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Colocation : Leveraging the Benefits of The Cloud With the Security of Owning The Infrastructure

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turnkey-internet-datacenter-pod-technology-colocationJeremy here again and this week we will be covering one topic: Colocation.

 

Have you ever heard of collocation? Did you know it is a GREAT way to grow your business whether a small or large business. You get the benefits of the Cloud, along with the performance and security of having your own servers, vpn devices, firewalls and infrastructure.  Before we delve too far into this topic, lets first define what collocation actually is. Directly from our friends over at Wikipedia:

 

colocation centre or colocation center (also spelled co-locationcollocationcolo, or coloc) is a type of data centre where equipment, space, and bandwidth are available for rental to retail customers. Colocation facilities provide space, power, cooling, and physical security for the server, storage, and networking equipment of other firms—and connect them to a variety of telecommunications and network service providers—with a minimum of cost and complexity.

 

You can read the full article at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colocation_centre. To sum up colocation for you, collocation is when you use a datacenter to house your servers. This could be one server all the way up to a full rack of servers. Here at Turnkey Internet, we have several clients who lease several racks from us that house their entire IT(Information technology) department. Now, you may be wondering, how will this help me to grow my business? I feel the best way to answer that question is to list some of the benefits of collocation. I will then delve into a few of the benefits to show you would reap rewards from colocation

 

  • A predictable and operation expenditure model
  • Better access to space and power
  • Integrated, advanced components
  • Cutting-edge security system including lockable racks
  • Network connectivity
  • Cooling
  • Real-time live monitoring
  • 24/7 monitoring by engineers

 

Now that we’ve listed some of benefits, lets delve a bit deeper into a few of the benefits beginning with:

 

A predictable and operation expenditure model

 

When you have a small to medium size business chances are, you can’t afford to spend large quantities of money on your IT infrastructure. This could be everything from hiring a full-time IT engineer to setting up your own network infrastructure. The prices you would pay could exceed what you have budgeted for your business. For example, one of the most expensive items with owning a datacenter or housing your IT department will be the power. The power that each server uses. The power to keep the servers running 24×7. The power needed to run a generator or battery backup in case your office encounters a power failure. Power is just one example to use, but I used power to show that you may not know the amount per month you will be spending on just power alone. Factor in setting up redundant network, bandwidth pricing or the amount you have to pay your IT engineer to keep it running and your business could be looking at well over 6 figures.

 

This is where a major benefit of collocation stems from. You can sign up for a collocation contract at Turnkey Internet and receive one flat rate for all of those items. Your bill per month would be predictable as you would know each month how much you’re going to be paying to run your IT department. Colocation takes a lot of the variability out of the equation

 

Better access to space and power

 

Quick, does your office or business currently have enough space within it to run your IT department? Keep in mind that you will need ample space for the servers themselves. You will also need ample room to bring power into your business to run the server. Don’t forgot about cooling, batteries and a plethora of other options you will need to run your IT department. Do you currently have enough space in your business for those services? If not, collocation could be a great option as all you would need to is send your server into the datacenter. They will take care of spacing and power needs. You wouldn’t have to worry about your office overheating from 20 servers running and not enough room to disperse the heat. You could also include this under cooling.

 

Network connectivity

 

One of the biggest costs in running your IT department in house are the costs associated with keeping your network at 100%. This may seem like common sense since you’re running a business on the internet, but are you aware of how often your network can lose connectivity? This can be caused from a faulty network cable all the way to a full scale DDOS attack. Please see previous blog posts to learn about DDOS attacks. When an attack or faulty cable goes down, you entire business can become crippled. How will you send email? Is your site still online? Can you communicate with your customers? Most people only worry about these type of things when they can no longer use them, however, as a business owner, you do not have that luxury. You have to stay on top of your network to ensure that you’re able to connect with your customers and vice versa. While yes, you could do this yourself, but what if you’re not a fully qualified network engineer? Will you know all of the items you will need to keep your network secure and stable? This is where collocation comes into play. Since you’re paying a fee to collocate your server, network connectivity is taken care for you. Highly qualified network engineers will constantly monitor your network for any connectivity issues and remedy them should the need arise providing you with peace of mind

 

Listed above are just 3 GREAT reasons that collocation may be an option for your business. It will help streamline your business and provide you with piece of mind that your IT department is being handled by professionals. You can see our current collocation offers at: http://turnkeyinternet.net/colocation/ While this is by no means an all inclusive list of the benefits of collocation, it should at least provide you with a starting point to determine if collocation is right for your business

 

Until next time…

 

 

 


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