Businesses are increasingly reliant upon their mission-critical IT infrastructure, and networks are becoming ever more complex, so it is crucial to ensure that business systems are always up and running - downtime is not only damaging to the bottom line but threatens brand and reputation. For many IT departments, the management of these increasingly complex hybrid environments sets them significant challenges - the pressure is on them to keep the lights on, support critical applications and continue innovating, yet IT budgets are shrinking. And this is why many organisations are turning to colocation…
A global forecast predicted that the colocation market would grow at a compound annual growth rate of 14.6% between 2017-2022, and it’s easy to see why: the growing requirement for scalable data centres, reduced overall IT expenditure, growing data centre complexities, the ability to maximise the focus on core business activities and the reduction of carbon footprint are just some of the key reasons that organisations are giving for opting for colocation above on-premise solutions.
The presence of our skilled operations team on site to complement clients’ in-house IT teams and carry out maintenance activities (even if clients’ in-house personnel cannot be on hand) is another key reason given by our clients for migrating their IT infrastructure and workloads to our facility. This may be regular scheduled maintenance (to ensure that everything is working optimally), prognostic maintenance (to identify potential future failures) or corrective maintenance (resolving issues when they occur) - all of these are required to ensure that organisations don’t have to suffer the consequences of downtime should their IT equipment encounter problems.
The Datum client portal – client access to key data on their installation
As part of Datum’s commitment to complete transparency, the Datum client portal gives our clients access to data about their infrastructure and installation, and how they are performing. This is something that our clients find particularly valuable. Alongside general user management functions and access to our client ‘knowledge base’, clients can use the portal to:
- investigate power utilisation
- raise tickets and review historical tickets
- review monthly access/key logs to see who has accessed their footprint
Not all data centre operators are prepared to share this level of detail with clients, but we believe that complete openness is a prerequisite of a successful partnership. Our staff go above and beyond to provide all the information our clients need, as demonstrated by some recent feedback from a key Datum client on his interaction with our engineering team:
I was really impressed by the speed, accuracy and depth of information provided to me regarding network bandwidth. It is sadly rare, but satisfying, when someone takes time to understand the requirements and provides such detail that removes the need for supplementary questions. They obviously take pride in their work, have the end result in mind, and are committed to customer satisfaction.
Scheduled engineering services – ensuring optimum performance
Regular scheduled maintenance is essential to ensure the safe, efficient and optimal operational performance of IT infrastructure and systems. It prevents issues occurring, identifies potential issues before they have had a significant effect, minimises the risk of downtime and maximises the operational lifespan of equipment.
Our on-site engineering team can undertake engineering maintenance or business-critical tasks when requested by clients and can assist with engineering activities when client personnel are unavailable. Scheduled engineering services include:
- Remote hands engineering
- Structured cable installation and cross connects
- Custom connectivity installation
- Patching
- Visual inspections for remote troubleshooting
- Hardware planning and procurement
- Custom deployment
- Systems configuration
- Re-racking and relocation
- Decommissioning
- Blanking
- Power cycling and soft booting
Emergency response – when action needs to be taken fast
Responding quicky to faults in client installations prevents issues from becoming a service impacting failure, so Datum’s operations centre is available 24X7 to respond quickly to issues and minimise disruption to our clients’ operations. Typical requirements for emergency response include power cycling of equipment, reporting status indications and basic configuration changes.
Break-fix services for client equipment
We offer multi-vendor break-fix support for client equipment installed in our data centre covering third-party computer maintenance and business-critical services on all major vendors for enterprise server, storage and networking systems. Technology capability stretches from high-powered low-energy, virtualised systems and complex storage solutions to legacy VMS, Tru 64 Unix and HP-UX. We offer flexible service levels to match requirements, ranging from next-day response to a two-hour fix, and our spares portfolio is continuously managed to ensure we have the capability to exceed agreed SLAs.
Workplace recovery services
In the rare event of major events occurring that prevent our clients from accessing their premises, we can provide access to fully equipped, networked office recovery suites to enable them to continue with their operations with the minimum of disruption. Alongside the facilities required for staff, these suites provide a server recovery area so that IT infrastructure can be recreated using hardware and internet access.
Keeping the lights on for our clients is our top priority and everything we do, from our client service and built-in resilience to our 100% uptime SLA, is geared towards ensuring business continuity and preventing downtime. If you are considering a move to colocation, why not get in touch to discuss your requirements?
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