regardless of where they are on their cloud adoption journey.  Whether it’s in response to an urgent need to decommission expensive and cumbersome on-premise hardware in favour of a nimbler cloud-based alternative, or part of a strategic migration to new IT consumption and cost models, VDC services fit the bill.

We’ve compiled a top 5 list of benefits that Luminet customers experience when they opt for our Virtual Data Centre services.

1. Boosts business agility

Responding fast to new market opportunities, changing customer demands and aggressive competitors is severely impaired when your IT foundations are too static to evolve or scale.  The cloud computing revolution has been built on the promise of greater business agility and this is exemplified by the possibilities of the VDC.  This capability has empowered business after business to accelerate their time-to-market for new products, grow IT capacity on-demand for competitive advantage, and adapt rapidly to emerging compliance pressures.  And while designing and building data centres can take months or even years, Luminet’s VDC service can be up and running within 10 working days of ordering.  This has created huge value for both ‘born-in-the-cloud’ businesses and those with complex legacy environments

2. Slashes management overheads

Looking after the needs of a sensitive, mission-critical data centre environment is a 24/7 responsibility.  It eats up capacity from internal IT teams who, frankly, have better and more strategically valuable things to do with their time.  Not only that but it eats up expertise too; expensive, specialist skills ranging from patching critical updates to environmental monitoring and UPS maintenance.  Using a VDC removes all those overheads in one fell swoop, freeing up budget and resources to spend instead on more digital innovation.  Luminet simplifies management further by delivering added intelligence, analytics and ease of use through its VDC with a single IP address range, single bill and single point of contact.

3. Improves cashflow

As IT consumption models have changed, organisations are benefiting from a seismic shift away from CAPEX headaches to a more dynamic OPEX-based payment approach.  Customers that use Luminet’s VDC service gain access to superior infrastructure environments with no hardware purchase or maintenance costs.  By leveraging ‘cloud economics’, organisations from all sectors lower the total cost of ownership for IT and preserve valuable capital for other projects.  VDCs also levels the playing field for small and medium-sized businesses, enabling them with access to technology that would normally be beyond their budgetary reach.

4. Maximises uptime

A good IT infrastructure is a truly invisible one, never giving its users any reason to notice that it does anything other than provide a seamless, uninterrupted experience.  This is possible with the exceptional reliability of a VDC-based service that offers far higher uptime levels than could otherwise be achieved without very significant ongoing investments in on-premise systems.  Luminet’s fully-managed SLA assures 99.999% high-availability and full backup data recovery in five minutes or less.  Uptime can be further assured in combination with our Always-On connectivity product that provides a 100% uptime guarantee on your last mile connection.

5. Safeguards against disaster

Risks are an ever-present feature of data centre environments, from the dreaded cyber-attack through to physical threats and even the potential for fire, flood and other disaster scenarios.  A VDC service like Luminet’s is geographically diverse, hosted inside Tier III data centres that offer carrier-grade levels of resilience and continuity in the event of disaster, and superior physical and virtual protection measures to guard against malicious and accidental damage.  This is further supported by the watchful presence of a 24/7/365 Network Operations Centre staffed by qualified engineers who can identify and remediate potential issues before they gain momentum.

Find out more about Luminet’s Virtual Data Centre services.

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