What is a colocation data center? A colocation data center is an IT rental service that stores computer servers and hardware for enterprise clients, supporting their daily operations. Colocation centers allow clients to share secure spaces and ideal operating conditions for their servers, catering to the daily maintenance tasks and providing stable bandwidth.
Colocation centers are also called data center colo, for short. They typically provide tiered services with different costs and features. Therefore, scalability, cost, security, and improvement of business processes are core considerations if you want to move or expand your data center. Before making the move, you must carefully weigh the benefits against your current situation. Using a colocation data center could improve your business processes.
Benefits of data center colocation
Switching to a data center colocation service could be the key to unlocking certain benefits for your organization. If you ask what is a co location relates to your organization’s on-premises IT assets, the former has the advantage depending on your unique features. While not every organization may reap immediate benefits from using a database colocation center, you can leverage these advantages to make your organization more secure and smoother and lower overhead costs. Some of these benefits are:
Improved Reliability
What is a colocation data center, and how is it different from an on-premises system? A colocation center is often more reliable than on-premise systems because a datacenter colo services firm has the resources to deploy and maintain resilient IT systems to keep your IT assets accessible and safe. Switching to a colocation center can significantly improve your organization’s workflow by improving your IT systems and their impact. It gets better if you have branches or clients accessing data worldwide.
Lower Personnel Requirements
On-premise data centers are quite expensive, with costs ranging from hardware and software to technical staff who plan, deploy, and maintain IT assets. But your organization can reduce and significantly lower those costs by switching to colocation data centers. Colocation data center firms perform the same technical tasks for servers but have the advantage of reduced costs. Leverage co lo data center services to reduce your in-house IT personnel requirements without reducing the quality of your IT assets.
Geographic Flexibility
Another advantage of switching to data colocation is that they are not location-bound. Your organization can host its servers or IT assets anywhere the colocation center is situated. This allows organizations to take advantage of geographical features such as stable electricity, internet, and low vulnerability to natural disasters. For example, a bitcoin mining hosting service hosted in naturally cold areas like Siberia may not spend less on cooling equipment while delivering quality services to clients.
Scalability
Scalability is another crucial benefit of colocation data centers, especially for growing organizations. Growth increases dependence on IT assets; companies must keep scaling their IT solutions to meet new demands. That may be difficult or near impossible, but a colo datacenter makes it easy to scale. Scalability allows companies to increase their capacity at budget-friendly costs, thereby improving profits for the same operations. Colocation data centers offer robust IT solutions.
Reduced Costs
Affordability and cost-scaling are appealing features of switching to colocation datacenter services. Although some companies with relatively small server needs spend less than others, there’s a general advantage that supporting multiple clients’ data servers provides. What is a colo data center? A colocation data center enables clients to deploy and maintain their servers at lower costs, sharing the costs with other clients served by the same facility. Switching to colocated services reduces overhead costs.
Uptime
What is co location without stable uptime? Enterprise clients need excellent uptime delivery for several reasons. A colocation data center provider prioritizes that need, ensuring that clients’ servers are always on. This is done through tiered services according to the uptime:
- Tier 1. Nonredundant power, cooling, and network connectivity
- Tier 2. At least some redundancy for power and cooling
- Tier 3. Able to withstand a 72-hour power outage
- Tier 4. Able to withstand a 96-hour power outage
Data center colocation service firms typically offer these flexible plans to clients.
Data Center Security
Co location centres offer immense advantages to enterprise clients, enabling them to scale operations while maintaining agile, robust, and stable IT systems. However, the risk of cybersecurity threats is present, just like in on-premises IT systems, necessitating security protocols for data centers.
While clients are security conscious and implement cybersecurity protocols, data centers also design and deploy security solutions to scale clients’ IT infrastructure, offering robust threat detection, prevention, and response. Cybersecurity solutions include tools, best practices, and regular monitoring. Cybersecurity teams use artificial intelligence, machine learning, automation, and integrated security management systems to protect IT assets.
What is a colocation facility without a cybersecurity team? Check Point, a leading software and cybersecurity company, deploys data center security solutions that offer robust protection for data servers and centers for on-premise, cloud-based, and collocation centers. They also offer protection for hybrid data server centers. Cybersecurity is at the core of data center colocation definition; you can sign up for a free trial on Check Point to learn more about protecting your data servers.
Our tips: how to choose a data center?
What is data center colocation, and what should you consider when choosing a colocation data centre? Here are eight factors to consider before moving your enterprise data assets to colocation centers:
- Is the security up to my standards?
- Does the facility support my power needs, current, and future?
- Is it the best location for my data? Accessible? Out of the way of disaster areas?
- Is the agreement flexible to meet my needs?
- Is the data center certified with the Uptime Institute?
- Is the facility network carrier neutral? Or does it offer a variety of network carriers?
- Is this data center scalable for future growth?
If you answer yes to those questions, it may be the right move to switch the colocation data center definition for your company.
Colocation vs. Public Cloud
When considering switching to colocation data centre services, don’t get confused about data center vs colocation remote services. Although colocation and cloud services are remote, they differ based on their basic principle.
Colocation involves firms providing remote physical locations where clients can install their servers physically, but cloud facilities use their hardware which clients pay to use from remote locations. In both cases, the remote server firm manages the daily maintenance, cooling, connectivity, and other activities necessary to provide remote access for clients. But clients for data centre colocation services provide their supporting infrastructure, servers, and storage systems.
Cloud FAQ analysis shows that many organizations prefer public cloud services that offer pay-as-you-use pricing for purchasing, installing, and maintaining their hardware. This is why colocation services target organizations that want to use their hardware but store it remotely.
