One of the services that many data centres and hosting companies provide is known as ‘colocation’ and we thought it would be useful to outline what it is and how it can benefit your business.
What is Colocation?
Colocation is a hosting option utilised for businesses of all sizes for a variety of reasons. Essentially, colocation is when you install your servers in a professionally-managed data centre, rather than on your own premises, for example, in-house.
So, instead of having to find space in your own building, pay for expensive cooling, and handle the maintenance of your own servers, you pay an external provider (such as a data centre like ours) to do it for you as part of a colocation service.
We often get asked a lot of questions from our customers about the benefits of colocation and thought it would be worthwhile putting a short guide together to outline some of the advantages when opting for a colocation service.
This list isn’t exhaustive, but provides a good insight into the advantages of utilising the significant investments a data centre has made to ensure you get the best performance and reliability from your server.
Advantages:
- 24×7 access – an advantage of opting for a more local colocation means that you can rest assured that you have access to your hardware and your data at all times.
- Security – data centres have invested heavily in security and redundancy so your server would be located in a highly secure environment and protected against ‘downtime’ in the event of, for example, a power failure. All reputable data centres (check that they are ISO27001 certified) will have multiple connectivity carriers, generators and UPS systems.
- Connectivity options – data centers have fully redundant network connections ensuring that your business critical software and applications always run uninterrupted. By colocating to a data centre, your servers are installed in a professionally managed environment, also increasing uptime and reliability.
- Expansion for growth – colocation enables you to expand your infrastructure to fit the needs of your company’s growth without having to take on capital expenditures. For example, if your business is growing, your IT infrastructure can expand to support it quickly and with less investment.
- Technical support – although you are primarily responsible for managing your server(s), most data centres will include some form of ‘remote hands’ allowance for basic issues like rebooting servers and diagnostic work. It’s always worthwhile checking to see what support packages may be available to assist you.
We hope this short article has given you a brief overview of some of the benefits of opting for a colocation hosting solution. If you would like any more information or would like to speak to us regarding your colocation, our services or would simply like some advice and guidance, don’t hesitate to contact us on 0161 464 6101 and we’ll be glad to help.
