Data Center Philosophy
As part of our service, Erie Blue consultants routinely visit data centers in order to take facilities tours and learn as much as possible about the facility and the data center’s business, management, staff and culture. We typically like to arrange data center tours back to back in order for the similarities and differences to stand out in our minds. At the end of the day, the greatest impression we have after a day of touring facilities is the difference in culture and how understanding datacenter culture is a critical input in the data center selection process.
Why Data Center Culture Is Important – Thinking Beyond Features and Price
As data center marketers, we have had the priviledge to screen thousands of data center email leads over the years. Without seeing the submitters job title, we can often tell if the submitter holds a technical position or a management position. While this is only a generalization, technical positions, such as IT staff, tend to place a focus in their initial email lead inquiry on confirming features and requesting pricing. Their role seems to be one of an information gatherer and while pricing is important information it’s a mistake to over-emphasize the important of price in the early stages of selection. A price focus data center search can often lead a business to the wrong short-list of vendors. Even when the data center vendors all provide a sound and secure service.
Managers and strategic decision makers tend to not request pricing in their initial emails and there’s good reason why – they understand that while data center features and pricing are certainly important, these questions should not be primary. What comes into focus early on for the strategic decision maker is the evaluation of the data center’s business culture. A suitable example of the shortcoming of a price focused selection process is that of selecting a wife or husband. In many ways, there are strong parallels because data center services are often long term relationships where if unfortunate discoveries are made, they are most often made after the union. A price focused selection process is similar to selecting a husband or wife based upon outward attractiveness while a culture selection process places a focus on values.
The Importance Of Culture
Data centers are service providers, and like all businesses, they each have their own distinct culture. Difference in culture is good. It provides important variation in service delivery that when well paired to your businesses culture provides added value. When there is a mismatch in culture there can be frustration or worse.
As an example, some data centers in the Cleveland market strive to fill the need for enterprise level service where standards and almost military style adherence to standards at all times provides value to their clients tremendous value in the form of predictable assurance. Other data centers fill the need for creative service delivery. Customization and flexibility in data center service style is often best fit for projects and companies with some measure of unpredictability.
Evaluating a data center’s culture, from it’s ownership, management and staff through to its operational procedures, is a critical step in the data center evaluation process because the data center’s business culture and style needs to fit with your company’s project and business needs. Strategic decision making is forward thinking and this why successful leaders and managers will focus on culture well before price. Questions such as, ‘Will the datacenter be flexible enough to meet my unpredictable growth?’, ‘Can I trust them to not bend their rules if I prefer rigidity?’, ‘Do they see my business as a partnership?’ ‘Can the datacenter scale with my business?’, ‘Will their culture work with that of my IT engineers?’ are the kind of questions strategic thinkers try to gather information on before proceeding to pricing.
Erie Blue’s Service Approach & Philosophy
Given what we have said above, it is clear that we value the intangibles surrounding data centers as much as we do the objective dimensions such as facility technical specifications. Our service does not seek to simply gather your name and provide you in return with simple pricing. Far from it, our service philosophy is to learn about your business and project needs and the future needs of your business. With that, we then make data center recommendations that will include the cultural dimensions of the data center provider. Data center selection is often a long-term strategic parternship and our process helps ensure you with the information you need to make the best possible pairing with that of your business.
Next Steps:
We strive to gather information and formulate professional opinions on data center services, including their all too important culture, in order to arm our clients with the most comprehensive information available. This helps to ensure successful decisions.
To help ensure your own success decision, please contact us to obtain strategic information about Cleveland data centers and in data centers in the markets of Akron/Canton and Columbus.
