The hot topic of the moment is, without a doubt, cloud. And for good reason. The adoption of cloud is rising rapidly. In fact, we expect the cloud segment to grow by over 30% each year for the next several years. But did you know that the colocation and dedicated leased service segments are also expected to grow by around 20% each year for the next several years? Despite the current cloud hype, colocation and dedicated hosting still have an important place among IaaS offers. It is essential to weigh the pros and cons of each hosting solution (or combination of solutions) in order to decide what is right for your business.
We’d like to get back to the basics and talk about how each of these Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) solutions fit into your business planning for IT. This article is the first in a four part series that will discuss the benefits of each type of service and how they work together to provide the best and lowest cost solution for your hosting needs.
Part 1: Colocation
Part 2: Dedicated Leased Servers
Part 3: Cloud Servers
Part 4: Hybrid Solutions – Let’s work together!
All IaaS offers are outsourced infrastructure; you put important technology in a data center. With colocation, you will need to weigh the trade offs between:
- Laying out money for large capital purchases
- Having the right skills for managing the infrastructure
- Importance of security & uptime
- Obtaining standards compliance and certifications
- and Convenience
What is colocation?
With colocation hosting you provide your own equipment and the data center provides improved infrastructure that includes a place to put your equipment (rack space), the circuits to power your equipment (power), and a connection to the internet (bandwidth). It is that simple. Of course, there are additional options you can add on if needed such as redundant A/B power, redundant Internet connections, remote power control and others.
What are the benefits?
Once you have reserved your colocation space, power, and bandwidth you are then able to bring your equipment to the data center and configure it. You may have your own skilled IT staff , or you may be working with an outsourced IT company who can complete this task. Either way, you have complete control over your own equipment but reap the many benefits that come along with leasing space in a data center.
Click here to view the full infographic
Is colocation right for my business?
If you have most or all of the following characteristics, colocation may be the right choice for hosting or outsourcing your IT infrastructure:
- A skilled IT staff with a broad knowledge of server administration, internet, hosting, security, and infrastructure standards
- Funds to purchase the required IT equipment like servers, routers, switches, and firewalls
- A requirement for the highest levels of security or other compliances
If not, stay tuned for the next articles in the series that will cover dedicated leased servers, cloud services, and hybrid environments.