Colocation: A popular data center and telecom industry term that refers to the physical location of servers and network equipment owned or leased by various companies/organizations operating within a reliable third party facility’s shared power and cooling infrastructure. The equipment (servers, etc.) located here are thus referred to as colocation servers; while the premises at which they reside are known as colocation hosting sites, or data centers. In these facilities, multiple companies will house and operate their IT infrastructure systems’ equipment, such as servers, storage devices, , routers, firewalls separately and securely with connections to one or more telecommunications carriers and Internet Service providers (ISP’s) in order to enable communications with other primary, secondary or failover facilities or data sources while managing and supporting their IT configurations, applications and systems remotely, along with any other data and voice network related to this resource.
So, colocation hosting is as simple as a company operating its IT (servers, etc.) and/or network equipment from a shared third party’s data center or hosting company that is equipped with the level of security, reliability, redundancy and diversity required in its access, power, cooling and communications infrastructure..
What are the Benefits of Colocation?
Saves Money
Colocation provides companies access to a ready built data center space with the requisite security, power, cooling and communications infrastructure needed without the direct investment or ongoing expensive maintenance cost of the facility.
In addition, carrier neutral colocation data centers provide the added benefit of more choices in and more competitive telecommunication service options, especially internet bandwidth with much higher bandwidth speeds and improved redundancy for network connections. The reason for this? The data center already collocates (houses) a number of telecom companies’ or Internet Service Providers’ (ISPs) network “Points of Presence” (POP), so you simply purchase connection to any of their multitude of services.
Lastly, premium colocation providers, such as TELEHOUSE, include or offer 24X7 first level (“remote hands”) support for very basic or simple on-site remediation requests (Help Tickets), .
These requests could include simple power cycling, checking or changing connections, entering simple commands, etc. Higher support levels may also be offered as well, including scalable or specific IT services and hourly or prepaid consulting services. The point is these are all designed to be delivered quickly and at a lower cost typically than the customer can, especially at a distance from the data center.
Power / Outage Protection / Security
Depending on the facility rating, or “Tier” level, describing the level redundancy and diversity in the infrastructure, Colocation facilities offer considerably better protection against power and cooling failures or “outages”. Premium colocation providers not only have multiple power feeds uninterruptable power supplies (UPS) and backup power generation equipment, along with redundancy and diversity in the cooling infrastructure, , but will guarantee 99.999% uptime concurrent with maintenance cycles .
Typically, Colocation facilities offer various levels of security for authorized personnel and equipment. These measures may include, multiple check-in points, key card facility access with or without biometrics, authorized access lists, password protection, video recording, roving guards, perimeter sensors, cabinets or cages with access cards, key lock or combination locks.
Pride of Ownership
The money saved in colocation, provide companies with the opportunity to further invest in and utilize higher end equipment ownership, or leasing, along with further development of their applications to advance their business needs and goals. . Companies maintain complete control of, hardware (servers, router, firewalls…), related software and their timely upgrades as they see fit to schedule.
Flexibility
If a company moves locations, it does not have to worry about moving its servers along with it as well.
Ok, I understand what colocation is. Now to get somebody to help my company even further?
Here is where Managed Hosting comes in!
Colocation is more of a ‘hands-on’ approach to having companies’ servers reside on the premises of a colocation hosting provider. It allows companies to act as their own managed host, colocating the equipment in a third party data center, as opposed to from their office or home using a local telecom or internet connection. Managed hosting is one step further – in that the company delegates all server maintenance to the colocation hosting provider.
Increasingly, businesses are all about saving time and money; and with a managed hosting provider, companies are at liberty (and with great peace of mind) to allow the data center provider to do all of the work necessary for successfully, securely setting up and maintaining the IT equipment (servers, routers, firewalls….etc.) thereby reducing initial and on-going maintenance costs. The data center facility bears the responsibility of maintaining the server or other equipment on the client’s behalf, which not only saves considerable costs, but it saves IT professionals the time and worry of operating and managing the equipment’s reliability, security and performance. Top managed hosting providers guarantee uptimes, with highly reliable 24X7 service and personnel on staff. This is especially useful for companies that do not have IT team members located in close proximity to the colocation facility.
The sheer difference between colocation and managed hosting is that with colocation, the IT equipment continues to be managed by the client while located in a colocation data center; with managed hosting, the data center provider takes care of all aspects of the server hosting and management for the client.
In the end, it’s totally up to you, the Customer.
“Colocation hosting” is a wondrous service for companies of all types and sizes, who require ownership and control of their IT equipment, security, processes and applications, more than a “cloud” or “managed hosting” solution (such as web hosting) provides.
“Managed hosting” is ideal for companies that would like to have its servers (owned or leased), operating systems and/or other supporting features administered exclusively by the hosting or colocation provider. Companies that do not have the IT staff or available competitive bandwidth necessary to manage its own servers and equipment often choose this option.
For over 20 years, TELEHOUSE has pioneered the development of data center services and worked to keep our clients’ information secure and uninterrupted, while performing at the optimum level.