It is strange that a company would choose data center colocation when the concept appears to provide only a roof over a bunch of servers. They could jump directly into cloud computing and be able to achieve more. There is more to this decision than meets the eye.

Data Center-as-a-Service (DCaaS)

Either public clouds or colocation services will move a data center away from physical corporate offices and into a space of their own. However, that is the end of any similarity between these operations. Colocation is merely the occupation of physical space for storage and could be the gateway to a hosted private or hybrid cloud, which allows you to bypass public internet connections.

Move forward while you plan your next step carefully. There are enough reasons to avoid a sudden jump from onsite housing of equipment and IT services. The top reason is that you could be tossing out costly physical assets in favor of virtual assets even though a cloud would be the next new colocation.

Emergence of the Counter Trend

Applications that grew and developed in the cloud are now finding it too expensive to stay there. If this is your passion or invention, it is surely less expensive to build out a data center that is within the physical facility with your workspace. You could rent out your place in the cloud and make some money.

Periodically, it is important to reassess the practicality of utilizing cloud-based workplaces in light of the soaring costs of expansion in the cloud. A business could be spending monthly amounts for an infrastructure in the cloud. If there is little control over the happenings in that cloud, some companies may begin to rethink this costly outlay.

Practicality of Togetherness

No business enterprise should need to choose between colocation or a cloud infrastructure when both services can coexist under the evolution of a common IT service. A physical colocation facility can arrange and rearrange the server stacks to benefit from private or hybrid cloud oversight. Companies can connect to cloud providers while eliminating public internet interference by the direct connections at a colocation facility.

Some tight central IT facilities still house parts of the infrastructure in another place for purposes of security. Colocation providers tend to offer other services to complement the colocation service:

• Networking
• Cloud formations (DCaaS, IaaS, SaaS or PaaS)
• Clouds (private, public or hybrid)

This simply means that colocation could provide optimal service when working in combination with these other services. Togetherness can become a big benefit. Contact us for more information about how our methods of colocation can benefit your company and bring costs within realistic parameters.