With so many enterprises across all key industries migrating off their own datacenters, you may be wondering if it makes sense for you. When is the right time to take this transformative step and engage datacenter outsourcing services?

The answer is “it depends.” Although your company is similar to others in many ways, it’s not identical, so the steps you take to support future capabilities and competitiveness require a unique approach. Here are some key considerations that will help you decide if switching to datacenter outsourcing services makes sense for you. You’ll know the time is right when:

• You need to reduce costs.

This remains the primary reason government and private enterprises move from in-house to outsourced services. Costs continue to escalate, and that’s not going to change. You can’t be fiscally effective without curbing expenses wherever possible.

• You want to optimize costs.

More and more companies are taking a different approach to costs that goes beyond simple reductions, extracting greater benefit from the dollars they’re currently spending by instituting efficiencies that free up time and services.

It’s a more refined form of resource management. In many ways, the net effect is similar to increasing revenue – you may not be doing more with less, but you’re doing more without spending more.

• You need to improve service.

The biggest trend in IT is the switch in thinking from a functional focus to a service focus. It makes sense, considering that IT permeates every detail of your company’s ability to grow and thrive.

Employees need consistently near-perfect service availability – via a growing range of service “touch points” and applications -- to work efficiently and effectively, whether they’re developing new products, marketing them or collecting payment. Your customers expect perfection – not to mention ultra-fast speed – when they do business with you online, whether they’re conducting their personal banking, researching information or making purchases.

If you can’t deliver on any of these fronts, you’ll find yourself slipping backward at a rate that could be fatal. The time to move to datacenter outsourcing services is before you develop problems.

• You need to modernize.

When your beloved legacy infrastructure can no longer handle today’s workload, smoothly and easily integrating new applications, that signifies it’s time for a change. For many companies, it’s not just their IT infrastructure that’s aging, but their high-level IT staff, too. As the people you’ve relied on for years retire, they’re taking with them the inside knowledge earned over decades of working within your datacenters. And, unfortunately, replacing these people may be impossible.

It’s time to face the fact that you need a new plan. Datacenter outsourcing services could be at the center of that plan.

There are distinct benefits to migrating off your own datacenters.

You can redistribute internal resources toward more productive endeavors. Migration frees up valuable IT staff so they can turn their attention to contemplating new ways in which technology can help generate additional revenue or better position your enterprise for whatever changes you expect (or cannot foresee) in the years to come.

Migration frees up money. Even if you aren’t literally saving (per earlier discussion about optimizing your spend), you have rescued significant capital funds. Instead of directing those dollars toward a continuing costly cycle of purchasing, upgrading and maintaining your datacenter equipment and facilities, you can expand your push into new markets or otherwise invest in your future.

datacenter outsourcing opens doors. Why not get some advice from consultants who have had extensive experience managing their own datacenters as well as helping companies like yours make smart, timely outsourcing decisions? They can help you determine if – and when – it makes sense for you to begin your migration.

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