Committed to building hyperscale at hyper speed

Black Box is your ideal partner if you are looking for hyperscale data center companies to build cutting-edge infrastructure across a wide geographic footprint. The ability and capacity to build these infrastructures across a nation, across cities, and even beyond borders make Black Box a premium choice. At the core of putting all of these together is the availability and access to trained professionals. Black Box solves this for you. You can now rest assured that we will be there in small towns or urban territories across countries and continents to provide you with customized support.

 

The Human Side of Hyperscale

Global IT managers very well know that data center construction companies around the world with aggressive go-live deadlines require thousands of potentially seasoned technicians. IT leaders face significant questions like: How do you find, train, and retain the right resources in the right places at the right times? Moreover, how do we maintain consistent processes and outcomes at every site? Black Box data center services attends to this human aspect of data center builds on a local level with proven, globally tested processes and methodologies, such as:

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Rethinking Hyperscale

Enterprises are moving from the traditional patchwork of local teams to global strategy standardization requirements and methodologies for repeatable, predictable services.

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The Talent Cycle

Cultivating talent for the long haul requires a cyclical approach to recruiting, training, and retaining talent to reallocate resources (and knowledge) from one project to the next.

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The Right Partner

A skilled partner can orchestrate builds, retrofits, and maintenance, giving you the ability to go to market quickly through strategic planning and rapid mobilization and enhancing the Customer Experience.

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Comprehensive Data Center Solutions

Having a global data-center strategy as a Div 27 Telecom Data Center Provider means anticipating (demand) requirements and putting consistent methodologies and mechanisms in place for hiring, retention, and redeployment from one site to another. We are investing in long-term, program-level training and reallocating resources to the next project for full-circle, repeatable, predictable services — and results — across all sites.

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    Global Reach, Local Knowledge

    A working knowledge of each location's legal, financial, technical, and cultural laws, standards, and customs keeps each project running smoothly.

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    BICSI-Certified Worldwide

    Black Box owns and operates strategically located authorized data center services training facilities that serve Europe and the United States, with more on the way.See more.

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    3-Step Talent Plan

    To ensure talent is ready when and where it's needed, Black Box follows a proven 10-step Talent Acquisition & Retention plan. See More

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    Service Beyond the Build

    Our data center services extend far beyond builds and retrofits to include day-to-day operations, building automation, and wireless networking. See more

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    Core Project Management

    A core project management and logistics team positively impacts the success of the project and team member satisfaction. See more

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The Human Side of Hyperscale

A global model for recruiting, training, and retaining skilled workers.

As an IT services provider dedicated to the hyperscale space, see how Black Box attends to the human aspect of data center builds on a local level with proven, globally tested processes and methodologies.

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Customer Success Stories

Black Box partners with leading technology providers and global network distributors to plan, design, and build out hyperscale-class DCs around the globe.

Related Resources

Gain insights to the latest trends and technology in Data Center deployment, management, and more.

Know Your Data Center Types

May 16, 2022, 10.43 AM by BlacK Box
Modern data centers exist in models that address the requirements of virtually any business. Understand your options, weigh them against your own requirements, and then determine the best path forward in making your own data center a reality.

The worldwide demand for data center capacity is exploding. Increasing adoption of cloud and technologies such as AI, IoT, and big data, as well as accelerating digitalization and the deployment of 5G, are driving exponential growth in the creation of new data.

Between 2018 and 2020, more new data was created than in all the years previous, combined. As that rate continues to increase, so too does the need for modern data centers. In fact, according to Arizton, "the global data center market size was valued at USD 215.8 billion in 2021 and is estimated to reach USD 288.3 billion by 2027, growing at a CAGR of 4.95% during the forecast period."

More and more businesses rely on data centers to support their core business functions. Choosing the right data center type for your business is the first step in harnessing data to provide key services and drive more efficient, responsive, and cost-effective business operations.

The Data Center Defined

Data centers are mission critical facilities supporting global businesses. The term "data center" simply refers to the buildings that house the computing infrastructure used to run those businesses. Within these facilities are the servers, storage, and networking equipment that support essential applications and data. While secure, climate-controlled physical facilities contribute to high reliability, the data center infrastructure itself is optimized to handle high volumes of data and traffic with minimum latency.

Differentiating Between Data Center Types

While characteristics such as efficiency are valuable across all types of data centers, different models have emerged to serve various market requirements. Four of the most dominant models in today's computing environment are hyperscale, enterprise, colocation, cloud, and edge. Each has its own unique characteristics, strengths, and ideal use cases.

Hyperscale Data Centers

Designed to meet the requirements of cloud and big data storage, hyperscale data centers are huge high-density facilities. Often owned by the likes of Google, Amazon, Facebook, IBM, Microsoft, Apple, and others, modern facilities can occupy several million square feet across multiple buildings, with thousands of servers running on ultra-high-speed networks to deliver massive storage and processing power.

Hyperscale data centers bring their owners benefits including high availability, performance, and security, as well as tight control over every operational parameter. However, while the sheer size of such facilities can enable economies of scale, modern campus and facility construction projects can exceed the $1 billion mark. Because most hyperscale data centers are situated in rural areas to keep costs down, a key challenge in addition to initial capital outlay is to find, train, and retain the talent to keep operations up and running smoothly.

