J.K.: One of the interesting phenomena is the emergence of higher tiers in the third-party industry (e.g. collocation and hosting providers). For a while, the third-party industry was focussed mainly on lower-tier business cases. Now, as the cost of data centers has become so exorbitant, enterprises are reticent about putting their money into a data center. We see more enterprises that typically ran large, high-availability data centers going to the third parties. So we see more certifications for collocations, hosting environments, managed service providers, whatever term you prefer.

IDGNS: A couple of years ago Mike Manos [a well known industry figure who currently manages AOL's data centers] was , saying people adhered to it "dogmatically" instead of thinking about what are their real data center needs.

J.K.: We wrote a public response to Mr. Manos. We acknowledge his point. What we heard him say is that tiers are not the be and end all, which we agree with. The system, like any system, can be abused. You don't have to put a 600 horsepower engine in a car to go to the grocery store. We agree that a comprehensive and coordinated planning process is key to a project's success and effectively utilizing the tiers.

At the same time, it's important always to go back to the business case. If your business is not significantly hampered by your data center going down for maintenance on a regular basis, by all means don't spend a bunch of money on a Tier 3. A Tier 4 data center is not the 'best' data center, it's just the right decision for some organizations.

IDGNS: The data center business has seen some big changes in the last decade -- capacity constraints, higher costs, pressures to go green. Has the tier system changed to keep up?