Since the COVID-19 pandemic reached the UK, many businesses have rapidly transitioned their teams to work from home successfully.

But now the transition phase is over, we are entering a period of sustainment; where the focus is no longer on just ensuring systems and processes work, but that they are optimised, secure and compliant. But what does this mean for your business?

This best practice guide explores the key challenges you’re likely to face as a result of sustained remote working and provides advice on steps that can be taken to protect data, safeguard your business, and keep IT systems running efficiently for the duration of this crisis and beyond.

The post Preparing for sustained remote working appeared first on Pulsant.

All businesses have IT hardware they need to house. Whether it’s a handful of servers in the corner of the office, a larger estate of multiple servers or some racks in a comms room.

This requires reliable power distribution, cooling systems, and much more infrastructure for the servers to operate optimally. The cost of housing servers, therefore, requires a significant level of capital investment that many organisations simply can’t afford.

That’s why many businesses are turning to colocation. In this article, we discuss the meaning of server colocation, why it’s more cost-effective, and how it could help support your IT growth.

Contents

• What does ‘server colocation mean?
• How much does server colocation cost?
• The advantages of server colocation
• How safe is it to collocate your server?
• How to collocate your servers

What does ‘server colocation’ mean?

The definition of ‘server colocation’ is the process of housing an organisation’s compute, storage, networking and security hardware in a purpose-built data centre, owned and operated by a partner.

Using a data centre removes the need for your business to spend money and resources on housing servers on your own premises. You simply move your existing equipment into pre-built racks, and the data centre looks after the supporting infrastructure. We will take a look at what some of this infrastructure is below.

How much does server colocation cost?

It’s important to understand the factors that can determine your colocation costs.

The commercial goal of colocation is to avoid the up-front capital expense of building your own hosting facilities. This is done by following an OPEX model of paying the colocation provider only for the hosting space and services you need.

Our colocation contract terms are flexible. We allow you to rent a space as small as part of a shared rack, up to multiple racks locked in your own secure cage. You can even have a dedicated private room within the facility, depending on your needs.

The point here is, you only pay for the capacity you use. Billing is monthly, and you don’t need to commit to lengthy contract terms. Furthermore, as your IT needs grow, your data centre footprint can scale accordingly.

This system saves you having to pay the up-front costs of expanding your own on-premise server room.

The advantages of server colocation

• Frees up your IT resources
  • A colocation service provides engineering staff responsible for maintaining the facility and responding to issues 24/7.
• More cost-effective
  • We house multiple customers within each data centre, allowing us to spread the cost of maintaining the facility. For you, this means benefitting from economies of scale.
• All the infrastructure is provided
  • The data centre provides the building fabric, power feeds, cooling systems, generators, CCTV cameras, maintenance engineers and back-up servers.
• More reliable
  • Power outages and loss of network connectivity are major disruptors to IT operations, and in business-critical or customer-facing IT systems, any downtime will result in loss of custom and reputation.

How safe is it to collocate your server?

The ISO 27001 accreditation for IT security management covers all of our data centres. Each one is designed from the ground up to be reliable.

As part of our server colocation package, you can expect:

• Multiple redundant cooling systems
• Multiple power feeds
• High-capacity, enterprise-class UPS systems
• On-site diesel generators,
• Steel perimeter fencing preventing access
• Internal and external CCTV
• Diverse network connections

The latter takes services from several different telecommunications carriers to minimise the risk of communication outages. Your IT will continue to function and serve your customers even after a component failure.

Because we own and manage the entire environment that houses your servers, it provides us with clear visibility of any issue affecting your collocated servers and vastly increases the speed of diagnosis.

Where can I collocate my servers to?

One of the potential downsides to the colocation approach is it can mean long travel times if your engineers need to physically access your hardware.

To mitigate this, we own and manage a range of data centres across the country, with excellent transport links.

All of our data centres are constructed to enterprise-class specification, allowing you to choose a facility that is geographically convenient for you.

We also offer a ‘remote hands’ service, where our engineers act on your behalf in carrying out essential maintenance, repairs, or upgrades to your collocated equipment. That means, in many cases, you can avoid sending your own engineers entirely.

You still own the servers and you are responsible for setting up and configuring them. Your own engineers will have access to them 24/7 if required.

How to collocate your servers

If you’re interested to find out more about server collocation, you can contact our team today. We will be happy to find a solution that meets your business needs.

The post What is Server Colocation? appeared first on Pulsant.

Snapshot

Cintra is an award-winning provider of HR and payroll services to over 900 happy customers. The company provides a range of solutions, including fully outsourced payroll, in-house or hosted HR and payroll services, and bespoke, hybrid solutions. Established in 1981, the company is head quartered in Gateshead, Tyne & Wear and employs more than 100 staff.

Challenge
More than 250,000 people are paid every month using a Cintra solution. A large percentage of clients use Cintra’s outsourced services, to ensure that their employees are paid correctly and on time – failure to perform is simply not an option. Payroll is a heavily regulated industry and compliance is always high on Cintra’s agenda. As a BACS accredited, ISO9001 certified and ISAE 3402 company, Cintra’s disaster recovery processes are constantly reviewed to make sure that its exemplary service can withstand any form of disaster. Continually looking to improve this area saw Cintra turn to Pulsant, to take its disaster recovery capability to the next level.

Pulsant solution
Pulsant worked with Cintra to design and implement a 35-seat workplace recovery service that met the HR and payroll company’s strict security, availability and testing requirements. The service is also scalable to accommodate all staff, if necessary.

Results
Cintra has total peace of mind that, in the event its internal line of business systems, outsourced bureau operations or offices are inaccessible, it can remain operational. No matter the disruption, Cintra has the ability to be back up and running at Pulsant’s workplace recovery site within an hour. The solution enables staff to deliver business critical services to clients and fulfils the requirements of Cintra’s frequent compliance audits.

The post Workplace recovery service rated excellent by Cintra appeared first on Pulsant.

Snapshot

Scottish Building Society is Scotland’s only independent building society. With its headquarters based in Edinburgh, the firm employs 80 staff and operates 6 branches across the country.

Challenge
Scottish Building Society designs and delivers savings and mortgage products to its customers across the region. As a financial institution, security and resilience are key in meeting regulatory compliance and ensuring banking customers receive the best possible service. The organisation needed a new workplace recovery provider to ensure continuity of service to its six branches across Scotland to mitigate the risk of lost business or revenue and reputational damage in the event of a disruption. In addition, the organisation also wanted to ensure its production servers were housed in a secure location to avoid downtime and guarantee business continuity.

Pulsant solution
Pulsant supplied a 40-seat workplace recovery solution, complete with virtualised private network, to Scottish Building Society, working with the financial institution to tailor the service based on its requirements. Pulsant also provided a colocation service based out of one if its secure, enterprise-class data centres, hosting the building society’s production servers.

Results
Scottish Building Society has peace of mind that its missioncritical servers are safe in a well-maintained, resilient and highly secure data centre. In addition, the financial institution has complete assurance that in the event of a disaster its core staff can quickly and effectively relocate to Pulsant’s workplace recovery site within four hours, ensuring minimal disruption to branches and customers.

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