Colocation and outsourced data centers: it’s still about control

Colocation and outsourced data centers: it’s still about control.

Is colocation going out of style? Is cloud computing making outsource data centers and wholesale colocation facilities irrelevant?

The answer is no. Colocation is growing. Wholesale data center space is being gobbled up by companies, telecommunications providers and managed service providers. That includes software (SaaS), platform (PaaS) and infrastructure (IaaS) as-a-service providers.

What are the drivers behind this growth in the colocation space? Control. Most of the companies that use colocation possess the staffing, skills and IT strategy to design and maintain their own environments. They like having and controlling their own servers, storage and network so that they can manage costs and tune performance. Here are a few key reasons that outsource data center and colocation is still the solution of choice for high reliability:

Many companies still want to own and control their hardware. Software companies and companies that maintain in-house development staff often want control of the hardware to better isolate bottlenecks and control throughput. Cloud computing is often delivered using shared resources, including shared servers, network and storage. Shared architecture is simply not appropriate for many high-demand applications.

Compliance and certification requirements preclude the use of cloud computing. Although this is changing, many regulatory bodies limit or forbid the use of a shared cloud computing environment. Data center certifications and compliance become more expensive, and wholesale colocation is an easy way to avoid these costs.

Owners and shareholders are too worried about intellectual property to use cloud computing. This too is changing, but the present state of paranoia for many stakeholders will be an issue for a long time to come.

Many cloud computing companies use colocation. While it may seem counter intuitive, many cloud computing providers build hardware and software environments rather than using cloud services themselves. But these companies often cannot afford to build a high availability data center, so they use colocation to avoid the capital costs of buildings, HVAC, utility feeds, generators and power conditioning equipment.

Data center uptime is still the primary measure of success for most IT organizations. Affordable colocation facilities with flexible options like Lifeline Data Centers can deliver 99.995% uptime while allowing companies to retain control of their mission critical IT assets. Want to learn more about Midwest colocation? Call Lifeline Data Centers at 317.423.2591.

Alex Carroll

Managing Member at Lifeline Data Centers

Alex, co-owner, is responsible for all real estate, construction and mission critical facilities: hardened buildings, power systems, cooling systems, fire suppression, and environmentals. Alex also manages relationships with the telecommunications providers and has an extensive background in IT infrastructure support, database administration and software design and development. Alex architected Lifeline’s proprietary GRCA system and is hands-on every day in the data center.