Further, Alcatel's IT team uses the ITIL framework to apply one management model, for everything from change management to help-desk procedures. "Our goal is consistency," says Tozier, "to leverage resources, drive down costs, improve service levels."

4. You will hold your breath and await text messages as never before. On a human level, overseeing a consolidation on this scale will cause anyone a few nervous moments. "As it was mission-critical applications [being moved to the new data center in Marcoussis], we were always concerned," Hackenson says. "What we tried to do in the planning was have backup plans to minimize all of the risks. There were tremendous 'what if' scenarios," she says. "I would anxiously await the text messages from Cliff during these moves."

For Tozier, some of the most stressful moments were during the move of the company's fully clustered SAP application environments, in which he broke and rejoined the clusters. "We did it in test but it's always different in production," he says. "It worked very well but was nerve-wracking."

Also stressful: IT's time line had to flex frequently to be responsive to the business team's changing needs. "We stayed away from month ends, quarter ends," and so on, Tozier says, but business plans would change and IT had to be responsive to new timing concerns and change its plan accordingly. "The schedule was a huge challenge." If you are planning a similar consolidation, don't underestimate this hurdle, he advises.

5. You can find middle ground between outsourcing a data center and owning it all. One unique aspect to Alcatel's new data center in Marcoussis: The company arranged a revenue-producing joint venture with Colony Capital that will rent the data center's multiple buildings to multiple tenants. This way, Alcatel gets the state-of-the-art data center that it wants in Europe, without taking on all the costs. "It's really the economics," Hackenson says.

"The problem we all have in data centers is the ecosystem— power, heating, coolingââ¬Â¦you're paying for utilities and facilities you're not using," she says. "This is an alternative to outsourcing. You can share your environment. It's a nice middle ground between outsourcing it and owning it."

The arrangement also gives Alcatel, which is starting with about 22,000 square feet of space, the option to add space later if needed.

6. You can find model ways to keep your cool. Not surprisingly, power and cooling efficiency were key concerns as Alcatel planned the new data center in Marcoussis. The company worked with data center engineers, who suggested cement floors instead of the traditional raised floors, and advocated skipping the traditional "hot aisle/cool aisle" arrangement for data centers.