It’s now over five years since the pandemic brought about significant changes in all areas of our lives, not least a complete rethink of working practices. The sudden switch to home working (initially assumed to be short-lived) continued for much longer than expected and, over time, morphed into an overall change in perception; many who were eager to return to the workplace when the pandemic first hit actually adjusted well to hybrid working practices and, after two years, became less keen to return to the workplace full time.
The role of colo in the era of hybrid working
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Temporary shift to permanent change
The shift to hybrid work
Between January and December 2019, around 1 in 10 (12%) of the of the UK workforce had worked at least one day from home in the previous week and around 1 in 20 (5%) reported working mainly from home (UK Parliament). Even though home working rates have reduced again since a peak during the pandemic, 13% of UK workers were still working solely from home and 27% had a hybrid working arrangement between 6 November and 1 December 2024 (ONS). The growth in remote working posed a new set of IT challenges for many organisations.
Previously, when everything was managed centrally, IT departments could set up protocols allowing for some mobile working, when required. Now, with remote or hybrid working as the norm, things look very different. Whilst IT glitches and familial interruptions during online meetings were viewed with some amusement at the beginning of lockdown, there is now an expectation that things will go smoothly; a high proportion of workers rely on cloud resources and online meeting software and, as such, a correspondingly hybrid data centre architecture is essential to make this work.
Colo and the decentralised work environment
In the initial lockdown uncertainty, colocation data centres were a place to turn to for many organisations. With remote staff accessing networks remotely every day, it became more critical than ever to manage business-critical IT and systems, and ensure seamless connectivity, cloud storage and use of web-based applications. Colocation data centres became key to offering security and remote maintenance of IT real estate in the new decentralised system (particularly at the height of the pandemic when many on premise DC facilities weren’t accessible). Now, long after the pandemic, off premise data centres such as ours continue to facilitate remote working.
A hybrid solution
It was tempting for many to make the leap to a total cloud-based solution to facilitate remote working when the pandemic hit, but this isn’t always the best approach, particularly for organisations working in high security environments. Colocation data centres like ours offer the best of both worlds – a safe and fully managed location for IT infrastructure and critical applications, combined with connectivity to private and public cloud services.
Efficiency and environmental benefits
Spiralling energy costs and an increased focus on Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) practices, has added to the already growing focus on environmental efficiency of data centre operations. Our facilities are run with environmental efficiency in mind, so partnering with us can dramatically reduce a company’s overall energy consumption compared to on premise facilities – not least through our energy-efficient free cooling system, our state-of-the-art infrastructure, redundant power, and our ability to secure the best energy contracts (zero carbon 100% renewable electricity across our sites). Our participation in environmental ISO accreditations and EU codes of conduct further enhances our energy performance, including:
- ISO 14001: 2015 (Environmental Management) - identifying areas for improvement, measuring our environmental impact and implementing strategies to achieve our environmental objectives.
- ISO 50001: 2018 (Energy Management) - improving energy efficiency across our facilities to improve our sustainability, reduce our environmental impact and reduce our energy costs.
- EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres - we are signed up to this code of conduct, which sets out ambitious voluntary standards for reducing energy consumption.
Expert support and strategic guidance
Our dedicated and experienced data centre team is on hand all day, every day, and can act as an extension of clients’ IT teams as well as providing strategic advice on IT transformation and optimisation. The dramatic shift in working practices has accelerated digital transformation plans for many organisations and several of our clients have benefited greatly from using our facility as a platform for their digital transformation activities.
Resilience and reliability
Ensuring that systems, data and applications are always available is key, even more so with a partially remote workforce. Our 100% uptime SLA offers complete peace of mind that downtime won’t ever be an issue.
Security and monitoring/maintenance
Management of servers in our ultra secure colocation facilities offers better physical security than even the best on premise facilities could achieve – our Farnborough facility is on a government-grade campus, and our Manchester site has an on-site police-linked alarm receiving centre and SOC (security and operations control centre).
Furthermore, our data centre team is on hand 365 x 7 x 52 for remote monitoring and checks. IT teams who manage on premise data centre facilities can spend much of their time on day-to-day issues rather than focusing on IT strategy – housing IT infrastructure and workloads within our data centres frees up IT teams, and our remote hands services are always available when clients can’t come on site.
Cloud and connectivity
Remote working depends on reliable connectivity and access to cloud services for collaboration. Our colocation data centres provide a wide range of connectivity options and high-speed connections to public and private cloud services.
Disaster recovery and business continuity
Our data centres offer vastly superior disaster recovery and business continuity measures compared to traditional on premise solutions. We deal with risk assessment and risk management every day, so we have robust disaster recovery and business continuity protocols in place, and any business that has moved its IT infrastructure and workloads to our facility is protected by those.
Compliance and accreditations
Most on premise data centre facilities are limited by capacity and budgets, which can compromise investment in facility upgrades. In contrast, we are legally obliged to comply with stringent industry requirements. Accreditation activities are performed as standard at our facility and all accreditations are actively refreshed, so our clients can be assured that their business-critical IT is in the safest hands.
Capacity flexibility
In a rapidly changing environment involving an increase in the use of digital technologies, many on premise data centre facilities have been constrained by space and capacity issues. We offer additional space/capacity whenever required (or a reduction in footprint to ensure that clients are only ever paying for the capacity they actually need).
Step inside our data centres
We welcome the opportunity to show potential clients around our impressive colocation data centres in Farnborough and Manchester (including our brand new, purpose-built second data centre in Manchester, which is due to go live in 2025). Please get in touch if you would like to discuss your requirements, or book a tour to see our colocation in action.