With AI soon set to be everywhere, businesses must decide whether to invest in a private data centre or rely on a specialist provider – a choice which, according to Matt Cantwell, Director Product and Propositions at Colt Data Centre Services, could determine if they stay ahead of the curve or fall behind.

The release of ChatGPT in 2022 made AI more accessible and understandable for the wider public. Now, the future of some multinational organisations is being staked on its success. 

With AI soon set to be everywhere, businesses will also need an increasing amount of compute power to support the technology. AI models need to be trained, which requires swathes of data that needs to be stored somewhere. Developing AI requires vast amounts of energy too, not only for the training models themselves but also for storing and transferring the large volumes of data involved. 

Businesses who don’t embrace AI may get left behind by those who do. But pursuing it also brings another dilemma: should you build your own data centre, or work with a data centre provider? Ownership of your own data centre may offer more control – but the rapid acceleration of AI innovation and the infrastructure needed to support it also means that expensive, long-term construction projects may already become out of date by the time they’re completed. 

For businesses, is the building of private data centres a sensible, scalable investment? Sometimes it isn’t. Instead, purchasing halls or racks from a data centre provider can prove to be less risky, involve less capital investment and even involve a smaller carbon footprint. Let’s explore the benefits in more detail. 

Location, location, location 

The first consideration on your AI infrastructure must involve your data centre’s location. Picking the site to house your IT is crucial because the closer it is to high concentrations of your customers, the lower the latency – providing a faster, more secure, and generally a far superior experience for your AI generated outcomes. 

Given that data consumption is highly concentrated in densely populated urban areas like London, Mumbai, and Tokyo, data centres are often situated close by. In order to achieve this, however, the facility needs to be located where it has access to a high concentration of diverse fibre routes offering the best connectivity options.

The rapid expansion and development of these cities also makes securing land in urban areas more challenging, and expensive. Therefore, pre-existing data centre providers will usually offer a range of location options (often several in or near the same city) to best suit their customers’ needs. 

Data centre providers can also make important location decisions in terms of amenities, emphasising stability and consistency, so you don’t have to. Given the reliance of data centres on consistent power for their operations, ensuring energy security and uninterrupted access to electricity is crucial, especially in areas where power supply can be unreliable. Providers will also assess the region’s stability regarding natural disasters such as earthquakes and the political climate. 

Since the information stored in data centres is often business-critical or sensitive, working with a data centre provider can ensure the best possible security provision thanks to their tried-and-trusted relationships with physical and cyber security providers.

Sustainability races up the list of priorities 

Meanwhile, sustainability forms an ever-present consideration in any new data centre. This is because data centres consume an incredible amount of energy which, unless sourced renewably, could have a catastrophic effect on both our planet and your business’ reputation. 

Today, data centres are responsible for around 1.5% of the world’s energy consumption, but this is expected to accelerate due to their increasing involvement in supporting AI workloads. Despite this, the data centre and IT industry on a whole is in fact leading the way on supporting the construction of renewable power generation. This bears the question; without the support from the data centres, how much less renewable generation would be actually coming online? 

As sustainability becomes an increasingly core business consideration, building and running an environmentally-friendly data centre, without the required resources, is a serious undertaking. For instance, you need to know which global or industry sustainability regulations to adhere to and how you are going to minimise your carbon footprint. In addition, you will need to consider if you will have access to green power and how you can achieve a low power usage effectiveness (PUE) rating.

Instead, selecting a data centre provider that already minimises its environmental impact – from the use of green energy, changes in fuel within generators, to modifications in cooling systems from air only to a hybrid air and liquid cooling methods – places all the onus on the supplier. In doing so, you can operate safely in the knowledge that your output is green, without all the effort, knowledge, and resources required to personally sustain it.

Expertise on the centre stage 

Perhaps the single biggest reason that businesses choose to partner with external data centre providers, rather than build their own, is to access their ready-made expertise across multiple data centre disciplines. 

Data centres are an incredibly complex operation, with rows of servers and racks needing a carefully controlled environment to work to their optimal capacity. Data centre providers are well versed in connectivity, power supply, cooling, physical and cyber security, health & safety and much more. Looking ahead, AI infrastructure has different data centre power and cooling requirements when compared with other types of infrastructure which existed before. This means the specialist knowledge data centre providers have will be even more important in this new technological era.

The rapid pace of technological innovation and the number of businesses getting involved, means that any distractions and resource-sapping activities could impinge on your progress towards outpacing your competitors. You could train or employ workers to focus solely on your own data centres, but these skills are an expensive investment. Simply, your employees don’t need to be worrying about critical power distribution systems, or the most efficient liquid cooling methods. Leave these concerns to your expert data centre provider, so you can focus on delivering the products and services that are the most important to your customers.

Your tailor-made, future-proofed data centre network 

Ultimately, purchasing data centre solutions from single racks to data halls, or an entire site from an experienced data centre provider will allow your business to efficiently store, access, and manage your IT infrastructure from a highly secure, and well-connected location. 

With AI’s dense power requirements, and the likelihood they will continue to rise, flexibility is crucial. Building your own data centre now, in the hope it’ll last around two decades, risks your IT infrastructure becoming outdated within five years – just a quarter of the way through its intended lifetime. Instead, housing your company’s data with an established data centre provider could future proof your business into the era of AI and beyond.