Colocation can mean many different things, to many different people. While colocation itself generally refers to a data center space in which companies, businesses and consumers can rent/lease space for servers and server equipment, within different industries, the use for colocation varies widely.
With this in mind, we want to take some time to define colocation within a small office space, within an expanding corporation and within industries which require high levels of security/power.
Colocation for the Small to Medium Sized Business
Colocation for the small to medium sized business (SMB) is a combination of server data needs, critical internal business solutions and the room for growth. All the while, colocation for the SMB is always a price affair consisting of either a) being able to justify colocation costs per month or b) hosting the companies IT needs internally.
The biggest colocation concerns for most SMB’s are not the type of bare metal or flex servers their hosts utilize or the method in which their colocation provider cools their servers. No. For the vast majority of SMB’s, investing in colocation is an investment in internal business services. This is to say, colocation for the SMB is a matter of having a working email and phone system. For the SMB, the exchange and telephony servers are the two main concerns when it comes to colocation.
The third major concern comes in the form of web hosting. Although the SMB is small, even small companies need a powerful server to host their website. Colocation fills this need for the SMB.
Colocation for the Growing Corporation
What do colocation services mean for the growing corporation? What does data center colocation mean for the corporation who has 50 – 100 employees and plans to expand their reach globally over the course of 2014? For them, colocation is about leasing more space within a data center at a reasonable price. For the company looking to expand their reach in 2014, colocation is more about the data center provider’s ability to scale with company growth. Scaling with to match company growth and reach in 2014 means investing in a data center provider who not only have the physical space available for your company to grow into, it also means providing your company with a leasing contract which doesn’t rake you over the coals.
This is where managed colocation comes into play. For the company who is growing, you have more important things to do than to worry about the technical issues and IT problems arising from company colocation servers. Due to this, managed colocation allows you to safely collocate with a data center provider of your choice without having to take care of the day-to-day management of those servers. While this might be a bit more expensive per month, it will save IT related headaches.
Colocation for the Multinational Corporation
Colocation for the multinational corporation, more than anything else, is about control. In a company with 500 – 5,000 employees, control and security are paramount. To not only be able to serve their employees correctly but also be able to serve the globe with your powerful solutions, colocation servers have to be powerful, redundant and secure. For this reason, for the multinational corporation, colocation is about using an internal IT team to constantly look after, maintain and update leased colocation servers. Not only does this mean caring for the physical hardware and the infrastructure that supports it, it also means installing hardware and software firewalls which the company trusts.
For the multinational corporation, being able to secure your colocation servers in a manner you see fit is paramount.
Luckily, colocation providers around the world supply the SMB, the growing company and the multinational corporation with all of the aforementioned solutions.