Making the move to colocation: time for change?

As businesses expand and change, it is not unusual to find the IT infrastructure is spread out across a number of locations. At times it can seem acceptable to maintain such diversity, but a widespread infrastructure can become difficult to manage, inhibiting the corporate infrastructure from properly supporting future growth plans. The lack of control over your IT systems and the need to manage multiple premises with, in all likelihood, different set ups can make any attempts to undertake activities such as upgrading systems incredibly time-consuming. By consolidating your IT estate through a colocation provider, you can achieve management efficiencies and reduce costs in the long-term.

Future-proofing your IT infrastructure comes down to anticipating the level and speed of growth your business will go through, and what systems are needed to support this. Typically, when businesses grow, and they’ve not provisioned their IT to grow with them, it puts pressure on the existing IT infrastructure. Ideally, you need a solution that can help you scale your IT requirements as you grow. A colocation solution can provide this level of flexibility to match your levels of growth and expansion.

Businesses that are considering moving their IT off-premise often have concerns about the risk of storing critical applications and data in a public cloud. But moving IT off-premise does not always mean everything needs to go into the cloud. Many data centre providers offer cloud connectivity that can enable you to benefit from the security and scalability of colocation along with the flexibility and accessibility of a cloud solution. It’s the best of both worlds.

Businesses need to be able to demonstrate that they have systems and measures in place to protect the data they hold on their customers and partners, an area of particular concern with the GDPR regulation brought in this year. If your IT is off-premise in multiple locations, it becomes challenging to know which data is where, and to ensure you have access at any time with consistent security measures in place. Colocation can provide a secure and reliable solution that brings all your IT infrastructure under one roof.

When thinking about your business-critical data and applications, the thought of the system going down is enough to keep you up at night. And if your IT is managed in multiple locations, how can you standardise an appropriate plan of action in the event that you experience any downtime? This lack of reliability can cause a real headache, which is why at Datum we offer clients a guaranteed 100% uptime SLA and a full range of other facility protocols that are there to minimise risk in the event of an emergency.