The COVID-19 pandemic presents unprecedented health and economic challenge, and as organizations focus on maintaining operations, data centers are key to keeping things running smoothly.
Datacenter colocation is referred to as an outsourced data center solution that businesses require to expand the capacity and capability of their IT infrastructure. Colocation services include network connections and the associated bandwidth, redundant power supply, cooling resources, and physical locations. Businesses that are geographically dispersed can utilize several colocation facilities to ensure the shorter distance of the Data Center from their facilities.
Pandemic has caused a spike in the utilization of data center resources. Organizations need to ensure mission-critical systems are running, power capacity is available for those systems, and redundancy is clear.
As more businesses adopt smart technologies in their homes and businesses, the demand for edge computing is bound to grow, and so will edge data centers. Due to the demand for better reliability and speed in the edge market, major colocation, and hyper-scale providers are opting for newer ways to host their critical applications.
Data Center Colocation vs Cloud Computing
Colocation services and cloud computing offers a shared facility. However, various colocation customers usually own the servers that are managed by the colocation service providers along with physical space and resources such as network connections, power supplies, and cooling components leased from colocation providers as well.
On the contrary, cloud companies own and manage the entire infrastructure components and make them available as a service through the Internet to their customers that later subscribe to these services following either a monthly, annually, or pay-as-you-go structure. This helps the IT department to focus on the core operations of the organization rather than managing the cloud infrastructure.
Hence, colocation services are tangible that allows the customer’s server to exist in a readily identifiable location. Colocation services are greatly helpful while migrating on-premise data to the cloud depending upon the preferences and requirements of the organization. Colocation services are best suited for organizations that refrain themselves from putting their sensitive data in a public cloud environment because of major security concerns.
As server colocation is an alternative to a non-cloud experience with third-party managed infrastructure, it offers greater migration and task flexibility at many affordable prices as compared to cloud computing. The dedicated resources of colocation services are easier to dynamically scale the resources in a cloud environment. Enterprises that want to hold total control over some of their servers choose colocation services as a part of a hybrid data center architecture strategy as it offers efficiency to the data center facilities.
Advantages of Data Center Colocation:
Some of the benefits of the colocation services are compared with other alternatives such as public clouds and private clouds and include the following attributes:
- Cost: Colocation is a cheaper and better option as compared to other alternatives and the costs are pre-determined in the provider’s contract.
- Control: Colocation offers infrastructure setup and maintenance, including cooling, power, and interconnections between resources and is completely managed and controlled by the service provider.
- Scalability: A colocation service provider holds plenty of space to expand resources within a specific data center.
- Reliability: Colocation data centers offer redundancy and disaster recovery, bandwidth connections through various service providers, and uninterrupted power supply along with backup power generators.
- Security: As the colocation providers maintain the equipment for several companies, they offer multiple layers of security to protect customer’s infrastructure.
Data Center Trends During the Pandemic
- Increased colocation to avoid costly constructions and hardware installations.
- More incremental projects to add critical power capacity at existing facilities.
- Cloud migrations to reduce upfront hardware expenses and provide fast speed-to-market.
- Increased use of third-party managed services for hardware installations, network optimization, edge deployments, and security due to access restrictions.
- Additional purchases of circuits from telecoms and interconnection-focused colocation providers to improve network utilization.
Bottom Line:
As the various colocation service providers offer a diverse set of services, organizations can truly seek benefits by analyzing their requirements. Micronova offers seamless and secure colocation services at its tier-3 compliant Data Center to its customers to help them grow strategically. With the highly advanced technology and comprehensive support, Micronova is undoubtedly the leading Data Center Colocation services in India at present times. Micronova colocation services not only eliminates the need to build, staff, and manage your in-house data centers and server rooms, but also ensures a trouble-free colocation and migration to safeguard the IT infrastructure of your enterprise as well.
