Data has become an inescapable reality of modern business, and the sheer volume of it poses huge problems to the enterprise. Recent research by Cisco predicts that by 2016 data centre traffic will have increased six-fold on the amount of data handled in 2011. That’s a startling statistic, and enough to keep any data centre manager awake at night.

Traditionally, there have been two options for organisations that require a data centre: build your own, or, rent rack space from a data centre colocation provider. Both have their distinct advantages and disadvantages; however, the size of an organisation has often proved to be the deciding factor with the most influence.

The biggest advantage of building your own data centre is exactly that. You designed it, you built it, you control what goes on in there. You can custom design your infrastructure to handle whatever systems you need to run. Upgrades to new technology can be carried out at the pace you need to go at, as slow or as fast as you like. Control also extends to security, and managing your own data on-premise means that physical security is less likely to be compromised.

This level of control, however, comes at a price. Quite literally. Building a data centre is not cheap, and it’s not exactly cheap to run manage and maintain when operational either. Between unpredictable property prices and the rising cost of energy, regardless of the size of the organisation, committing to build your own data centre amounts to a significant outlay of capital.

The other option is to use a colocation facility. There are many attractive and obvious benefits to this solution, not least the lower initial outlay involved and ability to buy more capacity as needed. This is a perfect solution to many organisations but the restrictions put in place in terms of available technology, ability to run custom systems and compromises to physical security mean that this is not a viable option for many companies.

With data traffic skyrocketing, a very real dilemma for many organisations that manage their own data centres is what to do when they exceed capacity. Finding a service provider that can handle legacy systems can be a real challenge. My own experience as a technical data centre engineer in the financial services sector taught me that many of the traditional outsourcing options were not really fit for purpose.

Recently, however, we’ve seen a different third model emerge, providing a viable alternative for those in need of rapidly expanding data handling capabilities. The advent of the modular wholesale data centre provider offers, in a way, what is the best of both worlds. Customers can lease what is essentially a managed data centre environment, providing a secure location, network connections, as well as power and cooling infrastructure, but critically, what happens inside this environment is completely down to the customer.

The environment can be exactly what they make of it, and is not restricted to the hardware put in place by the datacentre provider, preventing compatibility issues that may have arisen using a traditional colocation provider. This approach lends itself to phased expansion, and the modular technology associated with this type of offering allows tenants to increase their capacity in the same footprint as they need to.

For organisations that need more than just rack space, this is a godsend. In essence, it provides what is, for all purposes, a self-controlled data centre, while avoiding the outlay associated with building and maintaining your own. In a time when raising capital for infrastructure investment is becoming more and more difficult and budgets are being cut left right and centre, any opportunity to turn the data centre into an operational expense rather than a capital expense will be music to the ears of any IT decision maker.

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