Owning and operating a data center is no easy feat for any business. It is a huge investment of capital, time and manpower… not to mention it’s often a stressful burden on your IT department. Time spent maintaining uptime and performance of your on-premises IT facility, can quickly pull attention from completing more strategic IT projects that drive your company forward. With the unpredictability the past year threw at us, many companies are realizing huge benefits by switching from a self-managed, on-premises data center to outsourcing their data into a colocation facility.
Colocation hosting can not only save your organization the headache from managing a physical data center but can provide your company with piece of mind with improved uptime, security, and flexibility that enables growth. Read on to learn the benefits of colocation and to see if it is the right option for your company.
What is Colocation?
Colocation is a highly-secure data center that acts as a warehouse for IT equipment and servers. These facilities are purpose-built to give clients access to physical infrastructure, power, space, and connectivity options that ensure 100% uptime and security of hosted IT equipment. Since most businesses are not equipped or staffed to own and maintain their own data center long-term, they are able to purchase space within these data centers to host and support their IT.
Colocation hosting diminishes the threat of downtime, provides top notch physical security and allows businesses to focus efforts towards improving management and operations of their IT while shifting major capital investments to more strategic business initiatives.
How does Colocation work?
Now that you understand what Colocation is, let’s get into how colocation works. The physical facility provides customers with white floor space, cooling, power, connectivity, and security… all things that are more than likely not available or challenging to build on-premises. A company transfers their existing infrastructure into a building specifically designed to support and protect IT assets. Customers can choose to purchase a dedicated rack, cage or private suite, depending the size of their IT environment and what best fits their company’s needs. Colocation eliminates the burden of maintaining a data center so your team can focus on improving operational efficiencies and growing your company.
Why choose Colocation?
Let’s dive a little deeper into why companies decide to make the jump to Colocation.
Contain Costs and Free Up Capital
Let’s talk cost. Many organizations see owning and maintaining a data center or IT room as an advantage. They find comfort knowing their on-site IT department will have complete control and access to their IT environments. In-house means saving money, right?! What they fail to see is that owning and operating the physical infrastructure that supports your IT is a HUGE investment of time and money and often not something that makes your business successful. It’s critical your IT is always on and always available, but it’s not always strategic for you to be the one who guarantees that happens.
The amount of capital a business must invest to maintain their on-premises facility is never-ending. A high-performing IT system requires significant investments in physical equipment to maintain power and cooling, redundant connectivity options to ensure availability for end users and clients, and strong security controls to protect your mission-critical data and applications. You must plan for regular capital investments as well as unexpected costs to make sure your supporting infrastructure is always performing at optimal levels which can eat up budget you’d rather spend on more valuable projects.
By outsourcing your data center, you can shift capital spent on maintaining physical space and equipment and invest that money back into your business. Your IT department and budget can focus on the things that really matter to your business and help you achieve your mission critical priorities.
Diminish Downtime
There’s one “D-word” that can make any IT professional cringe… DOWNTIME. Experiencing the nightmare of unexpected downtime can cost a company everything from revenue to reputation. Depending on your business, even minutes of unplanned IT downtime can cost you revenue or negatively impact your client’s experience and loyalty. While downtime can’t always be predicted or controlled, why not be proactive and get ahead of disaster before it occurs?
The biggest causes of downtime for any IT team are network, human error, and infrastructure failure. The right colocation provider should intentionally build out supporting physical infrastructure, offer redundant network carriers and paths into the facility and supply documented business practices to mitigate these risks and guarantee maximum uptime for their clients.
Businesses who choose to collocate their IT with data center provider quickly see increased uptime and availability of their IT systems. In the chance an outage occurs due to facility or network issues, your colocation provider owns the responsibility to get your systems back online and your team doesn’t have to come to a complete halt.
Lock Down your Data
Sure, every office building has security measures. Maybe you have employees badge in or punch in a code to enter your building… however these measures may not be as sophisticated enough to effectively secure your mission-critical IT systems. At a time when cybercrime and data breaches are at an all-time high, it is vital for your business to keep its data secure.
Working with a colocation provider will surround your proprietary data with security features that you only thought was possible in the movies – think retina scanners, man traps and more. Your IT deserves to be protected by physical security measures with the purpose of keeping your data secure and far out of reach from bad actors. You should look for multiple layers of physical security, 24/7/365 onsite staff or audited compliance processes that demonstrate they take physical security as seriously as you do. When you decide to work with a colocation partner with leading security controls, you can rest easy knowing that your company’s private and confidential information is protected.
Let LightEdge Be your Colocation Provider
We get it, finding the right colocation provider can be a daunting process! Your company deserves top of line security, network availability, scalability, and support. Thankfully, LightEdge is top-performing in each of those categories, but don’t just take our word for it. Take a virtual tour through one of LightEdge’s seven data center colocation facilities with the hosts of Off the Cuff to see our world’s most secure data center.
If you think you are ready to make the jump to colocation, feel free to give us a call today. Whether you are ready to dive right in or just testing the waters, our experts are standing by to help.
