An Overview Of Server Colocation

For cost-conscious enterprises, collocation is a viable option. the total cost of ownership in IT is the total cost of the staff and infrastructure to support your business. When crunching numbers to determine the total cost of servers supporting the company’s websites and how that fits into your day to day operations, disaster recovery and business continuity plans, take that one step further to compare those numbers versus colocating your servers in a data center.  In a hosted environment the data center service provider ensures your servers are secure while providing regulated temperature environments and conditioned power to ensure maximum uptime.

Typically, data center provider simply provides the environment to house your equipment. The client typically is always responsible to rack their own server into the colocation cabinet provided by the data center facility.

Housing your servers in a regular office setting runs the serious and common risk of security threats, power outages and fire, to name a few. As well, managing, maintaining and monitoring your network on a 24/7/365 basis takes time, skill and technical expertise. The most feasible solution is to choose a Data Center with the infrastructure, capabilities and technical expertise to build, deploy and manage your Internet operations. Simply put, colocation means that you own your server equipment and choose to house it in a secure Data Center environment. You retain control of and access to your equipment.

Choosing a Data Center site with 24/7/365 on-site network engineers that have proven experience in installation, repair, monitoring, replacement and configuration removes the need for you to make regular trips between your office and your equipment. However, few Data Centers provide hands-on support for their customers. In fact, most won’t even touch your equipment.

Managed Hosting Solutions

Managed hosting is a cost-effective way for companies needing 100% network uptime, who is responsible for maintain and managing the server which is colocated in the data center. Some data centers provide what is conventionally known as Remote Hands services which on a fee basis. Here  they will perform basic system support functions such as; system reboots, tape swapping, etc.

It is important to note that in most basic server colocation programs always puts the onus on the customer to manage and maintain their infrastructure. Although, typically server Colocation providers offer clients 24/7 access to the data center facilities, to allow them to manage their infrastructure.

A number of market sectors can benefit from server colocation services including Managed Service Providers, Software as a Service Providers, VoIP Telecom Providers and Online Gaming Providers.

• Managed Service Providers: IT firms specializing in managing clients network infrastructure and applications known as Managed Service Providers or MSP’s can take advantage of server colocation services offered by data center facilities.
• Software As A Service Providers (known as SaaS) require partnering with a server colocation facilities. SaaS organizations also require resilient network uptime and cannot allow their critical servers to go down as it would directly impact their deliverables which would be their hosted applications.
• VoIP Telecom Providers (Voice over Internet Protocol) have been emerging globally, providing businesses and global residents an alternative telephone platform to utilize. With the explosion of VoIP globally, these telecom providers now need voip server colocation facilities globally to house their server infrastructure to terminate traffic and provide POP’s (point of presence) in diverse geographical locations globally.
• On-Line Gaming Providers (Gamers), a global phenomenon allows individuals to play hosted, on-line games around the world simultaneously. For on-line gaming providers to succeed, they need to ensure their game server colocation environment is housed around the globe in a low-latency data center environment to ensure adequate performance for their gaming community.

Security, always a primary factor in the mind of the customer cannd security of their hosted game server infrastructure.