The retail industry has seen online sales making E-commerce a critical component of every retailer’s overall business strategy. Those trends only accelerated in 2020 and 2021 as the COVID-19 pandemic pushed millions of consumers to retailer storefronts and E-commerce sites for their shopping needs.
When looking to build out the infrastructure for their digital experiences, E-commerce companies are increasingly turning to Colocation Data Centers rather than on-premises or cloud computing solutions. Colocation is an IT asset management model in which a company places its physical servers and other essential hardware in a third-party Data Center. The facility takes on the responsibility for managing that equipment on a day-to-day basis, providing power and
cooling as well as providing stable internet connectivity and maintenance issues that arise.
The Importance of Server Colocation for E-commerce Companies in Maintaining Critical Infrastructure
E-commerce companies without the right infrastructure in place are asking for trouble. Today’s customers have too many options available to justify waiting on an unresponsive website to load. The dynamic frictionless network is needed to deliver a high-quality customer experience that requires a combination of low-latency connectivity and superior uptime reliability.
Without the right redundancies and backup systems in place to ensure consistent uptime, networks can become unreliable and pose a significant threat to business operations. When a company’s servers go down, customers are shut out from online shopping portals and may become so frustrated by the inconvenience that they leave and never return. Even worse, freequent downtime makes it difficult to enforce policies and controls that keep sensitive data secure.
The combination of slow, high latency networks, freequent system downtime, and poorly secured data can quickly undermine an otherwise well-designed customer experience. Taking the time to get the foundational infrastructure right will make it easier for any E-commerce business to grow in the future
The Benefits of Colocation for E-commerce Businesses:
Reliability :
With multiple redundant power systems and the ability to offer disaster recovery backup services, Colocation Data Centers have the robust infrastructure in place to mitigate risk and ensure key data and applications remain available when they are needed most.
Additional features such as intelligent monitoring tools and 24×7 on-site Remote Hands and Eyes Support help E-commerce and retail companies to retain full visibility and control over their colocated assets
Scalability
With the help of Colocation services, E-commerce and retail companies can monitor their power and bandwidth utilization in real-time to make sure they’re basing their capacity planning on actual data rather than guessing what their requirements will be.
Colocation infrastructure monitoring gives them an accurate picture of what resources their assets are using and helps them identify when additional capacity will be needed to meet rising demand.
Be it upgrading your rack space, bandwidth or power. Colocation services help in upgrading all of them upon your requirement seamlessly.
Power and Cooling
Data Centers have a 24×7 continuous power supply and cooling system backed by N+1 gen-sets. Colocation Data Centers typically have backup generators with varying levels of redundancy and/or battery backup systems or uninterruptible power supplies, depending on the facility. Precision ACs, in-rack cooling, temperature control (18℃ -22℃) are some of the additional features provided.
24/7 Expert IT Support
Co-location Data Centers provide round-the-clock monitoring support including facility maintenance, monitoring, and reporting, troubleshooting, prevention from potential catastrophes such as system failures, a breach in the security, outages, and so on.
The on-site expert IT team can help prevent minor incidents from becoming significant ones and provide you control over your server. Changing to a Colocation service implies that your business can concentrate on revenue-generating ventures and improvements instead of dealing with an on-site Data Center.
Security
Organizations need assurance that their colocated infrastructure is being protected and checked every minute of every day. Colocation providers are noting the call for more tight and smarter security by employing stringent protocols in both physical infrastructure and network layer.
Co-location service providers employ multi-layered protocols for physical security within the location. With the on-site IT support team monitoring and controlling 24×7, they can detect a breach in security and take necessary actions to counter the threats.
They also have other physical safety measures incorporated such as biometric access, 24×7 surveillance cameras, personnel monitoring, sensors to detect fire and water leakage, etc.,
Conclusion:
In wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, many organizations have seen the value of shifting from an on-premises solution that needs to be actively managed by their IT teams to a Colocation solution that can be administered and managed remotely. This allows them to keep their employees and their data safe while also making it easier to transition to an entirely remote workplace.
With Data Centers located in Bangalore, Micronova provides Colocation services that allow E-commerce businesses to achieve a true digital transformation. Our facilities deliver unmatched reliability with 99.75% uptime SLAs. We provide all the tools you need to build an E-commerce infrastructure that will carry your business into the future.
After migrating mission-critical hardware into a secure Colocation environment, you can save associated costs on power, cooling, space, and expertise manpower. This allows you to be worry-free about the IT operations and focus on your core business.
Talk to one of our Colocation experts today to learn how we can support your journey to create an unmatched digital customer experience.
