Although cloud has earned the limelight, the shift to colocation services is growing swiftly. IDC predicts that by 2018, around 65% of all IT infrastructure will be on cloud or colocation data centers, but now the attention is more on cloud. This is happening in particular because on-premise infrastructures are either aging or undergoing consolidation.
However, along with the growth of cloud-based solutions, colocation data centers is expected to accelerate as well. Let`s take a look at how colocation and cloud go hand in hand.
Empowers few of cloud advantages
Using colocation services provides as much benefits as moving to cloud-based infrastructure. When colocating servers, you still have to spend a significant amount of data for buying servers, networking, storage and other related IT equipment. But there is no need to invest on the other essential things such as internet connectivity, redundant power supply, generators or the infrastructure, where you save a big amount of CapEx. The cost-saving is one of the most commonly known advantage of cloud solution, but colocation is also matching this benefit as it also assures to offer pay-as-you-go pricing model. In addition, it also focused on energy-efficient functions and thus, when organizations move their equipment to the IT facility, they will be able to save a significant amount on power consumption.
Flexibility
100% uptime goes hand in-hand with avoiding the CapEx of building a fault-tolerant data center facility. Cloud services and colocation are both expected to just work, with 100% Service Level Agreements often guaranteeing 24/7 uptime. Because different workloads require different levels of resilience, however, we’re seeing colocation providers offer customizable power densities, redundancy, fault tolerance, and load balancing options.
Just like cloud solution, colocation assures maximum uptime guarantee and thus, this eliminates the need to spend on building a fault-tolerant infrastructure. Colocation service providers tend to deliver customizable power densities, along with redundancy and load balancing services. This enables customers to eliminate implementing solutions that is not required and make efficient use of resources. For instance, if an enterprise does not require 2N+1 redundancy, they could pay relatively less to colocate at the facility and get the service customized.
Alteration
Colocation service providers must get engaged with IT staff that would be able to build a more efficient and future-proof IT environment. With the evolution in technology and more migration towards on-demand and as-a-service model, a team of expertise is getting involved in infrastructure planning. However, organizations are not entirely migrating to the cloud and thus, their plans to move typically involve a range of geographically diverse clouds and that is where colocation becomes crucial as it need to play its part to interconnect and deliver streamlined systems.
In addition, colocation is not only serving customers with its basic features which is offering physical space and power to run hardware equipment, but it is also contributing to address particular applications or initiatives. Many large cloud service providers are building and operating their own IT facility, however, small-scale service providers need to host data and applications somewhere and thus, moving towards colocation. Not only small, but even large-scale service providers are purchasing considerable colocation space. And as they have considerable amount of IT resources, they are moving certain applications to the cloud and moreover, it will make sense to consolidate some data center sites.