Colocation is an integral aspect for data driven companies in the twenty-first century. It is important to understand the different aspects of colocation and the types of companies that participate in colocation to better decide whether colocation would be beneficial for your company. When do companies choose colocation?
Businesses of all sizes typically participate in colocation centers, which are essentially data centers used to store equipment, bandwidth, power, space, cooling and physical security for a company’s server(s), data storage, networking equipment and more, when they want a higher availability for their systems. The colocation centers rent out retail space to companies to handle all of these hardware needs. Rather than managing their own space for this server and network infrastructure, a business can “co-locate” these assets with a service provider that specializes in managing these types of assets.
Why Do Companies Use Colocation?
Many types of companies have the need for high-availability solutions including Colocation, Cloud Computing or hybrid solutions for a number of business security and other reasons. Not only does a colocation service beef up security and back up crucial data, but they also provide additional support for web based companies as well as companies with a huge reliance on a worldwide demographic.
Large-scale companies like Google, for example, have been building and maintaining their own data centers for a number of years. While Google used to rent colocation space from third party companies, since the mid-2000s they have built a dozen of their own data centers between the US and Europe. This is a great example of a company that used colocation to achieve economies of scale until they reached a certain point and managing their own location became the better choice.
Ways Companies Use Colocation
Smaller scale companies or operations new to the concept of colocation can utilize the services in a number of ways, as well as on a spectrum of size rentals. Colocation centers are proven to provide more bandwidth than private, small-scale companies can afford or achieve on their own. Colocation centers are also more cost effective than storing a server for a company in their own place of business if it’s used for more than just a small-scale, user friendly website. Not only do colocation centers allow you the flexibility to customize your needs, you always maintain full control over your own server.
If you’re in the market to expand a small-scale web-based corporation or you don’t have the space or security for your own servers in-house, colocation is a great option for your success on the internet in the twenty-first century. Real estate and hardware can be expensive, especially in major cities, which makes it a more feasible option for small and agile companies to use colocation services instead of trying to set up and maintain their own data centers; this is why, for example, a data center serving New York City presents such a great opportunity. With leased space in Manhattan going for $50 per squarefoot per month, companies opting instead for co-location grant themselves much greater flexibility to expand as needed while saving money on any size server footprint, as well as receive better network connectivity.
When you choose to rent space from a colocation center, you’re sharing the expenses with a number of clients, allowing you the financial flexibility to turn a hefty profit with your web-based business without dishing out more than necessary on your business expenses. You also don’t have to pay for IT staff or drive to the data center to make or observe repairs – these tasks are handled for you.