While many start-ups and small businesses operate entirely in the cloud, some still have IT equipment they need to house.
From air conditioning systems to networking facilities, there is a lot that goes into looking after IT equipment. What’s more, all of this requires significant levels of capital investment and on-going operating expense – the latter of which increases sharply when those systems become large or business-critical. For many organisations, housing their IT is simply not cost-effective.
In this article, we breakdown five business benefits of colocation services, including cost, added security and flexibility. If you want to learn more, head over to our colocation page or get in touch with our team for a free quotation.
What is colocation?
Before we jump into the business benefits of colocation services, let’s very quickly summarise what this entails.
Colocation involves housing your IT hardware in a purpose-built data centre owned and operated by a trusted partner, such as Pulsant. With our colocation service, you simply move your equipment into our data centre. This removes the need, expense and risk of housing the infrastructure on your premises.
- Colocation is more cost-effective
For many businesses, paying for the upkeep of hardware and IT infrastructure can be astronomical. If you’re looking to grow soon, you’ll need a flexible colocation plan that takes away the burden of having to house expensive equipment. Thus, rather than allotting a significant long-term capital investment to running an in-house data centre, a colocation provider will give you the necessary capacity at a snip of the price.
At Pulsant, we reduce business costs by taking care of the following:
- Power
- Cooling
- Space
- Humidity control
- Physical security
- On-going maintenance
We house multiple customers in the same facility. In doing so, it means you benefit from high service levels at a reduced overall operational cost. As your IT requirements grow, your Pulsant data centre footprint scales accordingly.
- Redundancy and reduced downtime
One key benefit of colocation is improved reliability. Power outages and loss of network connectivity are major disruptors to IT operations. And in business-critical or customer-facing IT systems, any downtime could result in the loss of business or reputation.
While there are steps you can take to limit downtime for systems on your premises, these are often limited in a non-dedicated environment, such as an ordinary office. By contrast, our data centres are designed from the ground up to offer:
- Multiple redundant cooling systems.
- Power feeds backed up by high capacity.
- Enterprise-class uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS) Systems.
- On-site back-up generators.
- Multiple network connections that take services from several telecommunications carriers to minimise the risk of communication outages.
We own and manage the entire environment that houses your servers – all the way down to the essential components. This provides us with clear visibility of any issues affecting your colocated servers and speeds up resolution times.
- Enhanced security and compliance
Pulsant’s ISO 27001 accreditation for IT security covers all of our data centres. This certificate means your systems will be protected by multiple levels of access control, internal/external CCTV, steel perimeter fencing, on-site staff, and more.
We offer a range of optional services to support your colocated IT. Although your engineers will have full access to your equipment, our expert data centre staff can perform many maintenance tasks for you. We call this “remote hands”, where our engineers carry out essential maintenance, repairs, or upgrades to your colocated equipment.
We complement our colocation services with a flexible and cost-effective range of network connectivity services. These keep you and your customers connected to your colocated IT.
- Flexible scalability
If your company is growing, you’ll need a solution that accommodates any expanding IT infrastructure. Likewise, if there are periods of the year that are busier than others, perhaps due to seasonality, you’ll want the flexibility to scale resources up and down. In either of these situations, having a small in-house data room isn’t reliable or cost-effective.
Scalable hosting, however, gives you the freedom to increase bandwidth and storage capacity in tandem with your growth. It also means that you don’t have to buy expensive hardware or recruit extra IT professionals, only to be left with unutilised resources if demand decreases.
A flexible colocation plan will allow you to deal with peaks in demand by distributing traffic across multiple servers. In doing so, we keep bandwidth costs to a minimum and reduce downtime. Got a new app that you’re looking to launch? Simply let our team know, and we’ll allocate more rack support. There’s no need to invest in extra on-site infrastructure.
- 24/7 IT support
Prolonged downtime can be catastrophic for businesses that rely on the internet. As such, it’s best to have your infrastructure in the hands of an experienced service provider, who will dedicate time to monitor performance and prevent potential disasters.
By collocating your infrastructure with Pulsant, you’ll receive round-the-clock support and a team on-hand to help. Let the pros take care of your data, and free up any internal IT resources for day-to-day tasks.
Benefits of using our colocation services
Managing and maintaining data centres is part of our core business. We have been running several large data centres and providing high-quality colocation services to our customers for many years. Our colocation facilities are ‘move-in ready’, pre-built and pre-configured for the rapid installation of your hardware.
Simply choose one of our several service tiers, and you’re ready to get going. Whether it’s a single rack or a private suite housing multiple units, it’s never been easier to protect and manage your data.
Get in touch with our colocation team today for a free colocation by calling 0345 119 9911.
