Reliability, Security, Flexibility and $$ Savings
Colocating minimizes downtime of mission-critical servers and applications. Can you afford to lose even one hour of revenue stream? What would it mean to YOUR organization in lost sales, opportunities and productivity? Or lost clients? Millions of dollars are lost every year to man-made & natural disasters with servers and applications hosted in-house. Whether your market is regional or global, statistics have shown an alarming percentage of organizations that have lost data go out of business within a year.
Scenario One: Imagine a large organization headquartered downtown in a major metropolitan area (St. Louis, Chicago, NY, LA, Atlanta, Miami … ) with branches scattered throughout its suburbs. They host their own servers and run Point-to-Point T-1s from each branch back downtown, plus another Point-to-Point T-1 from their HQ to a processing service out-of-state. Internet access is provided via an ISP to their Headquarters, then distributed to each branch. Let’s say they’re also hosting VoIP services.
Murphy’s Law kicks in, (if something can go wrong, it will go wrong). It’s late Spring and a thunderstorm rolls through causing widespread loss of power across the area for days, including at its Headquarters. Twelve of its sixteen branches still have power, but lack Internet access or phone services. Would this severely impact their operation? Would colocation help? Absolutely!
Do prolonged power outages happen every year? With regularity! I used to live in the Sunshine State of Florida (Pensacola & Miami) – plan on hurricane threats every year (up and down the Gulf and Eastern seaboard). The Midwest – tornadoes, thunderstorms and floods. California – mudslides, fires and earthquakes (and an occasional brown-out). Been there – done that.
Scenario two: You’ve started an immensely successful classic car dealership, where you showcase muscle cars on consignment, and historically ship a third of your inventory monthly via Internet orders worldwide. You’re on the fringe of a large metropolis, but the only connectivity to your dealership is a T-1 that seems to regularly choke, plus you endure an occasional power outage. Your Windows 2003 server is hosted in-house, but your website is on a dedicated server at a datacenter. Your website is always UP, but not your in-house connection. Someone in Australia is dying to own that ’57 Chevy you have on sale for $73,000.00 on your website, but you suffer delays in processing the order because your in-house servers are down. It seems like you’re constantly doing work-a-rounds. Does this severely impact your business? Would colocation help? Absolutely!
Scenario three: You’re a web developer – a good one. You’ve been designing websites since 1969 (in anticipation of the upcoming Internet). Your client base has matured to the point where you have enough clients to justify a dedicated server hosted at a reputable data center. You’ve been using a proprietary control panel with a discount host (shared IPs), but feel now is the time to step up to DirectAdmin on a managed Linux box (with static IPs for each site). Your old host has been pretty decent except for a few lapses of downtime. Recently you’ve begun to read some questionable posts about your host on forums that help force the issue. One post complained of her sites being hacked because (your) provider didn’t have the latest patches installed. It’s the second time one of her sites has been hacked and now (your) host is threatening to terminate her account (all 17 sites). For you, developing websites started out as an experiment, but over the years, it’s become your sole source of income. You start wondering how safe your sites are. If even one of your sites got hacked, would it severely impact your business? Would colocation help? Absolutely!
Scenario four: You manage streaming audio and video services, and need the absolute best possible speed. You desperately need economy of scale in bandwidth vs cost, as you’ve just launched a viral promotion that promises to triple your revenue within months. Bandwidth pricing is becoming cost prohibitive with your current provider, and you’re considering moving to a host that offers (economical) cross-connects. If your provider can’t economically support your anticipated bandwidth requirements, would that severely impact your promotion? Would colocation help? Absolutely!
Why Colocate?
Reliability – Downtime can be crippling. What if you lost your (_______) for only an hour?
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Web Server – would your clients stand by you or start shopping your competition?
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Centralized Point of Sales (POS) System – what if you couldn’t reconcile batched payments from 300 retail outlets nationwide?
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File Server – who needs access to accounting software, vendor or client records anyway?
Flexibility
Scale your services as you grow your business. Most data centers offer 10, 100 and Gigabit Ethernet (GigE) uplinks, with bandwidth as low as $5Mbps.
Security
You have $$ thousands, possibly $$ millions, currently invested in data and technology infrastructure. Protect your investment from malicious attacks or theft by colocating at a secure data center. Data centers are protected 24/7/365 via physical security, monitored video surveillance cameras, controlled access (physical login, access card, and keyed access), plus smoke, temperature and moisture alarms. All visitors are cross-checked against client defined access lists.
Cost Management and $$ Savings
The cost to build, secure and maintain an in-house data center can run into the thousands of dollars, often millions. The cost of power alone can amount to $$ tens of thousands of savings between LA, Chicago and NY versus Saint Louis. Layer on scaled bandwidth expense, multiple backup diesel fuel generators, 24/7/365 monitoring and it rapidly escalates beyond an expense most businesses desire to undertake. Plus, in-house skilled network engineers command sizeable compensation and benefits. Volumes have been written about the expense of replacing qualified IT staff, should they move on to higher paying jobs or just leave without explanation.
