Alan Lewis

NW

Consultant

Which shows a complete lack of joined-up thinking within the corporate centre.

Business has a legal responsibility to protect corporate data. Traditionally this meant backups and archives. More recently, the smart move is off-site mirroring.

"Best practice" BCM - and hence DR planning and recovery - entail maintaining archival/backup/mirror sites at least 50km from the main site.

So why the intensity to maintain London sites??? Its the old "if I cant touch it..." syndrome. Using a non-London (or non-local) data centre results in vastly decreased costs. The ultra-reliable providers offer high security, VPN access, "remote hands" hardware support. The only major cost drawback is the additional cost of sending an engineer on a long trip, but at most that's mileage and perhaps accommodation.

Oh, and rack space in Manchester is getting pretty tight too, if you are a TC customer...

With commercial property market in turmoil, this could represent an opportunity for a DC player to acquire a site near a motorway, and fibre from several telcos.... Carlisle, Lancaster (has a phenomenal amount passing through it), York... all have the bonus of being nice places to work in, too. Or of course, there's Leeds, Brum, Crewe, Bristol...