This year, the colocation and data storage landscape continues to grow significantly, largely due to the rise of a new breed of tech and media companies looking to store their present and future data.

While it’s great news for your organization, with Data Center construction set to grow at a CAGR of 6.7% from 2022-2030, you will need to fend off some serious competition.

Your potential new clients are also becoming smarter and more demanding – making it increasingly difficult for Data Centers, in their current state, to evaluate and keep track of capacity and also meet customers’ demands.

We’ve identified five common challenges that could be slowing your growth and looked at how you can resolve them. 

1. Data Center Security Issues

Security is an ongoing challenge for data center owners, costing millions in theft of personal information and private data breaches.

A survey conducted by IBM shows that more than 52% of data breaches are caused by malicious attacks: compromised credentials, physical security compromise, vulnerabilities in third-party software and cloud misconfiguration.

Due to the complex nature of data centers, security components need to be considered, encompassing a range of strategies to prevent outside interference and preventing criminals from entering the networks

2. Manual data entries and too many IT processes

Data centers are complex and have a lot going on, leaving room for failures. There are applications, network connectivity, cooling systems, connecting cables, power distributions running at the same time, making it difficult to track and analyze processes, as well as make well-informed decision making. 

Managing data center infrastructure is an around the clock job. 

Data Center maintenance requires different local, regional and even national teams to collaborate seamlessly and efficiently to provide a clear view of a specific Data Center’s capabilities. 

Given their geographical separation, it’s difficult to follow the same processes across the organization and expect an error-free outcome. Additionally, the manual nature of processes takes time away from making strategic decisions, impacting service offerings

73% of IT leaders say automation saves employees between 10-50% of the time they previously spent doing manual tasks. Teams are in need of a centralized cloud-based system, rather than multiple systems, which allows them to automate IT processes and reduce manual data entries. 

Better communication and a transparent data view would provide much-needed consistency and will boost your company’s growth.

3. Inefficient view on colocation capabilities (and utilities) around the globe

Colocation represents a big chunk of a Data Center business and with your customers having drastically changed in the last 10 years, it’s important for your enterprise to have a better view of its facilities.

Your clients now have a better understanding of their needs (and their data) as they are looking to scale – and Data Centers must facilitate those needs. Internal teams should have a holistic view on their center capabilities and utilities around the country, or the globe, and should be prepared to service their new customers immediately.

This single view allows teams to view colocation capabilities, including floor plans, the cooling situation per facility, their design and security – answering all the questions a potential client brings to a sales meeting.

Think about how your organization can improve that 360-degree view on colocation capabilities and you will be able to provide better insights to aid your sales team in their next client meeting.

4. Error-prone sales and contract renewals

Another vital component of your customer experience is contract renewals. When it’s time to go through the renewals process, sales teams need the process to be as seamless as possible.

However, manual contract processes are error prone and slow, with other team members having to check for inaccuracies, leading to contract hold ups. Along with a lack of visibility across contracts, this affects your sales team directly and can even disrupt their efforts to close a sale.

As Data Centers go through their digital transformation, it’s important to implement solutions that can automate contract renewals and support sales teams.

A centralized, easily managed product catalog that offers easy access to product and pricing for your services will also ease the burden on your sales team by cutting any billing errors for your customers.

5. Prolonged service or product launch timeline

Siloed processes and a lack of a decent IT infrastructure affect big organizations’ ability to deliver new products to the market.

Your Data Center could suffer the same fate – so what can you do to improve this area to speed up the launches of new services?

Optimizing internal communication between different teams to allow tighter collaboration and better deadline management is a good start in accelerating your product time to market. A cloud-based product catalog will also allow your organization’s development team to have a 360-degree view on upcoming product designs and enable them to innovate commercially.

Once launched the new products, services and bundles can be made available across all sales channels, ensuring go to market speed, accuracy and consistency – ultimately maximizing the lifetime value of your customer.