We’re living in the information age where data drives the business world.
As companies expand, so do the requirements they place on their data. Businesses are looking for cost-effective, secure solutions for storing and managing their data. While many organisations still use in-house facilities, data centres continue to gain in popularity every year.
In fact, experts are predicting data centre spending to reach $200B in 2021.
Many data centres offer colocation as their core service. This allows companies to lease space within a larger shared facility.
When it comes to data management, a colocation centre is a secure and affordable solution. Keep reading to find out more.
What is a colocation centre?
A colocation data centre is a physical facility used for data storage. This means companies lease space within the facility to house their critical IT infrastructure.
Colocation centres offer power, cooling, and security. This provides companies with a robust, turnkey solution for their data storage needs.
Included in most colocation services are network connectivity, physical security, powerful cooling, and resilient power delivery.
These facilities are multi-tenant accessible. Depending on their needs, businesses can select from a variety of scalable solutions.
Colocation centres include cabinets, cages, and suites for housing equipment. Clients can access the facility, outsourcing the location and security to the service provider.
There are two main types of colocation centres – wholesale and retail.
Retail colocation
In the retail model, a business leases space inside a colocation centre, usually a rack or cabinet. Power is supplied at a threshold, and the amount you pay depends on your consumption.
Retail colocation is mainly used by startups, SMEs and government agencies.
Retail colocation is a turnkey service, meaning you can just turn up with your hardware and get setup. The data centre provides the rack(s), power, PDUs, network connectivity and IP addressing.
Wholesale colocation
Wholesale colocation is geared towards large corporations and service providers. Because of this, it’s a more complete solution. Wholesale colocation provides organisations with larger spaces away from other tenants, and is generally sold as technical space in square feet, or by available total power in the space.
Having your data storage facilities separate from other tenants helps ensure security. Costs for wholesale colocation depend on your power usage and space requirements.
Wholesale space is generally a more hands on experience, for businesses with lots of in-house technical know-how. This approach offers a greater level of economy at a larger scale, by committing to a much larger service specification from day one.
Benefits of data centre colocation
There are several reasons to consider using colocation services for your business. Here are some of the advantages of colocation for data management.
Affordability
Colocation centres provide businesses with an affordable solution for their data management needs. With a colocation facility, you can scale up your hosted environment as your business grows.
Sharing space and infrastructure with other companies helps save on operational costs. This makes colocation a highly affordable solution.
Furthermore, companies can enjoy modern data centre infrastructure, cooling, experienced staff, and security.
Efficiency
Companies that choose to manage their own data have to set up server rooms. They also need to find trained staff to manage their hardware. A colocation service offers a more efficient way of storing and managing data.
Colocation centres offer efficient solutions to meet energy and cooling requirements. And on the whole, energy consumption is lower, thanks to improved power efficacy.
Colocation facilities are engineered for high uptime. If your business relies on online traffic, then outages are simply unacceptable. With colocation services, you can be sure your systems are operating in a stable environment.
Flexible
Colocation facilities are flexible and provide a range of carrier connectivity options. They can also offer blended transit services, spreading bandwidth between several carriers. This ensures 100% network availability.
With colocation services, you can increase space, equipment, and power as you need to. In-house server rooms may be difficult to scale once your business starts growing. You don’t have to worry about this with colocation centres.
Secure
Colocation lets companies make use of resources that would otherwise be too expensive. One advantage of using colocation centres for data storage is security.
Colocation centres have several layers of security and threat detection to protect infrastructure. These facilities are also monitored at all times using CCTV cameras. And personnel are on active patrol 24/7.
Scalable
Another important advantage of colocation services is the scalability that they provide. With a colocation setup, expanding is quick and seamless. The same can’t be said for in-house setups and server rooms.
Colocation makes it easier to grow long-term. This is thanks to better control over fixed-costs and IT budgets.
Connectivity
Colocation offers global and secure connectivity. These facilities provide fast networking solutions and stable connectivity at an affordable cost. Traffic flow on the network is monitored to ensure minimal downtime.
Fast internet connectivity is not always possible at an office location. And employing personnel to manage specialist equipment can be costly.
Sustainable infrastructure
Colocation provides organisations with a fully auditable system. They also have full control over their IT infrastructure. This is why colocation has an advantage over other data solutions such as cloud storage.
Cloud storage can be very expensive. It’s often more affordable for companies to store data on their own servers.
Moreover, data centres are constantly researching and making use of green technologies. This allows companies to reduce their environmental impact.
Colocation vs in-house data facilities
What is in-house data storage? It’s when a company stores servers and networking hardware on their premises. Some companies prefer this antiquated method of data storage.
Why? Because it gives you full control over your equipment, and you can tweak and change your setup when you want.
There’s one problem – maintaining your own hardware can be complicated and expensive. Colocation centres provide a simple, turnkey solution that comes at an affordable cost.
Also, companies don’t need to worry about the cost of power, cooling, and security. Colocation facilities also increase uptime by offering stable connectivity and redundant power solutions.
Improve your data management with colocation services
A colocation centre provides organisations with scalable solutions for their data management needs.
Colocation allows companies to lease space for their IT infrastructure. This includes power, cooling, connectivity, and security. Many tenants lease space in the same facility. This makes colocation more affordable than in-house data storage.
Are you thinking about moving to a colocation solution? We offer world-class data centre facilities run on 100% renewable energy. Get in touch with us to find out more.