The pandemic has prompted a lot of businesses to rethink how they’re working. With a lot of our workforce now working from home, we don’t necessarily need the office space we once had. However, that itself brings up a few issues…
IT teams have now got to overcome several issues with more of the workforce out of the office and face both internal and external pressures, namely:
- Hybrid Performance
- Greater Resiliency
- Cyber security risks
- Digital Transformation
Some of these pressures have likely already been dealt with. Many organisations are now using tools like Teams and Zoom to collaborate online rather than in the office. People are securing their remote workers and providing them access to onsite servers in the office using VPN’s.
Having servers sat in an office where no-one goes anymore, and where there is potentially a single point of failure might not be the most efficient way of managing your infrastructure. This presents an opportunity for the business to drive digital transformation whilst improving user experience.
Benefits of Colocation
Colocation is the practice of outsourcing your servers and hardware into a purpose-built facility, where you can scale at will, enhance resiliency, bolster security and budget efficiently.
Hybrid Performance and Resiliency
Colocation data centres provide businesses with a steppingstone to the cloud. When you move to a data centre you could have access to cloud network providers such as Amazon, Azure or Google. This gives you availability to use some of the largest cloud providers in the world, whilst maintaining your own infrastructure – a hybrid cloud approach.
With many businesses now focusing on this hybrid approach to infrastructure, the demand for colocation space is soaring. Many are seeing the pros far outweighing the cons when it comes to a hybrid approach. Having a dedicated space for your servers and hardware, combined with resilient connectivity and power gives you the peace of mind that your kit will be highly available at all times, without you having to worry if the national grid will be working in your area and switching the power off!
Cyber Security Risks
With employees working from home the need to maintain a high level of security across all devices is imperative. The last thing you want to be worrying about is the physical security of your servers and hardware at the office which no-one has been to in the last 18 months.
If your infrastructure was in an appropriately certified data centre, you would rest assured knowing that some specific security components of ISO27001 would be taken care of.
Digital Transformation
With your infrastructure now hosted in a data centre, access to cloud providers and resilient connectivity you are well on your way to transforming your business to a more agile organisation.
Any blockers from the business in terms of compliance or cost can be overcome with the use of Colocation. Having that access to the public cloud, while maintaining your own infrastructure allows you to take advantage of both, whilst keeping costs down. This transformation helps to lay the foundations for any cloud migration you have planned later down the line.
