You should know some of the IDC universal knowledge

Currently there is no authoritative definition of IDC (Internet Data Center), but it has a deeper connotation than the traditional data center, it is accompanied by the development of the Internet needs and developed for the ICP, enterprises, media and various types of websites to provide large-scale, high-quality, safe and reliable specialized server hosting, Space leasing, network wholesale bandwidth, as well as ASP, EC and other services. Data centers have emerged in the mainframe era, in order to achieve professional management and reduce operating costs by hosting, outsourcing or centralizing the management and maintenance of large hosts to the enterprise.
IDC is a place to host (Hosting) enterprise, merchant or website server group, it is the infrastructure of various mode electronic commerce, and it is also the platform of supporting Enterprise and its business Alliance  its distributors, suppliers, customers and so on to implement value chain management. IDC has two very important salient features: location in the network and total network bandwidth capacity, which forms part of the network's basic resources, like backbone, access network, it provides a high-end data transmission (data Delivery) services, providing high-speed access to services

As is known to all, as an innovative tool, the Internet is becoming a darling of the IT marketplace, and Internet service Providers (INTERNETSERVICEPROVIDER,ISP), which provide access to the core business, have also been in the IT landscape. However, with the development of the Internet in depth, the simple access service is far from meeting the needs of Internet applications, users require ISPs to provide more types of services, higher quality. As a result, the original ISP began to shift to the deeper role of the network service provider (NETSERVICEPROVIDER,NSP) and the Application Service provider (applicationserviceprovider,asp), driven by user needs. Compared with the original ISP, NSP can provide more content of the network services, while the ASP is the network application services in the future development direction. In this Internet Data Center (INTERNETDATACENTER,IDC) and a backbone network high-speed connection, with rich network resources to the Web site to rent bandwidth and space, and provide customers with quality assurance services (including machine rental, server hosting, cabinet rental,      room rental, private line access, network management services, etc. The domestic informatization construction is in the ascendant, the enterprise surfer's upsurge is increasing. But the communication between intranet and extranet needs a lot of technical and human input, and these inputs are like "bottomless pit" which often cause unimaginable repetitive investment to the enterprise. At the same time, the demand for Internet applications is more and more complex, and more and more enterprises have been from e-mail, domain name registration, virtual host, image propaganda website to establish on the basis of secure transmission of the enterprise comprehensive information transmission, Rich interactive E-commerce sites and comprehensive internet marketing development. It is for this reason that IDC, which provides adequate network resources and high-quality business services, is starting to emerge.

The IDC concept can be conceptually understood as the public commercial internet "room", and it is also an IT professional service, is an important infrastructure of IT industry. IDC should have a very rich bandwidth resources, safe and reliable room facilities, a high level of network management, a very complete value-added services. With the development of the Internet, the future mainstream of IT industry will be the service industry, abroad has evolved in this direction. IDC business in the United States began to appear several years ago, the current international IDC business area well-known companies have Abovenet, Exodus, Digitalisland, such as Intel, IBM, Oracle and other large traditional it enterprises, is also concerned about and participate in the development of IDC business. Companies such as Exodus and Abovenet, which operate the IDC business, not only have sophisticated management experience, but also operate many Internet data centers in their home countries and extend their business tentacles to the international market. At home, people for IDC also gradually understand, Mr. Yang Zhiwei, chief engineer of China Netcom, said, there is no unified authoritative definition of IDC, but operators operating IDC business generally have a large area of the room, for various types of Web sites and E-commerce enterprises, to provide specialized server hosting, Server leasing, network bandwidth leasing, and ASP services. Some people even call IDC the "nursery" of various websites, that is, network companies can entrust the entire Web site system to IDC, which is centrally responsible for management and maintenance. Tsinghua Fair Company's marketing Center General manager Ho told reporters, IDC is accompanied by the development of the Internet needs and developed for various types of Web sites to provide large-scale, high-quality, safe and reliable server hosting, leasing and value-added services such as ASP business. As for the nature of IDC, Wu Yutao, general manager of the Internet IDC Business Department of the century, explained his understanding from another angle. The essence of the data center, he says, is to provide high-speed Internet connectivity that enables high-speed access for users from any network. IDC is not only a service concept, but also a network concept, it forms a part of network basic resources, like backbone, access network, provides a high-end data transmission (datadelivery) service and high-speed access services. So, the combination of network and service concept is the content of IDC.

According to industry analysis, IDC can bring the following benefits to the website operation: first, can save the cost significantly. Self-built rooms, access lines need a lot of input, to maintain its operation also requires a high cost. But in the data center, a lot of facilities, operating costs and even expensive human resources costs are equally shared, the cost of the assigned enterprises will be significantly lower than the cost of the self-built; the second is for enterprises to enter the Internet to reduce the threshold, the website system outsourcing makes the enterprise net initial investment greatly reduced; Three is to enable enterprises to focus on the core business. For websites that are now spending more and more cautious, the benefits of IDC are obvious. Because of this, the IDC market quickly grew up. Only a few years ago, IDC had a secondary role in the US internet access business, which now constituted the most basic and critical industry in the new economic era based on the Internet.      According to the U.S. Yankee Statistics Report, 1999 U.S. server hosting market revenue of 4.4 billion U.S. dollars, is expected to 2003, will reach 14.6 billion U.S. dollars. At present, IDC from the business type can be divided into the following 5 categories:
1. Telecommunications operators: Such data centers are generally operated by basic telecommunications operators, relying on the advantages of the natural telecommunications resources that they accumulate in traditional telecommunications operations, to gain profits by selling or renting telecommunications resources directly to customers. This type of business representative of the United States At&t, LEVEL3, the domestic China Telecom and the emerging telecom operators Netcom and so on.
2. Professional service Provider type: The core business of such data centers is to provide server hosting services. They generally lease the corresponding telecommunications resources to the basic telecommunications operators, through the services of the data center to the end users, while the data center to provide high value-added services to profit. Their clients are typically traditional businesses and some. com companies. This kind of business representative has the American exodus, the domestic capital line and so on.
3. System integration business: such as EDS, IBM and so on. Such companies focus on specific hardware and software systems. They are mainly service-oriented, using the original customer base, to provide users with further improved services.
4. Information flow control type: This kind of data center generally rents the corresponding telecommunication resources to the basic telecommunication operator, by reselling the access traffic generated by the customer's site of the data center to the other network operators to obtain the profit. Their customers are generally a large number of visits to the ICP site. The representative of this kind of business has the American abovenet.