The COVID-19 pandemic has changed every facet of our lives, from business to everyday routines. From schools to grocery stores and even data centers are having to adapt to virtual and remote work environments. That may seem easy, but a lot of thought and strategy goes into the practice of making a data center tour safe and effective for potential clients and partners.
Our data center virtual tours have become an integral part of our clients’ experience at our Texas Data Centers (specifically our Houston Data Center and our Austin Data Center). How so? First, let us give you a little context on why it’s so important to be adaptive given the current pandemic.
Data Centers operate 24x7x365 – when everything else is closed, the internet is open.
It seems obvious, but e-commerce and a company’s online presence is vital for business success. According to a recent article, there was a 34 percent increase in smartphone data usage between March 1st and March 17th. This was the direct result of social distancing and quarantine protocols enacted during the pandemic.
Most businesses have either drastically reduced their onsite work staff or completely shut their campus down. These days video conferencing and work-from-home is the norm. This puts a lot of businesses on the hunt for a data center that allows for scalability with the need for remote work expansion.
Colocation Data Centers offer flexible options for an organization’s data needs. They also need to be COVID-ready.
When we built our Austin and Houston Data Centers, we built them to be able to expand in ways that a single organization often doesn’t have the budget for. From state-of-the-art security to massive power and cooling requirements, they’re big enough to handle any space requirement that your enterprise deployment may require.
Unfortunately, all data centers aren’t created equal. We needed a way to show potential clients our data center while limiting risk during the pandemic. We also needed a way to ensure that OUR employees have a safe work environment in which to work. Here’s what our President and CFO, Shane Menking had to say about how COVID has changed our business in a recent interview.
“One of the biggest challenges that we will continue to face is providing the safest possible work environment when the very nature of our business requires people to work in close proximity. In addition, being able to support our customers which are also required to visit our facilities in a post COVID world. Our approach has been to limit as much as possible how many people need to be at the data centers, and when people are there, we’ve put in place policies and procedures to limit the need for two people to interact unless it is an absolute requirement. When it is required, everyone wears masks.”
Our solution? A Data Center virtual tour unlike any other.
We figured a way to give prospective customers who may be interested in our Texas Data Centers a way to get a look and feel for our facilities without ever having to step inside. Now our clients can check out the facility from the comfort of their remote work environment.
Now in both Austin and Houston, we are proud to be able to have a virtual tour experience for our Texas 2 Data Center and our Houston 2 Data Center.
The importance of this virtual tour can’t be minimized. It shows a dedication to safety and protocol that we believe should cross over to all the ways a data center works. Remember, you can’t see beforehand when disaster might strike, but you can be ready for when it happens. Get a data center that thinks the same way.
Curious about what our virtual tours look like?