Table of Contents
- What is Colocation?
- Colocation Service
- Why Choose a Colocation Service?
- Risk Factors Called Out by Colocation
- Services that Colocation Service Provider Can Provide
- Conclusion
There are several aspects to maintaining IT equipment, such as networking infrastructure and air conditioning systems. Furthermore, all of this calls for considerable capital expenditures, additionally ongoing operational costs, the latter of which sharply rise when such systems grow large or become crucial to business operations. It is just not cost-effective for many businesses to house their IT.
Here, we will discuss how colocation data center services reduce business risk.
What is Colocation?
In the past, business data get saved on internal servers and networking hardware. As cloud storage gained popularity, many businesses turned to off-site solutions. Businesses do not want to be responsible for the expense and upkeep challenges associated with running dated servers and data storage systems. However, data must get stored somewhere.
As the primary remedy for this issue, colocation facility has evolved. Instead of servers living on location in a room or a specific area of a company building, it is the practice of a third-party housing privately owned servers and networking equipment in an off-site data center. By renting space, frequently in the form of a cabinet, you can “co-locate” equipment.
All sizes of businesses gain from colocation. In the absence of making a substantial investment, small firms can get the benefits of a large IT department. Medium-sized and giant corporations can increase their data storage capacity without incurring expensive building or facility lease costs.
Colocation providers enable companies to keep their equipment in a safe location. By access to power, bandwidth, and a public IP address given by the outside service provider.
Colocation Service
Managed colocation services, commonly referred to as “colo” provide a safe environment for hardware and give consumers access to global networks. Usually, the customer provides the servers, while the colocation provider provides the building, cooling, power, bandwidth, and physical security. The facility capacity gets rented out by the rack, cabinet, cage, or room.
It was the case in the past, that large firms with limitless resources no longer had exclusive access to CO data centers. Many colocations provide services that may get customized, and they have expanded their selection to include managed services that support their client’s business goals. Colocation services additionally consist of the following
- Examining the equipment
- Assembly and equipment verification testing
- Educated personnel to consult with Inventory analysis
- Verification and burn-in procedures are used to ensure that the machinery gets correctly set up; and that the systems are functioning.
Why Choose a Colocation Service?
Businesses that use colocation services operate and maintain their hardware while paying a shared rate for communications, power, cooling, and data center space with other clients. It indicates a wise decision when complete control over the equipment is necessary.
The requirement to solve the shortcomings of a current data center is a typical justification for switching to colocation. Renting space in a colocation facility makes it simpler to upgrade present capabilities than creating a new data center.
Risk Factors Called Out by Colocation
1. Overcoming Data Center Equipment Issues
Operating a resilient and reliable data center is expensive. Let us face it most companies do not invest easily. For many, the phrase “onsite data center” just means the area of the building in which technology gets housed. It is a storage closet, an extra office, or maybe an out-of-the-way corner of the building. Most companies have tried to build resiliency and reliability. But, due to a lack of expertise or limited IT budget will often fall short of delivering.
A colocation service’s primary responsibility is to supply your types of equipment with dependable electricity. Engage UPSs, automatic transfer switches, and backup generators. A service can ensure that your equipment will have access to electricity. Additionally, your service provider (colocation business) will keep everything on a regular testing and maintenance schedule so that in the event of a disaster – the equipment is prepared, and you will not experience service interruptions.
2. Weather Risks And Weathering in Storm
Power and internet disruptions caused by weather may potentially cause fires, floods, and other natural calamities. A colocation services provider will guarantee that you have both electricity and internet access.
Colocation service providers construct redundant internet connections offered by various carriers and have multiple access points in their buildings as part of their design for resilience to guard against service disruption. This strategy eliminates the possibility of a single point of failure with a single vendor by providing several pathways in the facility from many carriers.
3. Securing Human Elements Solutions
Human errors and the opportunity they give rise to for successful cybercrime assaults overlap significantly. When consumers neglect to change passwords regularly or improperly apply patches and upgrades, security holes are left open for hackers to exploit.
Having clearly defined processes and procedures with checks and balances for quality and change control is probably the prominent strategy to reduce human errors. Also, make it possible for numerous people to participate in a clearly defined process to ensure that choices made are significant and implementation procedures are all followed.
It is natural for establishing and documenting processes to be neglected when IT is not your primary area of expertise and when resources are few. A business that offers colocation services will take considerable care to design and record processes and procedures because IT is its primary business.
4. Day and Night Assistance
It is possible to get IT to support through many channels. Support staff can deal with requests for troubleshooting, security concerns, and power outages and will continuously monitor systems. Downtime gets minimized, and potential security issues get quickly resolved with an available online support technician.
You can free up your team because the colocation solutions have an on-site IT team. Your IT team can be assigned to projects that might have a bigger effect on how your company conducts business.
Services that Colocation Service Provider Can Provide
Using a colocation service provider enables businesses to access a wide range of services – that they would not have access to in-house data centers. Listed below are a few service solutions you might want to use:
Hybrid Cloud – Data centers can offer cloud servers in their cloud or one of the big cloud providers as technology ages and capacity becomes scarce.
Storage as a Service – As business applications expand, they frequently run out of disc storage. Data centers can provide storage solutions with various connectivity choices so that businesses can expand their storage as necessary. Colocation costs are effective for multiple businesses.
Remote hands – Data centers have staff who can assist you in monitoring your environment, making changes, or simply pressing a button to solve problems without your presence on-site.
Backup and disaster recovery services – Businesses can scale up backup and recovery services using data centers without needing to construct more data center space.
As you can see, using a colocation plan will considerably reduce your risk. Businesses have an alternative to storing data internally in colocation. Colocation service is considered one of the greatest risk reduction strategies in business.
Conclusion
Colocation is no longer just for businesses that work with large amounts of data. Small and medium-sized businesses must now choose colocation if they want to avoid the complexity and expense of developing their internal servers and infrastructure.
Consider your data center demands as you would with anything else, related to managing businesses.
