As with most key business decisions, expense will usually play a large role in a company’s data centre strategy. While basing any IT strategy on cost alone is a mistake, companies must also avoid overspending and leaving themselves financially vulnerable.

When it comes to investing in a data centre solution, the flexibility of a third party colocation centre provides an obvious answer to that problem. Nevertheless, Gartner’s vice president of research Rakesh Kumar stated at 2011’s Gartner Data Center & IT Operations Summit they had witnessed a steep increase in new data centres as companies decided to foot the bill for their own facilities.

He also suggested that it was beginning to be more cost effective for a company to build its own centre than to rent space, and a new facility could pay for itself within four years. This is a surprising claim, considering that a new fully equipped centre in Europe can cost more than 20 million euros to construct, before even approaching the cost of staffing and maintaining the facility.

Ownership is also a much riskier strategy that leaves far less flexibility and room for error. A company building a smaller and more affordable centre might find their demand outstripping it before long, while a large and expensive facility could become a costly white elephant if demand and growth don’t live up to expectations.