Every year, businesses collectively spend trillions of dollars on IT products and services worldwide. In fact, the global forecast for the sector reached $3.46 trillion for this year, which is quite a staggering figure.
All over the world, businesses have to make the right decisions in IT management every year. So how can you make the correct cost-effective moves that will truly protect your business?
Most businesses have basic IT needs such as affordable server space and server hardware.
If you’re looking for more in-depth options to manage your business data, here’s how and why a colocation centre might be the best solution for your organisation.
What are colocation centres?
Colocation centres, or “co-lo” data centres, contain enterprise data servers at a remote location away from your own business premises. This is a purpose-built facility designed specifically to house business data systems and infrastructure.
Your own IT technicians are then able to visit the site for any maintenance or updates, or use the facility operators in-house technical team to assist you remotely.
The transfer process
Your service provider may supply you with the physical server hardware, or if you already have hardware in place, you can choose from a variety of service packages for the space you need.
To find how much infrastructure you require, you will need to consider a variety of factors, including the power requirements for each of your servers. Your provider can help you understand what specification service you’d need to support your systems.
During this process, you should evaluate how much space and resources you need, both now and in the future. You may also want to take this opportunity to immediately upscale or downscale, since you’re now entering into the process of bolstering your technical capacity.
Common issues in business data management
For many businesses, server space is a limited commodity on-premise. This is especially true for small businesses that typically have smaller operations.
IT resources simply grow in proportion to the scale of large businesses. No matter how much building capacity your business has now, more data in the future tends to mean more space will be required.
Physical space is just one of the issues that many businesses run into when growing their systems. Overall costs for data solutions can grossly overtax a business’s financial resources.
Colocation centres are uniquely designed to hit both of these major pain points for business.
In general, a colocation data centre helps businesses centralise their data management and scale the space to their needs. This offers more flexibility, reliability, and predictability to help you achieve your operational priorities.
Maintenance and flexibility
Colocation data centres often function like managed IT services. Because of this, data service providers can conduct regular maintenance on your behalf. This can be a big cost saver, and reduces stress on internal technical resources that can spend more time on core business functions. This also reduces the in-house personnel required to perform maintenance.
However, you also have the option to manage your own hardware maintenance through your internal IT department if you choose.
Reliability
Choosing to make use of an outsourced colocation service provider will always offer you increased security and reliability over going in-house.
Colocation server hosting can be an alternative to cloud storage. Many organisations that made the leap to cloud services when they began taking hold a few years ago are now moving back to physical colocation services. This is because they offer greater value for money, decentralise the control of data from the large US cloud service operators, and allow for far easier compliance when it comes to data domicile and security.
Being able to point to your own server hardware, and make physical changes to it, has major operational advantages.
Predictable expenses
Operating costs for data management can become expensive over time. When businesses choose to manage their own IT needs the expenses typically include:
- Electricity to power servers
- Maintenance and equipment
- Security
- Data recovery
- General overhead costs
Fortunately, you can reduce these expenses when you choose a colocation data centre. One of the best advantages to outsourcing your IT management is that providers offer services at predictable, contracted rates.
Breaking down monthly costs
For example, a proper colocation plan will show you exactly how much space your services will occupy. These spaces are typically measured in “rack units,” also labelled as a “U.” Units will be the first expense in your data management plan, usually coming with a monthly rate for the space.
There are also predictable monthly rates for power flowing to your servers and your network bandwidth.
Some providers may also offer additional consulting or hardware resources that may be included in your service free of charge. However, some may come at additional cost.
At any rate, the necessary expenses for colocation data centres are largely predictable and simplified. This allows you to anticipate the costs by tailoring your service to the specific needs of your business.
Unlike traditional IT management, you don’t have to worry about surprise costs. You simply pay for exactly what you need.
Find better business data solutions
The best advantage to colocation data centres is the fact that you can customize your service to the needs of your business.
Whatever your data management goals are, we’re here to help you achieve them with colocation solutions.
If you’d like to discuss your business data solutions, please get in touch with us by email, chat, or phone. We have some of the top award-winning locations in London to provide the safest environment for your data.