What You And Your Business Need To Know About Colocation

July 16, 2022

What You And Your Business Need To Know About Colocation

Whether you’re running a hot, new startup or an established brick-and-mortar store, your business is likely heavily reliant on data to drive operations and spur profitable expansion. While built-in servers and hard drives assist in gathering and storing your firm’s data, they also come with resources that may be challenging for firms to finance.

Instead of in-house servers, colocation has become a viable alternative for multi-stage businesses in storing their most invaluable asset—data.

Colocation is defined as the process of renting space from a data centre to store data and run servers. This off-site solution offers many advantages that can directly benefit your business in terms of cost, scalability, and security.

For those looking to level up their business’s internal systems, here are a few reasons why you need to consider colocating data.

1) Outsource Skilled Laborer’s

When you keep your data on-site, you’re also responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of the servers. This requires specially trained personnel to regularly check for issues and make sure that your data is backed up in case of an emergency. If you don’t have the technical expertise to tell apart genuinely qualified applicants from the rest of the pack, making a wise hiring position can feel like a dice roll.

Instead of shouldering this responsibility and cost, colocating your data allows you to tap into trained IT engineers from the data facility provider themselves. Not only does this help you minimise employee expenditures, but it also comes with the guarantee that your data is properly handled by experienced professionals who are trained specifically to keep your data in good hands.

2) Enhanced Facility Security

Your data is only as safe as the physical location it’s housed in. If a fire, flood, or other natural disaster strikes your office building, your data servers are at risk of being damaged and irreversibly corrupted.

To minimise this risk, many data centre facilities have implemented multiple layers of security to protect their client’s information from fortuitous events, physical breaches, and cyber-attacks. For instance, many of these centres are equipped with redundant power supplies. Moreover, backup generators, and fire suppression systems to ensure that your data won’t be compromised in any way.

In addition, data centres are also equipped with physical security features such as on-site guards. In addition, CCTV surveillance, and biometric entry to prevent unauthorised personnel from accessing the facility.

3) 24/7 Uptime Monitoring

When you host your data in-house, the responsibility of keeping the servers up and running falls on your team. This means that if an issue arises outside of business hours, you’ll have to wait until the next day to get resolution.

This downtime can be costly for business models. Ones that rely on uninterrupted operations to please their clients, such as eCommerce stores and SaaS platforms. Even a few minutes of an interruption can lead to a loss in productivity and revenue. Ultimately tarnishing your brand’s reputation in the process.

By utilising data storage providers such as colocation with Macquarie Data Centres, you’re ensuring the continuous operations of your servers. This way, you can rest assured knowing that your data is always accessible. And your business won’t have to suffer from long periods of downtime.

4) Improved Scalability

Let’s face it, servers can be costly. If your business is expanding at a rapid pace and you need to accommodate for a sudden influx of data. Moreover, buying new servers and installing them on-site can quickly become an expensive and timely undertaking.

Colocating your data, on the other hand, offers a much more scalable solution. All you need to do is rent out more space from the data centre and connect your servers to their network. This way, you can easily expand your storage capacity without incurring any exorbitant costs or disruptions to your business.

5) Protection through SLAs

When you outsource your information to a colocation provider, you’ll also be protected by an initial contract known as a service-level agreement (SLA). This document provides the terms of the agreement between you and the facility. Both parties would need to sign this document to proceed with the colocation arrangement.

The agreement can differ from facility to facility, but it generally includes:

Uptime guarantees
Expected bandwidth capacity
Support
Action in case of interruption

Should the provider fails to meet the terms of the agreement, the affected business will have an entitlement to compensation for any damages incurred. This protection helps businesses gain peace of mind. As a result, knowing that they’ll always receive the level of service stipulated in their contract.

6) Improved Bandwidth Flexibility

Getting connected to the Internet is vital for any business that wants to stay competitive in today’s digital age. When you host your own servers, you’re limited to the bandwidth capacity of a local business internet service provider, which can be both expensive and inflexible.

Colocation, on the other hand, provides a much more efficient solution. Most data centers typically connect to multiple tier-1 Internet providers. This can help in case of outages as your data can route through another network. In addition, data centers are also able to provide higher bandwidth speeds in case your business needs to accommodate for a sudden increase in traffic.