Expanding on Cringely’s posts late last year (first, second), I was wondering why companies don’t offer turn-key datacenters for businesses.
Imagine, for a moment, that you were in need of several servers – email, web, hr, inventory, file storage, applications – and support architecture – routers, switches, firewalls, etc. Locating suppliers for all of these can be a very time-consuming process, and if everything is not purchased at the same time, you can run into compatibility issues. So, why not have a business whose sole purpose in life is to integrate datacenter needs for customers, and then deliver those datacenters ready to roll?
For example, let’s say you need to provide email for 5000 users, handle user authentication for workstations, serve a medium-use website (>10000 hits/day), document management, and handle human resources -related stuff (employee contracts, sick/vacation time use, benefits, time tracking). From my understanding, a typical organization who needs to do this will solicit proposals from several vendors, fight their internal bureaucracies over how much should be spent, what OS to use, etc, and then finally start purchasing equipment after several months. In a perfect world, the vendor supplies support and training to administrators so they can run the hardware for their organization, but otherwise leave the ‘real’ work up to the customer.
I think a very profitable business could be run in which a vendor receives such a request from a customer, but instead of worrying about which hardware goes in which closet, is there enough rack space already, or do they need more, etc, they could provide the entire package in a container that could be delivered via truck (or train). Said container could include its own HVAC unit, and only need a couple connectors to the outside world to become a ‘usable’ server room when it’s delivered.
My vision for this is to install lots of rack space into a default arrangement in the container, preroute cooling and ventilation ducts, wire the whole container for power, phone, and network, and install insulation inside the container, so that the HVAC unit won’t be working overtime to keep the box cold.
Containers have lots of space inside of them, and could easily be used to hold dozens of servers, storage units, and networking infrastructure hardware. Once a customer settled on what they need, in terms of current and future capacity, minimum networking requirements, OS, etc, the vendor would just install all of the necessary hardware into the racks inside the container, install non-proprietary software into the hardware – basically everything the systems administrators would have to do when the hardware arrived at their location – but would then just close the doors on the container, hire a trucking outfit to deliver the container, and have it dropped-off at the customer’s location.
All that would be left for the customer would be decide where they wanted their datacenter, connect power and network, and turn it on.
What do you think?