Too many organizations feel locked in to the ongoing capital expenditures, IT and facilities upgrades as well as staffing requirements that on-site data centers demand. Colocation promises real freedom from the complexity and costs of maintaining a data center on your own. With colocation, you can leverage multi-tenant data center resources, optimal infrastructure and expert personnel that far exceeds the standards of what is typically available at an on-premises data center for a fixed monthly fee.

Here are 4 clear reasons you should consider colocation and what to look for in an ideal provider:

REASON 1: RELIABILITY

Downtime is not only costly but can be catastrophic. Yet, few businesses have the ability to fully restore and maintain operations in the face of a real crisis or disaster. It’s highly unlikely that you can match the highly redundant power and networking resources, flexible bandwidth and up-time reliability of an established colocation provider. Look for a colocation partner that offers multiple enterprise-class, carrier-neutral data centers with a dedicated Internet backbone, 2N power distribution redundancy and at least N+1 redundancy on all critical infrastructure systems to ensure continuous uptime and reliability.

REASON 2: SECURITY

Security risks are on the rise and it’s highly unlikely that you can fend off physical and virtual threats with the precision, efficacy and advanced technology that today’s premier colocation providers can offer. Seek out a colocation provider that requires multiple authentications to access the building in which your equipment is stored. Locked cages and digital card access on data center doors are pre-requisites to protect equipment. 24x7x365 monitoring of both physical assets and IP traffic along with a manned Network Operations Center (NOC), to provide monitoring, maintenance and support are necessary in today’s threat-laden landscape. The ideal colocation partner empowers proactive security with advanced technologies, such as biometric scanners, video surveillance, intrusion detection, IPTV with long-term storage capacity and more.

REASON 3: COMPLIANCE

Staying on top of all of the complex requirements tied to compliance acts such as HIPAA/HITECH, Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), Gramm-Leach-Bliley (GLBA) along with certifications is not only time consuming, it requires expertise that can be cost-prohibitive. Look for colocation providers with SSAE 16 SOC-audited data centers, which demonstrate that they have the appropriate processes, procedures and controls in place to safeguard your data, equipment and connectivity.

REASON 4: STAFF RESOURCES

Colocation done right extends your resources and reach by giving you extensive staff, dedicated support and deep expertise whenever you need it, so that you can be more strategic with your own on-staff resources. Seek out a colocation provider with facilities, engineering, cloud computing and storage expertise. Along with leading-edge infrastructure, the right colocation partner will have highly skilled staff who understand the intricacies of hardware, software, networking, security and compliance.

Explore AIS Data Centers’ colocation premier facilities and capabilities here and contact us to learn why so many business enterprises choose AIS for colocation.