Colocation for small businesses has been around as one of the best choices for hassle-free, long-term plans. While big corporations have all the necessary resources and personnel to run their own infrastructure, small and medium-sized businesses can bump into several challenges when it comes to managing data. You can either deal with inefficiency issues when running an on-prem data center, or, when you start growing, you have to face the sudden and unforeseeable cost increases of cloud services.
Fortunately, the evergrowing volumes of data birth a vast number of options to choose from, allowing businesses to adopt the solution that’s best for their current stage of development.
So, how do small businesses benefit from choosing colocation?
In this article, we are going to unpack the question and take a look at why colocation for small businesses remains a feasible option.
Colocation for Small Businesses Comes With Big Advantages
Colocation provides the infrastructure, excellent connectivity solutions, elevated security, redundancy, professional support, and cost efficiency at the bottom line. Colocation for small businesses allows access to the same perks of the enterprise data center, and since you bring your own, you get to choose whatever hardware you prefer.
Let’s take a look at these advantages in detail.
Sophisticated Network and Connectivity Options
Having access to a robust network infrastructure comes with lots of advantages, obviously. A carrier-neutral colocation provider can offer a plethora of network and connectivity options. The more options a provider can offer, the bigger their popularity.
Colocation providers offer excellent bandwidth services (with up to 100% availability), guarantee low latency, and facilitate private data center interconnection services and cloud connections for companies using the hybrid model.
As a matter of fact, carrier-neutral colocation data centers rent out sophisticated network infrastructure and connectivity. All tenants can have access to the same infrastructure. Therefore, colocation can be highly advantageous for small businesses because of gaining access to enterprise-grade resources.
Reliability and Redundancy
Outages are a significant problem for large enterprises. On a bigger scale, an outage event can cost millions. Reliable connectivity and redundancy are indispensable components to ensuring and guaranteeing 100% availability.
Data center outages are a constant issue. However, the number of data centers reporting to have had an outage at their site is gradually decreasing. According to the Uptime Institute’s 13th Annual Global Data Center Survey, 55% of surveyed operators reported that they’ve experienced an outage since 2020. This is still more than half of the operators. However, the number of affected cases has significantly decreased since the 2022 survey.
While smaller companies don’t lose millions in case of an outage, they can be greatly affected nonetheless. The negative outcome of losing money can be proportionately bad on a smaller scale, showing dramatically in their balance.
For the reasons above, colocation for small businesses is a safer and more cost-efficient choice than risking uptime with on-premises solutions that end up being more expensive in the long term.
Expanded security
Unlike on-premise solutions, a colocation data center is built to withstand specific threats like natural disasters. As such, they guarantee better chances of your data staying safe in case of an unexpected event.
Additionally, colocation data centers offer several layers of security most small businesses lack the resources to afford. On the physical security level, those include surveillance cameras, professional security staff, biometric scanners, and access control. Plus, the client’s equipment is held in secured cages and lockable cabinets, which prevent unauthorized access. 24/7/365 monitoring allows instant detection in case an issue occurs.
Moreover, a colocation data center can have network security protocols and offer server monitoring services. High-degree services can be available for protection against cyber threats, and security services can include compliant solutions for several different configurations.
Better efficiency and sustainability
As opposed to on-site server rooms and buildings, data centers are designed for efficiency from the ground up. This can be a huge difference in consumption and the overall bottom line for small and medium-sized businesses.
Efficient cooling and power consumption allow the colocation data center to use less non-renewable energy, making it more sustainable. While it is very difficult to run a facility only on renewables, most data centers strive to deliver more sustainable solutions to satisfy client demand and regulatory obligations.
Professional support
Having professional support available at your fingertips at all times is an extra that can’t be emphasized enough.
In this respect, too, colocation for small businesses is a great choice. For most small businesses, it would be too early to invest precious resources into their own infrastructure and professional staff to manage it. And there is a lot to managing a data center: security, server maintenance, power, and cooling management can take a lot of human resources from your team.
Luckily, this is exactly what colocation data centers, like Volico, are best at. Expert on-site technicians and support are there to take on the responsibilities hindering your team. For organizations that don’t have extensive experience with infrastructure management, this can be the perfect solution.
The team of experts at the colocation data center can help with various tasks from setting up and maintaining equipment to troubleshooting services, offering remote hands services, as well as professional cabling and security configurations.
Overall, colocation data centers that offer managed services are very advantageous for small businesses. Getting professional support allows better resource allocation and speedier growth in more important areas.
Scalability Potential
Speaking of growth, there’s a reason for many companies recommending colocation for small businesses. As the start-up phase passes, the initially flexible cloud solution can prove to be a more costly option.
However, growing companies still want flexibility but with more control and better prices.
Colocation data centers are the perfect solution for cost-efficient scalability in the long term. They can add extra rack space and bandwidth on demand, allowing for quick and easy scaling.
Additionally, with colocation, you can customize your plan and opt for short-term contracts. This allows you access to resources tailored to your needs and the freedom to upgrade when you need to. This way, you only pay for what you use and keep pace with your long-term budgeting goals.
Cost Savings
It is the beauty of multi-tenancy that it allows smaller businesses to benefit from the same excellent infrastructure bigger companies use. In multi-tenant colocation environments, renters share the costs of the infrastructure and space. For small businesses, this means better infrastructure and management services than they could ever sustain in an on-prem data room.
Additionally, colocation also comes with the perks of strategic location options. A growing business can highly benefit from effortlessly expanding its reach to faraway locations through colocation.
Other cost savings include better power and cooling efficiency, which not only reduces power consumption but also expands the life of hardware and equipment.
Small businesses benefit from colocation data centers from a security point of view as well. Data security is crucial, and while small businesses don’t lose millions of dollars on downtime, the effects of an incident can still be devastating.
Inflation comes with rising costs, and it’s becoming increasingly expensive to run data centers. However, it’s even more expensive to run a server room on your own, with extra expenses every time you scale up.
Colocation for Small Businesses From Volico Data Centers
Small and medium-sized businesses need secure and reliable data solutions to grow and prosper. However, few have the resources and expertise to manage their infrastructure safely and cost-efficiently independently.
Volico Data Centers Colocation can offer all the benefits and control an in-house data center has while taking away the challenges of managing it on your own. Our team of experts is available at all times to offer you help and guide you through the best options for your IT infrastructure – tailor-made to your needs.
Got questions? Want to talk specifics? That’s what we’re here for!
If you’d like to know more about how colocation can help your business, call (305) 735-8098
or Chat with a member of our team to discuss which solution best fits your needs.
