Colocation In A New Era — Part of the Evolving IT Strategy

IT no longer operates in isolation. Public and private cloud solutions combined with data center hosting and infrastructure management at scale have fundamentally changed corporate technology environments, setting the stage for a new era of colocation informed by both hybrid IT best practices and multi-cloud resources.

But what does this mean for your business? How do organizations embrace new IT expectations without sacrificing simplicity, security and speed?

What Is Colocation?

The value of colocation hasn’t changed. By moving company-owned hardware to shared data centers that provide vendor-neutral connectivity and managed network expertise, organizations can maximize the value of IT spending without losing critical asset control. In addition, professional colocation data centers that have successfully completed SSAE18 and SOC2 Type 2 audits offer physical and virtual protection that outperforms most in-house solutions.

Colocation data centers remain the go-to choice for companies across industries and market verticals, in large part due to economies of scale. Dedicated data centers serving hundreds or thousands of clients offer both better prices than on-site or privately owned data solutions and feature massive bandwidth pipelines that are often prohibitively expensive for small or medium-sized companies.

Companies also benefit from 24/7/365 managed support and backup recovery to both mitigate the impact of potential server incidents and get critical services up and running ASAP if local hardware is compromised.

The Hybrid IT and Multi-Cloud Impact

Ten years ago, many IT experts predicted an era of public-only cloud solutions which would see low-cost, high-population options outpace any private offerings. Others suggested that private rather than public clouds would become the dominate IT force as companies put data security and control above speed and accessibility.

Now, the new era of cloud computing has arrived — and it’s not quite so black and white. Both hybrid IT and multi-cloud solutions have emerged as viable alternatives:

• What is hybrid IT? This option uses a mix of physical infrastructure, public and private cloud services to maximize performance and security.
• What is multi-cloud? This IT approach emerged as a way to avoid vendor lock-in and leverage specific cloud services by using multiple cloud providers to meet IT strategy goals.

Best choices depend on current corporate needs, evolving IT requirements and the ability of providers to meet demands for high-bandwidth, low-latency solutions that support evolving IoT and mobile markets.

Creating Better Colocation

What does colocation look like in the era of hybrid IT and multi-cloud infrastructure?

First is the ability to easily extend current networks. Using a combination of colocation and on-premises cloud services, organizations can quickly extend their networks into Steadfast’s array of public and private cloud, storage and DR solutions.

Next is the need for enhanced connectivity to other networks and cloud providers. Our colocation data centers provide connection support for hundreds of networks to empower on-premise solutions along with simple connections into all major cloud providers including Google, Microsoft Azure, ExpressRoute and Amazon Direct Connect.

Finally, next-gen colocation means delivering world-class data center tools and technologies backed by experienced industry staff available 24/7/365. We recognize that in an era of cloud-first, digital-native computing your small or medium-sized business doesn’t have the time and budget to build full-time teams of cloud experts and colocation gurus.

Instead, organizations are better served by managed infrastructure and technology talent capable of delivering the collaboration and capacity you need to support multi-cloud, hybrid or any other IT strategy that drives ROI. Steadfast even levels the competitive playing fields for small to mid-sized businesses and enterprises by offering cloud technologies such as VMware with the NSX platform, providing SMBs and SMEs the advantages of a software-defined data center approach that is typically available only to large enterprise organizations.

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