Data centres are considered the preserve of a large enterprise that has the scale to justify such a costly piece of high-tech real estate, with specialist power supplies, reinforced flooring, and air and temperature controls.

Data centres are considered the preserve of a large enterprise that has the scale to justify such a costly piece of high-tech real estate, with specialist power supplies, reinforced flooring, and air and temperature controls.

But there are plenty of much smaller companies with hefty IT requirements that have outgrown their computer rooms and require a dedicated facility to house their systems.

The usual route is to hire space at data centre hosting service providers. For those who dislike the idea of handing over the kit, there is another option: the modular data centre, or as it is known in IT circles, ‘trailer park computing’.

Sun Microsystems and Rackable Systems are two server-makers delivering self-contained, ready-to-use data centres in modified shipping containers.

In its simplest form Rackable’s Concentro box can be thought of as ‘one giant USB stick’, says Conor Malone, director of data centre solutions at the company. But each container can house up to 1,400 of Rackable’s servers or 7.1 petabytes of storage.

By packing the systems into such a tight space, a fully configured container will use up to 50 per cent less electricity and needs 80 per cent less cooling than a standard data centre of the same capacity, claims Rackable.

Last year, luxury retailer Harrods realised that the basement computer room at its flagship Knightsbridge department store was fast running out of space. There was another issue too: the presence of a huge fish tank on the sales floor above meant flooding was a serious risk.

The solution was to put a data centre ‘pod’ on the roof. Although the Harrods pod was a bespoke structure, it could just as easily have been housed in a container.

For many, the price tag may be way too high – the Sun Modular Datacenter lists at $599,000 (£302,000) – but there should soon be more affordable options on the market for growing companies that put IT security and business continuity at the heart of their operation.