Data centers are simultaneously the factories and warehouses of Internet. A study of Cushman & Wakefield, Hurleypalmerflatt and Source8 has ranked Indonesia, India and Brazil as the riskiest countries to open a data center. That strikes out two out of the four BRIC countries from being the home of Internet.
Their risks are mostly related to physical, economic and social issues. Other factors however such as high energy costs, poor international internet bandwidth and protectionist legislation are also risks that need to be taken into account.
The top ten most favored countries that Cushman & Wakefield study has identified for data centers are: US, UK, Germany, Iceland, Canada, Qatar, Hong Kong, Sweden, Finland, and Switzerland. The report says:
Data centre downtime can potentially cost millions in lost revenue and compensation; it can even threaten the livelihood of a business by causing irreparable damage to its reputation. The Data Centre Risk Index assesses various macro level risks – physical, economic and social, that could cause a threat to service continuity and uptime.
Last year, 2011, the world endured a series of devastating natural disasters which have caused record economic losses. We have seen the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, severe flooding in Thailand, typhoons in the Philippines and storms wreaking havoc in the US. It was also the year of the Arab Spring, the repercussions of which are still echoing through the Middle East. The ongoing global economic crisis and the fragile state of some of the economies burdened with debt is causing political instability. These clearly have significant effects on business.
Download the full “Data Centre Risk Index 2012” from here (Free registration is required).
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