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“Larger green field data centres such as 1000m² or above tend to employ the majority of consultancy disciplines to deploy services from MEP, Security, ELV and IT.” Wes Tweedley, regional services director, CommScope Global services

Modern data centre design encapsulates many features including flexibility, the need for always-on availability, scalability and manageability. NME finds out from the region’s leading data centre specialists what essentials need to go into cutting-edge data centre design and the main trends in the Middle East.

The Middle East IT infrastructure domain has reached a natural state of evolution that has not been seen before, with many a company considering the expansion of their current data centre facilities.

It could also be said that the data centre market has reached a mini-zenith or plateau where all of the major enterprises in the region, at least in the more prominent countries, have had data centre installations in place for some years now and are looking at next-generation offerings such as cloud computing and virtualisation to maximise efficiency and hopefully save some dollars along the way.

Prior to the financial crisis the region saw such strong growth that a great deal of the businesses occupying the SMB sector were nipping at the heels of the low-end enterprise market and as such were beginning to consider the need to upgrade their data centre rooms.

The growth may have dissipated to a large extent, but this sector has endured somewhat and there is still the same interest in data centre design at the SMB level and certainly at the enterprise level.

At the same time, and stimulated by this maturation, a number of data centre consultants have started to set up shop in the Middle East and have been busy helping those companies looking to expand their data centres, or indeed carry out first builds, to ensure that they get the best solution and positive ROI.

However, data centre consultation in the Middle East is still relatively in its infancy and a lot of the firms that offer the service have only been operating and based in the region for a few years.

“We set up a business in the Middle East about 18 months ago, so we are newer to this market, but we are trying to replicate the same success out here that we have had in the UK and so far it is going very well,” said Duncan Adamson, general manager for the Middle East at IT consultancy and services firm Intergence Systems.

Despite being newcomers, Adamson is adamant that there has been a great demand for Intergence’s services when it comes to the designing and overseeing the creation of data centre facilities.

It has to be said though, that there are also end-users in the region that have elected not to employ the services of a consultant when it comes to data centre design and have instead opted to do it in–house.

e-Hosting Datafort (eDHF), which offers a variety of data centre advisory services, suggests that there is a propensity for the SMB sector to shun consultancy services, a potentially risky approach.

“Yes, definitely smaller companies tend to do it directly on their own,” explained Herbert Radlinger, business manager, data centre services at eHDF. “It’s dangerous, I believe at the end [of the project] they will not get the perfect solution that they are looking for. I don’t see that it is possible to get the best solution going directly with the contractor. The contractor will look at their own portfolio first. I have been in this business quite a long time now and this is not only my opinion, it’s also my experience,” emphasised Radlinger.

This is perhaps one of the major cases in favour of enlisting the services of a consultant. Every consultant in the market will loudly espouse the value of having an impartial third party involved in your project, one with the expertise and understanding to ensure that product evangelisers do not take over the project.

“Let me put the case for independent consultancy — at a very broad, blunt level any systems integrator purporting to have a services arm will be bound by the product pull-through targets they have in terms of vendor obligations,” asserted Intergence’s Adamson. “That is not a controversial statement, it is just a fact of life.”

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