The choice of which colocation data center provider to work with is a crucial one for your company. After all, you’ll be storing your business-vital technology at the facilities of another organization. Before selecting an option out of the many available options, there are a lot of factors that need to be considered. The nine that we have listed here are not meant to be an exhaustive list of needs for any company, but they are an excellent place to begin.
You may make use of these criteria as the foundation for either your search or your request for proposal for a data center. According to the findings of the poll that was conducted by Flexera on the State of the Data Center 2022,”…79 percent of respondents claimed they are combining numerous public clouds, while 60 percent are utilizing more than one private cloud.”
-
Location
When choosing a data center, location is one of the most crucial elements to take into consideration for a number of different reasons. The ease with which an employee from your organization can go to the actual site should be the first thing that is taken into account with regard to the location. This is an important factor to think about in the event that you ever need to update your equipment or have it serviced. Think about how expensive it may be to have equipment that doesn’t satisfy the criteria of the business process for a lengthy period of time. You should also consider the likelihood that the region may be struck by natural disasters such as storms, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, or tornadoes. It is always a good idea to take additional safety measures to protect your critical infrastructure, even if the supplier of the data center you use took all of these considerations into account when they constructed the facility.
-
Expansion capability and flexibility or scalability
We always want to make sure that our service provider can satisfy our requirements not just right now but also in the near future. Having said that, different data center providers offer varying degrees of adaptivity in their services. Others, in addition to their regular offers, will also supply customized solutions (flexibility), while yet others will provide solutions that are “out of the box” and may or may not satisfy your requirements.
Find out if there is any more room, power, or connection that is available. If we want our company to succeed, we shouldn’t choose a service that won’t be able to grow with us over time.
-
Reliability
When selecting a colo or data center provider, reliability is of the greatest priority. Uptime is the standard by which reliability is evaluated in the world of data centers. A dependable service provider needs to have an uptime of five nines, which indicates that they are dependable at least 99.999 percent of the time. The operational expertise that CoreSite provides is unparalleled in the industry, and the company guarantees uptime of one hundred percent. Certifications of the team, comments from previous clients, and on-site technical assistance are three other factors to consider.
-
Deployment efficiency
How quickly must your infrastructure be up and functioning before it is acceptable? In the not-too-distant future, how fast do you anticipate that you will need a new cross connect or more rack space? The majority of companies want their new locations set up as quickly and effectively as is humanly possible. It may be difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of a deployment using a single statistic or figure. However, you should insist that any potential providers explicitly communicate timeframes to you.
-
Network Ecosystem
The capacity to link inside a shared data center environment is one of the most significant benefits offered by colocation services. Interconnection may provide a great deal of benefit to your company, regardless of whether you wish to connect with business partners, distributors, or even rivals for peering purposes. Find out more about the many connection alternatives that are available before making a decision. Is the facility not tied to any particular carrier? Have they already linked a significant number of their consumers with one another? Do they offer a platform that was designed to make the connectivity and administration of several clouds easier?
You Might Also Like to Read: Best UK Colocation Server Hosting Providers Review (2022)
-
Wholesale data center facilities
The range of services provided by standard colocation facilities is further broadened by wholesale data centers. Wholesale providers often have fewer clients since they rent space and electricity at higher volumes than colocation models allow for. As a result, wholesale providers lease less space overall. In these kinds of facilities, individual apartments and huge cages are usually provided as standard; but, in some circumstances, companies may hire out an entire facility for their own exclusive usage.
Larger businesses find wholesale data centers appealing since they relieve them of the responsibility of constructing and managing a complete facility on their own. This makes wholesale data centers comparable to in-house facilities. In comparison to a typical facility, These facilities provide a greater degree of creative freedom in the layout of the available space. However, they still need a significant financial and time investment.
-
Lemming effect
Finding out how many different providers there are in the region is an excellent general indicator for anybody who is searching for space in a data center or in a colocation facility. If several service providers have established their operations in the same region, there is a strong likelihood that this region is physically suitable, has high levels of network connectivity, and is supported by dependable utility services that provide electricity and water.
-
Financial stability
Consider the provider’s history of profitability while making your decision. You don’t want to throw away a lot of time and money on an investment in a data center that will be shut down in just a few years. Your data center should ideally be able to provide assistance for at least five years, if not longer. If you want to obtain an understanding of how stable the firm is, you may do so by looking at press releases, financial reports, and the company’s financial history.
You may have read about the wireless solutions provider American Tower Corporation’s acquisition of CoreSite in the news. The purchase not only puts both companies in a position to assist in the adoption of upcoming technologies such as 5G, but it also further strengthens the strong financial basis on which we are built.
How much money may be saved with colocation? To assist in determining the appropriate response, we have created a colocation savings calculator. All you need to do is input your data center and connectivity needs.
-
Business and customer proximity
The location of the center in relation to a particular company or organization may or may not have a role in the decision-making process regarding the site selection. It’s possible that the company wants to have a business location close by so that they can oversee the facility and keep an eye on the employees working there. It is possible that the location of customers will play a role in this decision. This is especially true if the speed and latency of data transmission are important, or if the company or the customers have regulatory, political, tax, or other concerns that say which areas are or are not good for storing and processing data.
For Discount and Offers, Visit our Official Twitter Page