Leung added that as security threats could put business at risk, a core concern is to ensure that business data is not compromised. 'Protecting your data center is also crucial from a physical standpoint,' he said. 'Data which resides in your storage array, or server, needs to be backed up and archived and mirrored for disaster recovery'for example, email systems have become a crucial part of communications today and without it, your business is at risk of losing productivity.'

'To cope with the growth of business operations, we see a growing demand for large enterprises to build their own IDC to manage an increasing amount of data,' said Mak from PCCW Solutions, adding that his firm's data center services have extended from management services to design, build and implementation.

HK SMB data centers

What criteria should Hong Kong SMBs use to evaluate their need for a data center?

'To evaluate their need for a data center, as well as specific services their business would require from one,' said Yeung, 'SMBs can refer to the service levels definition of the data center, for example, (a) whether the business needs high availability of systems; (b) whether they need 24/7 year-round support service; (c) whether they need customer services support, etc.'