This is a question we get a lot. For the vast majority of companies, hosting their own IT needs (servers, cooling, networking equipment etc.) is common place. The reason for this is pretty simple: small to medium sized businesses (SMB) are focused on their core competencies and not their IT needs. As long as the phones (telephony) and the email (exchange server) work just fine, SMB’s are comfortable hosting their own IT solutions. Yet, what most SMB’s don’t know or don’t consider is that for SMB’s colocation hosting in most cases proves to be cheaper, safe, more productive and easier to deal with.
The Pitfalls of Hosting Your Own IT Solutions
Let’s look at this issue from the point of view of the most common IT needs for SMB’s around the globe. Those needs are simple: phone, email and web hosting. All three needs should be obvious. To stay in business all companies needs phones and email for communication and a reliable website to sell merchandise/act as a company’s public face. To have all these services work just fine, a SMB needs to host their needs. This means internally hosting a telephony server, an exchange server and a web hosting server. While the overall needs of the SMB might not be that large, hosting the aforementioned servers is a job to itself. With constant power needs, constant cooling needs, constant physical maintenance needs and constant IT maintenance needs, internal hosting can prove to be a pain.
Internal hosting means someone on staff needs to be dedicated to your IT solutions. While it’s nice to think that every CEO or assistant on staff can fully manage internal hosting services, this isn’t the case. To manage your internally hosted telephony server, exchange server and web hosting server, a SMB needs to hire a dedicated IT staffer. As you know, IT members do not come cheap. Cheap is a key word. Hosting internally is expensive and possibly dangerous.
Beyond simple cost, internal hosting means your internal IT SMB staff needs to understand and more importantly lobby for scalability of solutions. You’re in business to grow. When you grow, your internally hosted servers – internal colocation solutions – need to grow. Unless your internal IT SMB staff member understands the concept of scalability and the importance of lobbying for new servers when needed (this requires both an IT and business mind), your company IT needs are going to have a hard time scaling with the rest of your growing company.
Moral of the story: the three major pitfalls with internal hosting are price, knowledge and scalability through resources.
How Colocation Fixes Internal Hosting Issues
The basic idea of colocation is simple: for a low monthly fee, consumers pay web hosting experts to manage their IT solutions for them in a Tier 1 – 4 data center location with built in redundancy techniques and disaster recovery solutions. From redundant cooling and power supplies, to round the clock physical building security/round the clock IT maintenance crews and to instant scalability to match growing needs, colocation simplifies the process of internal hosting by removing it from the worries of the SMB.
In short, where internal hosting is an expensive worrisome proposition, colocation hosting provides clients with the ability to focus on their core competencies by removing IT worries from their minds. Whereas internal hosting keeps IT solutions first and foremost in the minds of SMB’s, colocation server hosting makes IT a background thought – something only to be worried about if it breaks.
We hate to say it, but for SMB’s and the majority of companies around the world, IT needs should be looked at as a background thought. Colocation server hosting accomplishes this goal for a singular low monthly cost.
Now, with your colocation solutions handled by a data center colocation facility, get back to your core competencies.