Can colocation beat the on-premise IT business model?
Barring unforeseen catastrophes such as extreme weather events, natural disasters or terrorist attack, we do not see that the obstacles above will overcome the ability of the colocation datacentre industry to record double-digit growth for several years. ~ ~International Data Corporation (IDC) Colocation Opinion Report.
In the last decade there has been a uniform trend towards small and large businesses offshoring their IT requirements to more stable and secure web hosting datacentres in the form of cloud computing and colocation hosting.
Even when SMEs decide to use cloud services, usually VPS cloud, over a colocated model, their hosted infrastructure probably resides in colocation facilities — a perfect fit for the popular cloud computing paradigm.
In recent years, a number of pundits have suggested that colocated web servers may BE threatened by growing environmental concerns encompassed by government regulation and green taxes on IT datacentres.
“However, datacentre companies would be in a strong position to argue their case based on greater energy and space efficiency compared with most corporate datacentres, and that regulation or green taxes should encourage rather than discourage datacentre outsourcing and collocation,” said the IDC.
The net result is that colocation offers a number of benefits over expensive, on-premise datacentres, which require frequent upgrades, staff overhead plus costly operating models.
In terms of resources, including networks, security, power and control, colocation offers a superior business environment for growth and reduced IT complexity.
While it may take years for your IT administrators to achieve the necessary economies of scale to power your business using on-premise servers, web hosting companies like UK2 have been it for nearly 12 years now. That’s a tough benchmark to beat!
Sophisticated datacentre networks utilizing advanced configurations of Cisco routers and underground fibre interconnect allow 10 gigabit line cards and links offering up to 480GB of bandwidth when necessary.
Add in advanced perimeter alarm systems, 40GB redundant fibre networks and 24/7/365 monitoring and you can see the level of sophistication, expense and firepower that has been loaded into UK2 remote datacentres.
The net result is that the IDC report highlighted further above, suggests that certain colocation infrastructure providers may grow at a rate of 25-30% indefinitely, or almost 10 fold over the next several years.
This leaves you with a clear choice: Get left behind using the costly, complex on-premise IT model or focus on revenue, growth and simplicity by shipping your remote servers to UK colocation data centres.
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Guest Blogger: Jason Stevens from jason-stevens.com / Freelance web developer, tech writer and follower of cloud computing trends. Follow him on Twitter @_jason_stevens_
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