Choosing an appropriate hosting solution is an extremely daunting task if you are currently operating in an onsite IT ecosystem and are looking forward to adopt colocation hosting. There are a number of infrastructure options to choose from and one must also understand how colocation hosting would improve different aspects of running an enterprise IT resource.
Why colocation
On site IT infrastructure is not a feasible solution for small and medium organizations. It involves a large number of heads of expenses including real estate cost, equipment costs, in addition to cost of power and cooling, and manpower.
Unless you are running a large sized organization, an onsite IT may not deliver expected returns on investment. This is perhaps the commonest reason for adopting a colocation hosting service.
The most relevant objective of adopting a colocation hosting plan is to eliminate huge costs of running an on-premise IT infrastructure. With a hosted IT infrastructure one can also gain freedom from routing tasks such as operations, monitoring and maintenance of servers.
When you get associated with the right colocation hosting provider, you are assured of seamless technical support. Your IT infrastructure will be backed by a profound knowledge and experience of the hosting provider that is offering specialized hosting services for years and has access to the most advanced technologies in terms of connectivity, data management, monitoring of equipments, and security measures. In order to gain a deeper insight into choosing colocation hosting and its key benefits, we shall individually address some of the most vital objectives of colocating an enterprise IT infrastructure.
Round the clock support
Promise of seamless tech support is perhaps the most valuable benefit of moving to a colocation environment from your onsite IT infrastructure. Although, many users of colocation hosting prefer to rely on deputing their technical staff to resolve technical issues, there is a new trend of hiring technicians from the hosting company itself. This would not only save expenditure of transporting your staff to and from colocation data center, but also will make sure that the staff is constantly available to look after ongoing projects.
Technical experts at data center can address issues such as component failure within no time to keep your systems always up and running. A hosting provider can also be relied upon to avail additional space for more servers. It is possible to fine tune your IT expenditure with needs of your enterprise without worrying about purchasing additional equipment if you have outsourced your IT infrastructure.
Enhanced data availability
Unrestricted and consist availability of mission critical data is an important responsibility. In order to make sure that your data is seamlessly accessible and available, the colocation host puts in place some of the most advanced options to maintain continuity of services even if there is an unplanned outage.
These precautions include redundant power and cooling facilities backed by availability of standby power sources. Regular testing of fallback mechanism is an important attribute of established colocation hosting service providers.
Yet another vital aspect of colocation hosting is seamless connectivity for keeping your IT infrastructure always up and running. In order to achieve this, a colocation host enters into agreement with several telecom service providers for redundancy of internet services.
Management and scalability
Management of an enterprise IT infrastructure requires expertise and access to advanced data center facilities. A colocation host not only promises to maintain round the clock support of expert technicians but also allows your in-house IT staff to invest their efforts and knowledge for development of new projects instead of looking after day-to-day server operations.
Unlike an on-premise IT infrastructure that suffers from limitations of resources such as bandwidth, a colocation service assures seamless access to premium bandwidth. This improves scalability of your services at far lower costs than an on-premise infrastructure.
Greater continuity of business processes
Disaster management is an extremely critical aspect of running an IT infrastructure. It would be far easier to gain freedom from a number of disaster scenarios in a colocation hosting environment than your on-premise environment.
In a colocation environment, your mission critical equipment is housed within a facility that has fortress like security arrangements to block entry of intruders. These facilities include mantraps, electronic access control, face recognition measures, round the clock presence of armed guards, and much more.
A colocation host spends a sizeable portion of investment in protecting your online IT resource from natural or manmade disasters including sudden power outages, tornadoes, fire, earthquakes, and floods to name a few. Special measures are implemented to make sure that there is no service break due to overheating of any equipment. The cooling systems are monitored constantly so that servers and other equipment run without any hassles.
If your vital IT equipment is hosted within a colocation data center then it is much more feasible to design a cloud backup services infrastructure within premises as a fallback mechanism. In this way it is possible to continue operations of your business in the event of any unplanned outage.
Secure and economical
There is a considerable amount of expenditure required for establishing an on-premise IT infrastructure. Equipment and manpower resources can prove to be prohibitive if you are proposing to address a wide range of IT attributes such as availability, security, redundancy, and scalability among others.
A colocation data center guarantees economy without any burden of maintaining equipment because users are assured of shared access to advanced systems. These include stringent security measures for blocking unauthorized access to vital equipment.
The high-tech surveillance measures are designed to protect server equipment and the data center premises by limiting access only to authorized people. In view of the possibility of terrorist attacks, some of the colocation providers are sealing peripheries with help of high walls and electrically charged fencing apart from deploying armed security personnel and installing CC TV cameras for constant monitoring of suspicious movements.
Takeaway
There is a plethora of reasons why one should prefer a colocation hosting environment over an onsite IT resource. Since costs of maintaining and running such an infrastructure are increasingly becoming unsustainable, a colocation hosting solution emerges as the most ideal alternative.
Read More At: Key Arguments in Favor of Colocation for Businesses