What To Consider When Choosing Your Colocation Provider

What To Consider When Choosing Your Colocation Provider
5 min read
08 February 2023

A few years ago, colocation was proclaimed to become extinct in the near future and replaced with inexpensive cloud computing. However, it is now undeniable that colocation is here to stay. Despite industry pessimism, experts throughout the sector forecast continuous growth due to digital disruption, business ecosystems, AI/machine learning, and the cloud.

Today's fast-paced business environment necessitates constant reinvention from companies and, by extension, their digital backbones. As a consequence, IT directors and CIOs must manage large infrastructures that are virtually invariably complex.

Here is where colocation shines. It is meant to have maximum flexibility with absolute transparency and addresses some of the most frustrating challenges encountered by IT departments without adding new problems. It needs the same skills required to manage servers in-house, but the provider assumes full responsibility for the physical environment, i.e. the status of the network connections, power availability, physical security, and even the degree of cleanliness are someone else's business.

Colocation becomes a particularly appealing possibility in situations when businesses are wanting to simply expand their IT sector, or when a big IT upgrade is being done. However, businesses need to go through a checklist to ensure the multi-tenant colocation data center meets their needs before making a final decision on a colocation facility.

The following are the top five factors to take into account when selecting a colocation partner to ensure future compliance.

Location

Nowadays, businesses have zero tolerance for downtime, therefore colocation providers must deliver minimal latency and dependability.

Smart providers choose excellent sites that combine the low-cost availability of adequate space and electricity for hyper-efficient data centers with the low-cost availability of wide and rich connections. These facilities are remote enough from city centers for disaster recovery and avoid costly city center charges, yet near enough to give application performance that local and international enterprises want.

Security

For factors like increased control over data security, some very big companies have typically favored setting up their data centers. This is becoming economically untenable, thus service providers must show that protecting their clients' IT infrastructure is a top priority. Reviewing the physical, procedural, and digital aspects of security is crucial for both internal and external purposes.

Connectivity

Businesses use public clouds to get access to a lot of data, computing power, and storage. However, businesses still use private clouds to process sensitive data and conduct complex calculations. The hybrid model is rapidly becoming the standard.

To successfully use cloud computing, connectivity to the appropriate networks is essential. It guarantees access to numerous public clouds, which boosts performance. This kind of connection is called a cloud on-ramp. Some data center providers create the most high-performance computing platforms, but without connection providing an on-ramp to other clouds businesses cannot implement a hybrid cloud approach.

Colocation services rely on having a connection to a carrier. Data centers with a completely diversified fiber duct architecture to suit all fiber owners or operators may cross-link to any carrier or associated provider, offering infinite cost-effective connectivity.

Flexibility

Because of the rapid changes in business and technology, many worldwide cloud and digital businesses are no longer willing to sign too restrictive long-term data center contracts. Antiquated and inflexible data center systems or contracts that can't adapt fast to their goals can potentially hold them back, resulting in lost opportunities and serious IT cost inefficiencies, which is a major issue for today's businesses.

Businesses gain from flexible contract choices because they enable genuine commercial and technological agility. As IT density changes, businesses may take advantage of lower computing costs by flexing the service's contractual power, space, and time.

Overall Service Expenses

The data center industry is now at a point where most companies choose to purchase colocation space. To avoid overspending, businesses should seek an innovative commercial model that offers unlimited scalability, consumption visibility, and management control.

Consider the following when determining the total cost of service (TCS):

  • Lower construction costs per MW of IT load;
  • Low PUEs and ultra-efficient cooling reduce energy expenses;
  • Capability to deliver high-density cooling;
  • Data centers with high connectivity and ecosystems;
  • Colocation space and network connection contracts with flexible terms.

What To Consider When Choosing Your Colocation Provider

Photo by Lars Kienle on Unsplash

Final Thoughts

In the near future, the internet of things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning will influence colocation demand and suppliers. Large volumes of information are being produced by products like smart houses and smart vehicle software.

With the rise of IoT items, gadgets will consume data in ways we haven't yet begun to imagine, thanks to M2M connections conducted over open protocols. Only specialized structures, known as data centers, are capable of housing the massive amounts of data and high processing speeds necessary for this kind of work.

In case you have found a mistake in the text, please send a message to the author by selecting the mistake and pressing Ctrl-Enter.
Alex 9.8K
Joined: 4 years ago
Comments (0)

    No comments yet

You must be logged in to comment.

Sign In / Sign Up