Understanding the Benefits of Colocation

May 7, 2019

Companies don’t always have the resources to house and maintain their hardware internally. Is colocation the right choice for you?

What is colocation?

Colocation (also known as ‘colocation’ or ‘colo’) is a service where businesses rent rack space for their servers and network equipment from data centers. This space is located outside the organization’s premises and therefore “co-located.”

Why choose colocation?

Companies don’t always have the resources to house and maintain their hardware internally. This may be due to a lack of space or technical means for the maintenance of specialized hardware. Elements such as power supply, cooling, network connections, and safety might not be readily available on the premises. In addition, colocation also works for companies that do not have the necessary IT knowledge and therefore outsource their IT infrastructure to external parties. Maintaining your own IT resources is expensive, and third parties can easily facilitate this. However, the main reason why companies choose colocation is to assure the continuity of their hardware and the systems that run on it.

"We regularly use remote hands in the data center, and we are delighted with how it works! The response time is fast, the technical support is knowledgeable, and they understand how we think. In the five years that Sona Business has been using a data center, there has never been any downtime."

- Sonia Harjani, director at Sona Business

What are the benefits of colocation?

Network equipment and infrastructure

Data centers have the resources to provide the network equipment and connect it to service providers with minimum cost and complexity. A redundant network ensures that all servers and business applications are always up and running. Besides, data centers have outstanding network security, such as firewalls and anti-DDoS solutions, to protect the customers’ systems.

Power and cooling

Advanced cooling techniques ensure optimal conditioning of the servers within a data center to keep them in good condition. Data centers also provide sufficient power so that hardware is always up and running. After a power outage, computers and servers might no longer start up properly. If that happens, companies can no longer access their data, which can have adverse effects. A data center provides a combination of multiple power grids with generators and backup systems. Even in a power outage, the chances of servers going down are slim to none.

Security

Data centers have various security protocols in place to ensure safety and prevent any physical damage to the hardware. These protocols include certifications with certain security standards, such as ISO 27001 and NEN 7510. Besides security protocols, data centers also offer physical security measures such as entrance security or fire and natural disaster prevention measures.

How can a data center guarantee these benefits?

Data centers often offer Service Level Agreements (SLAs), which record the agreements on the services.

Thanks to an SLA, a colocation buyer is aware of the details and costs of the services he purchases. This way, the supplier can be held accountable if he does not deliver the agreed quality of the service. The contents of an SLA are based on the organization’s needs, hosted equipment, and the available or required infrastructure in the data center.

Colocation at Smartdc

Smartdc offers colocation for businesses. With colocation, you place your own equipment in our data center, and you have the freedom to manage all your equipment yourself.

Smartdc’s unique modular concept provides scalability of our colocation services. This design allows us to adjust every suite in any dimension in case of potential expansion options. Whether you are looking for high-density colocation or high connectivity solutions, every suite is designed to function as a small private data center with its own cooling system, power supply and security, and uplinks to the internet.

We offer rack space from 1/4 rack up to an entire private suite. You can get your own fully secured rack in one of our data center suites. Our racks use multifunctional systems specifically designed for easy installation and suitable for housing servers, patch panels, glass drawers, telephone panels, switches, routers, and other IT equipment.

"When we started with one rack in the data center, we received tremendous support from experienced technical engineers. When it comes to power and cooling, a data center has a lot of knowledge. All systems are double implemented. We have never had any malfunction in our racks."

- Jory van Dam, Conscia