As we continue to navigate this new normal, many organizations are still looking for ways to generate improved ROI from their IT business unit. The problem? Cost restraints, human capital challenges, leveraging different skill sets, technical debt, and the list goes on. Unfortunately, in many organizations, they end up “stuck” or overextended focusing on non-ROI generating activities. This is where colocation can help your team.
What many companies don’t realize is that when they move their IT off-premises into a colocation facility, they have a golden opportunity to extend their team via the remote hands experts that work for their colocation provider in the data center. When it comes to speed, security and bang for your buck, the capital spend of colocation is significantly less than it would be if you were to keep your data on-premises and manage it with your in-house team.
Still unconvinced? Take a look below for just a few of the ways extending your team through your colocation provider can make a difference for your organization’s IT.
The Need for Speed
Extending your team through colocation simply makes things faster. It’s obvious that your network at a colocation facility will be always up and always on, but it’s also important to realize that when you have a larger team, more can get done, especially when you’re up against the clock. Not only will you be able to provide consistent connectivity, but your organization will also be able to take pride in finding issues before they arise and maintaining the infrastructure you do have in order to keep providing the security and connectivity your customers deserve.
Quick Maintenance with an Extended Team
You already know that they provide services around the clock, but remote technicians also excel at quickly identifying and immediately addressing problems. With expert technicians always on-site, you don’t have to worry about the service lag that happens when you have to wait for a response team to make the trip to your facility.
Additionally, you can be sure you’re getting the cream of the crop when it comes to experienced technicians. Remote hands teams often have collective decades working with the data center’s environment, and the home field advantage of likely having installed many of the hardware network configurations collocated int eh facility. With that in mind, you can rest easy, knowing that they are the perfect team to address problems quickly and aren’t losing time trying to obtain network specification details.
It doesn’t have to be an emergency to benefit from remote hands technicians either. Even if there’s no problem, should you want to alter something about your deployment, your facility’s team of experts can make adjustments to your physical equipment quickly and correctly.
Rapid Incident Resolution
In some situations, seconds matter when it comes to incident resolution. If you have a staff on premises that is overextended and has fifteen other items on their responsibility lists, it can be hard to catch minor incidents before they morph into massive, potentially devastating problems. System downtime is only one such issue that could impact network performance. Software bugs, equipment failure and cyberattacks can also disrupt services your business depends upon. Remote hands data center support provides 24/7/365 coverage for anything that goes wrong with your collocated assets or associated networks.
So much of incident detection is about visually verifying an issue. This could be anything from knowing which lights are supposed to be solid and which ones are supposed to blink to which alerts on systems require attention. With the assistance of remote hands in your colocation facility, technicians are able to easily and regularly inspect your equipment to keep it running smoothly—or get it back to working condition. Additionally, smart hands services can inventory equipment, take pictures and provide assessments of your current hardware. Colocation customers often have fewer issues that result in system downtime because they are caught while they are still small.
Upgrading Made Easier with Expert Hands
Operating system and software updates are the name of the game in the IT world. When your IT is on-premises, it can be hard to carve out the time to install necessary updates at best, and at worst, those updates may be done incorrectly, leaving you vulnerable to attack or downtime. When you opt for a colocation facility, you have the option to have an expert technician carry out the necessary updates and replacements, often with a backup plan in place, especially if you’re looking to remain ISO 27000-1 compliant.
Scale Up Faster According to your Needs
One of remote hands assistance’s biggest draws is the capability to help your organization scale IT operations rapidly. Whether you’re looking for server virtualization or expanded computing capacity, data centers often offer solutions that give colocation customers the power to expand their network without a prohibitive capital spend and leveling up your storage or bandwidth is done on request. Remote hands teams can get rolling on those requests immediately.
On the surface, this doesn’t seem like a huge advantage, but when you factor in the time and money of having your team members travel out to the data center and deploy those new functionalities themselves, taking them away from their day-to-day responsibilities, it makes more sense. If you were to keep your IT on-premises, you would run into similar snags while waiting for equipment or for schedules to line up in order to get it done. With a knowledgeable, capable remote hands data center team, you’ve got the power to transform your organization’s operations overnight.
Preventative Maintenance Keeps You Up and On
While it’s common for a typical server’s lifespan to be anywhere from three to five years, other components in your infrastructure will likely wear out or become outdated before then. A reliable remote hands team will perform routine maintenance on all of your data center infrastructure, identifying which pieces of equipment could potentially fail or are nearing the end of their life cycles long before they actually have a chance to fail and wreak havoc on your service or system. The data center’s bread and butter, managing cooling and power properly, is also a surefire way to extend the lifespan of your equipment.
Extended Teams Help with Compliance
Compliance isn’t always the first thing that comes to mind when talking about finding a little extra wiggle room on your team, but compliance documentation can take a ton of time and energy for team members to complete. When you offload some or all of your IT to a data center provider, you are gaining some of their compliance and, in some cases, their onsite experts can help you fill out some of the documentation you need to complete your own certification processes. This can give your team members hours or even days back in their busy schedule to focus on the core of your business.
LightEdge is Ready to Empower Your Team to Get Back to What Matters
At LightEdge, we believe in partnership with our clients to ensure they don’t feel limited by the scope of their existing staff. So often we see companies with expert staff members who simply can’t take on another project, and that’s where our team of enterprise-level experts comes into our local data centers to manage your IT.
Whether you’ve got a rack, cage or private suite now or in the future, you can benefit from LightEdge’s team of data center experts. Let us take some of the burden off your shoulders so you can get back to making a difference in the lives of your customers. Ready to take the plunge? Schedule a call with one of our colocation experts today to see how you can leverage our team to meet your goals.