Enterprise Data Centers

Built on a much smaller scale, the enterprise data center is typically a private facility that is owned and operated by the company whose applications and data it supports. While the enterprise data center is often located on the corporate campus, the facility may be situated elsewhere to comply with legal requirements regarding geographic location, to improve performance through closer proximity to a key user segment, or for other reasons. Within the data center, different sections may be separated and dedicated to different areas of the business.

The primary benefit of the enterprise data center is that it can provide exceptional security and be adapted to meet a company's unique network requirements. However, the initial capital investment required to build the data center is very large, and ongoing labor and maintenance are significant over time.

Colocation Data Centers and Data Racks

Colocation data centers can be massive in size, and they provide flexible, scalable access to rack space and resources on a rental basis. Rather than maintain an enterprise data center or a much larger hyperscale data center, a business can instead become a tenant in a colocation data center.

While one company might rent out an entire data center, more often multiple companies will rent server rack space within a single colocation center — like having offices in the same office building. One colocation data center might house anywhere from 100 to thousands of businesses.

In addition to renting out rack space and network devices, the colocation facility provides storage space, power, cooling, physical security, and connectivity to customers' telecom and network service providers as appropriate. For its part, the business is responsible for servers, storage, maintaining firewalls, and so on.

This model gives businesses the flexibility to establish hardware in different geographic locations. They also can take advantage of interconnectivity — the cost-saving cloud exchange of data with other tenants, such as network service providers, cloud service providers, and software as a service (SaaS) providers. The rental model also provides businesses with scalability that allows for incremental and cost-effective growth.

Cloud Data Centers

The cloud data center effectively takes the on-premises data center virtual and opens the door to subscription-based use of compute resources. Organizations access their data and applications in the cloud, where a company such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft (Azure), IBM Cloud, or another cloud provider owns and manages the hardware and cloud services.

In addition to enabling a pay-as-you-go model that works for businesses of every size, the cloud data center removes the need to worry about managing and maintaining physical facilities. Rather than spend time and talent on configuration and security, organizations can instead choose a cloud model and service that meets their requirement across key factors including cost, control, flexibility, scalability, and reliability.

A business needing greater security and control may choose to invest in a private cloud, where cloud computing resources are dedicated solely to that business. A public cloud offers a less-expensive alternative, providing non-exclusive access to cloud resources — servers, storage, and network devices over the public internet.

Edge Data Centers

Edge data centers are smaller data centers positioned close to the end user in order to minimize latency, increase throughput, and overcome intermittent connections. (The concept is taken from edge computing: Within a distributed IT architecture, client data is processed as close as possible to the originating source.) Numerous edge data centers may be located on the margins of a larger, geographically distributed network organized around one or more core data centers. This model enables exceptionally fast content delivery from the edge when needed, and it also allows for storage and processing of less critical or time-sensitive content at a core data center.

As consumers' reliance on digital services and connected (IoT) devices continues to grow, the proximity of edge data centers to end devices plays a vital role in reducing network traffic and operating costs while improving application performance. Businesses can use multiple edge data centers to establish mesh coverage, enable greater resilience, ensure high performance for edge applications, and provide consistent quality of experience for end users across their service areas.

Making Your Data Center a Reality

Build it yourself? Rent from a colocation data center? Move to the cloud? As IT leaders go about choosing the right type of data center for their operations, they can weigh the costs and benefits of each model against their business needs. Oftentimes, these factors clearly indicate which type of data center will suit the business best. When a hyperscale or enterprise data center is the right choice, the more difficult challenge lies in attracting, training, and retaining the right technical staff to build the data center operation quickly and expertly.

Large-scale data centers are complex, and they require a great deal of technical know-how through construction and operational phases. And right now, the competition to recruit qualified technical talent is fierce! Working with the right partner and the right talent, you can design, build, and run the data center your organization needs to stay competitive in a world driven by data and processing power.

Why Choose Black Box?

The Black Box Data Center Practice follows the "think global, act local" ethos, offering centralized solutions development and strategic planning while maintaining local project management and a local technical workforce for scalable delivery. As a global company with the ability to focus locally, Black Box excels in recruiting and training data center construction and technical staff.

Black Box services extend beyond the data center build and retrofit technical staffing. The company oversees day-to-day operations management, building automation, and in-building wireless networking through a single project management office to ensure consistency and quality around the globe.

Black Box Corporation is a unique, global data center services provider that supports customers throughout North America and worldwide. Black Box Data Center Practice services provide a holistic suite including hyperscale data center construction; co-location and large-scale deployments; Day 2 and RunOps support 24/7/365; and engineering and DAS solutions for leading manufacturers, social media, and search engine giants.

Learn more about how the Black Box Data Center Practice can help your organization take the next step.

Ready to move forward with your data center project?
Contact us at 855-324-9909 or email us at contact@blackbox.com.

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Why Black Box?

Black Box® is a trusted IT solutions provider delivering cutting-edge technology solutions and world-class consulting services to businesses around the globe. The breadth of our global reach and depth of our expertise accelerate customer success by bringing people, ideas, and technology together to solve real-world business problems. Our IT infrastructure solutions, services, and products enable secure, flawless connectivity and meaningful collaboration for businesses in every major market sector on six continents. 

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