Recent reports have highlighted the potential for an energy supply 'crunch' as early as the winter of 2015.  Of course this alarming news is a concern for everyone - we all want to keep the lights on after all. But for businesses the prospect of power cuts is particularly unwelcome. Businesses today are far more heavily reliant on their IT infrastructure in order to keep their data and applications up and running, so power shortages could be disastrous.

For companies with on-premises equipment the threat of power outages is particularly concerning. Ensuring proper provision of power backups entails significant investment in the generators required to provide meaningful resilience in the event of a blackout.

Outages are a particularly pertinent threat for businesses operating across multiple sites with on-site infrastructure at a central location – effectively a single point of failure. Therefore, backing up data and infrastructure at an alternative site provides far more comprehensive protection.

One of the advantages of outsourcing your business’s infrastructure to a Data Centre is that the investment in backup power and resiliency is completely taken care of. For example, our state-of-the-art facilities are all backed up with generators that can provide up to 72 hours of emergency power in the case of power cuts or other issues with the national grid.

In addition, choosing a partner with Data Centres in multiple locations gives you the added peace of mind that your outsourced infrastructure can be backed up at a secondary location – adding yet another layer of resiliency.

When making the decision on whether to outsource, power needs to be a key consideration for all businesses. Alongside the security and availability of data, and the cooling of equipment, power backups are essential and should not be ignored.

If you would like to see what outsourcing can do for you first hand, get in touch with the team here and book a tour of one of our Data Centres: http://www.node4.co.uk/book-a-tour/