Key Criteria When Choosing Locations of Data Centers in India

Businesses need data centers in India which are located in places that will not be vulnerable to natural or manmade disasters. At the same time, such data centers should be well equipped to provide them will resources like network connectivity, transportation facilities and power supplies. While there is no denying the fact that data centers in India are a very critical part of any business, there are occasions when decisions about their locations are taken rather arbitrarily. Earlier, for instance, data centers would invariably be located near the business centers but this has rapidly changed today as most of the administrative and monitoring tasks are performed remotely. Proximity to corporate office locations is no longer a prime criterion when choosing data centers in India; rather, a host of economic, social and geographical factors are taken into account when choosing their location.

One of the first things that businesses consider when choosing data center location is ways in which to reduce the possibility of physical threats to the data center facility. Besides the threats from natural calamities like earthquakes or floods, data centers in India can also be affected or made inoperable when their supporting infrastructure gets damaged. So, it is important to select an area which is known to be less prone to calamities; places located in seismic zones must be avoided.

Communications are integral for optimum functioning of data centers in India. So, equipments within such a facility must be able to communicate with other devices throughout the world to perform different business operations. This means the companies require excellent fiber connectivity. The provider should be able to offer you multiple carriers for redundancy.

It is also important to choose a location which can get power supplies as and when needed. Data centers anywhere will consume a huge volume of power. With complex applications emerging, power needs have also grown. Incidentally, power costs in data centers have become practically the second highest costs in data center operations today. So, when selecting data centers in India, factors like abundant and cheap power supply should be of utmost consideration.

While data centers in India can definitely be established in smaller cities, it is important that these remain accessible by all modes of transport. So, support crew for instance should be able to arrive at these locations without difficulty when needed to handle outage situations.

Data centers are going to be huge facilities and therefore the costs to get this kind of real estate has to be an important factor when it comes to deciding on location of a data center. Real estate prices are going to be lower in smaller towns and cities and building data centers outside big cities is budget-friendly.

While data center operations may be technical in nature, political factors cannot be totally disregarded when choosing their location. Data centers entail huge investments and businesses will always be searching for ways to lower their taxes. So, places which have low taxes are likely to be preferred by companies for establishing their data centers there. Incidentally, in the US, taxes were a key reason why Yahoo, Amazon and Microsoft set up data centers in various cities of Oregon and Washington.

Since data centers have to be run by site engineers, it is also important to choose a location which has an easy access to the local skilled professionals.

Data centers in India must be located in places where terrorism and other such threats are less. The physical security of the facility is of utmost importance because any kind of disruption to the facility will affect business operations negatively.

So, to sum up, data centers will be the core of any business facility and performance no longer remains the only criterion for defining a data center’s success. Business continuity energy efficiency and resource optimization are equally vital. Various mathematical models are used for evaluating the various factors which businesses must consider when choosing data center locations.

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