I have been thinking about, and planning this venture for the last six months.<\/p>\n
I am considering setting up a datacentre.<\/p>\n
Well, two actually, but let’s concentrate on one for now.<\/p>\n
In the last two years I have migrated a number of systems away from central government departments, and from large local authorities; from in-house infra to an external datacentre.<\/p>\n
Three migrations have been virtual to virtual, one was physical to virtual, and the most recent has been physical to physical.<\/p>\n
I’ve migrated a large-scale finance system with a turnover of \u00a352bn\/year.<\/p>\n
I’ve moved over 400 corporate systems.<\/p>\n
I’ve moved public-facing Sharepoint-based data collection systems (SQL-Server back-ends with feeds through to corporate datafarms).<\/p>\n
I’ve moved office systems such as email, print services, site access systems\/security systems, etc.<\/p>\n
While I’ve been working on these projects I’ve been looking at the hosting sector, and I’ve been looking at who does what for whom.<\/p>\n
I’ve noticed that the datacentre providers concentrate on very large customers.<\/p>\n
And I’ve noticed that there doesn’t seem to be anyone concentrating on smaller-to-medium customers.<\/p>\n
What I would like to do is offer datacentre services that focus on very small public-sector customers, and small-to-medium private sector customers.<\/p>\n
Nobody is offering services to small local authorities, because the fat profit margins they’re used to don’t exist.<\/p>\n
Think about what happened to South Oxfordshire District Council a few days ago – and also happened to Vale Of White Horse District Council in the same event.<\/p>\n
Also, over in the private sector world, small-to-medium businesses don’t even think about datacentre operations.<\/p>\n
Small-to-medium businesses don’t usually have any BC\/DR plan other than taking backups and keeping them in a safe on-site.<\/p>\n
I’ve walked through business parks, knocking on doors, asking questions.<\/p>\n
All I’ve found is that staff in small-to-medium businesses communicate internally by emailing attachments around, and storing data\/applications on individual hard-disks.<\/p>\n
Small-to-medium businesses give precious little thought about proper file\/information sharing, and give no consideration to either externally hosting things, or BC\/DR.<\/p>\n
They’re vulnerable to theft.<\/p>\n
They’re vulnerable to data corruption.<\/p>\n
They work in inefficient ways.<\/p>\n
I would like to build a datacentre with a pick-list of services.<\/p>\n
At the shallow end the datacentre would offer low-level services, such as just hosting backed-up data.<\/p>\n
At the deep end the services would include hosting of websites, email systems, production business systems, file-shares, etc.<\/p>\n
I’m looking at racked servers, hosting VMs, running CentOS.<\/p>\n
I have a shortlist of appropriate business units.<\/p>\n
If this goes ahead I would choose a business unit, build server rooms in it, get cable installed, build server racks, put in UPSs. And install network switches, and the servers.<\/p>\n
Notwithstanding the ‘how do I intend to get customers onboard’ question (actually, I have a plan for that), what do you think about the cunning plan – the general idea?<\/p>\n
I’m under no illusions, this isn’t going to make shedloads of cash. But it is going to pay for itself.<\/p>\n
And it is going to offer services to a sector that is under catered-for.<\/p>\n
Oh yes, and another feature of this concept is that all aspects would be domestically-hosted.<\/p>\n