When companies merge or one company takes over another, they are soon faced with a decision: what to do with the IT infrastructure of both companies? Regardless of the size of the merger or acquisition, it's always a challenge to merge and integrate the existing systems of both organisations into one efficient landscape. It's a complex process that requires careful preparation and a sophisticated plan. As a specialist in this field, an external data center can provide exactly the right solution.
External data centers now offer a much wider range of services than a few years ago. Previously, most data centers primarily offered a physical location with essential facilities such as power supply, cooling and security. External data centers now function much more as fully-fledged business partners that provide customers with customised advice and solutions in the areas of design, migration, connectivity and financing.
Setting up a new IT infrastructure based on existing hardware and software requires a full understanding of how the information flows through the various business units and what the business model of the new organisation looks like. It's important to merge the IT infrastructure as soon as possible; no company will find it beneficial to remain in two IT worlds. Eventually, there will have to be a list of redundant hardware and software. Or maybe even a completely redundant data center. And then the question arises: what can you do with that as a company?
An external data center can help you by taking over the equipment or data center from you, or managing it on your behalf. In 2020, LCL invested in the acquisition and modernisation of an Atos data center in Huizingen. Atos, an IT services company, wanted to focus on its core business. LCL has completely modernised the data center and now functions at this location as an external data center for Atos.
Data centers often have a huge network of partners at their disposal, which you as a company can take advantage of. As a carrier-independent partner, LCL offers a choice of more than 40 carrier partners, for example, offering you, the customer, a wide selection of competitive solutions. In addition, LCL offers scalable, flexible and secure connectivity to the most common public cloud platforms via the Equinix platform. During mergers or acquisitions, this can be a perfect solution for data migrations, for example, while redesigning your IT infrastructure. If you want to store all your data temporarily in a cloud environment during the redesign of your IT infrastructure, you can scale up to migrate masses of data for a certain period of time. When you're able to, just put it back in its own stack safely and securely. This allows LCL to respond flexibly to specific needs in the event of a merger or takeover and, as a partner for total solutions, give you total peace of mind with regards to connections.
Another advantage of partnering with a data center is that you can connect to certain ecosystems. Ecosystems are specially designed to create synergy between the various participating partners from a particular sector. By bringing them together in an ecosystem, they can design and offer their solutions and services as efficiently as possible. Direct connections between partners ensure secure and rapid data exchange, which is the key to (market) success in many modern business models.
In short, a merger or acquisition may be a good time to call on the knowledge and expertise of an external data center, because the possibilities are probably greater than you may have imagined.
Still not sure whether to build or buy? Do the Quick Scan! Answering three short questions will give you a better idea of which option is best for your business.
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