Why moving to colo may be the best IT decision you ever make

It’s not only IT spend that is increasing – so too is the cost of property rental or ownership, especially in high price areas such as London. Historically, some organisations have been cautious about moving their data off-premise for security or compliance reasons, or because they find the migration too daunting. But most now realise that the right off-premise solution by far exceeds on-site storage in terms of security, resilience and scalability, and that partnering with the right data centre provider means benefiting from expertise and experience, which makes the migration relatively stress free.

The added value:

• Minimise real estate expenses, especially in high-rent urban areas.
• Benefit from enhanced on-site security and scalability compared to in-house setups.

Providing you pick a service-focused partner for your off-premise IT, migrating to colocation should also mean benefitting from the help of an expert who can help you optimise your setup and manage it more efficiently. Getting advice and guidance on designing the best deployment strategy (including a review of technical design to identify any improvements that could save time and money) and receiving regular service reports and reviews throughout your contract, means that you know your IT estate is being monitored and managed. This frees you up to focus on big-picture IT development instead.

The added value:

• Expert guidance on infrastructure design and deployment.
• Freed-up in-house IT team, allowing them to focus on growth initiatives.

One of the other great benefits of colocation is that you can consolidate and reduce all your basic running costs. Your colocation partner will be providing the cooling, power, bandwidth and physical security for your servers, so it’s a great chance to benefit from their economies of scale and reduced rates. It’s also very convenient to have one bill for all data housing requirements, which saves you the time and money associated with managing multiple suppliers.

The added value:

• Lower operational costs through economies of scale.
• Simplified billing, saving administrative time and effort.

Building or maintaining your own data centre is an expensive capital expense that many organisations can no longer afford or justify. Colocation enables you to avoid this expense and lower your overheads by moving from a CapEx to an OpEx model. The result is that you can allocate long-term IT running costs much more predictably and efficiently and scale infrastructure more easily.

The added value:

• Lower upfront costs compared to in-house data centre investments.
• Budget predictability and flexibility for long-term operational expenses.

Many businesses are adopting increasingly hybrid strategies when it comes to cloud because different applications demand different solutions. Colocation is a great way to enable this and achieve the cost savings and performance you need. At Datum, for example, we can support your hybrid requirements with direct connects between your kit and private and public cloud platforms. These avoid potential internet issues of speed, reliability and security.

The added value:

• Flexibility to integrate colocation with public and private cloud systems.
• Improved performance, reliability, and security with direct cloud connections.