Co-location and Colocation Data Center
Small to Mid-sized businesses that don't require a full data rack can leverage co-location or ½ rack solutions to host their physical IT infrastructure. Co-location is an affordable way for smaller businesses to migrate some or all their Server and core application infrastructure over. Businesses can bring their own internet and firewall or can purchase, lease or rent based on the desired setup. Housing your critical IT infrastructure at a colo allows your business applications to be more reliable than on your local premise. For businesses that have a mobile or remote intensive workforce or that are geographically distributed can benefit for a Co-lo design setup. In addition, as your business grows you have the need for access to more data room space, utilizes, services and internet; thus, the colocation is good way to keep costs contained as pricing for things such as dialtone and internet are less expensive when at a colocation.
What is colocation?A colocation is a data center in which businesses can rent a space for servers and other hardware used for their network and IT infrastructure. Businesses typically choose colo over housing their own hardware as it is an intricate process to create an environment that can properly store servers and hardware. Data centers are the right temperature to house equipment, and when hardware is colocated, there is a higher sense of reliability as it is consistently monitored and there is typically a backup plan in place.
Benefits of Colocation:- Cost savings: Co-location saves money as it is expensive to build your own business center. It's also costly to maintain and update a data center. By co-locating your equipment, you can be sure that it is housed in a secure environment that is ready to change as your business grows.
- Reliability: We understand that downtime can negatively affect your business. With co-location, your business can depend on 100% network reliability. This is much more difficult to guarantee in an environment that is not a data center.
- Scalability: Businesses are meant to continue evolving, and it's important that their equipment and systems can evolve with them- easily. Co-location in a data center allows for complete scalability so that as your business needs increase, your systems can adjust.
- Security: With colocation, your data is protected from breaches. Colocation data center facilities are far more secured from unauthorized access and entry, fire, and natural disasters.
- 24/7 Monitoring and Support: At data centers, there are professionals available around the clock to monitor systems and security. This leads to business continuity, as someone is always monitoring your network to make sure that you don't experience excessive downtime.
The biggest reason why businesses select colocation is that they may need a fourth (1/4) or a half data rack and don't want to purchase a full rack. In addition, some internet providers may allow you to add colocation to your monthly bill to simply move a server into their colocation. When your IT infrastructure is moved into a data center or colocation access to voice and internet options is plentiful.
Other reasons why clients choose colocation may include:- Access to high performance infrastructure, internet and bandwidth
- Clients who run out of External IPs can easy obtain more External IPs in bulk at a cheaper cost
- Centralizing Internet for companies with multiple locations to provide an MPLS like private WAN and access to cheaper bandwidth
- Security and Reliability with 99%+ uptime and in most cases 100% uptime.
- Colocation is easy to scale as well as clients can move into colocation within a week's time as these partitioned spaces are pre-made for client seeking colocation.
- Immediate compliance assurance.
- Industries that don't have data or telco rooms such as Restaurant industries.
- Allows you to spread your business easily nationally and internationally.
If you would like to reap the benefits of co-location or are looking for new colocation services, email us at sales@convergedsystems.com or call us at (877) 598-3999.
