Arizona Data Center: How Colocation Improves Overall IT Performance
Colocation in an Arizona data center has been a practical strategy for a long time. By leveraging advanced facilities and new building technologies, colocation can enhance the performance of many data center environments for a number of reasons.
Colocation is often confused with outsourcing. However, colocation refers to leasing data center space with advanced power and cooling capabilities to maintain the availability of the hardware. The company’s IT staff decides what equipment to install in the space and how it will be used. Outsourcing involves the service provider providing and managing the IT assets.
Colocation at an Arizona data center is not a mutually exclusive strategy. Organization can use both colocation and outsourcing delivery models. They can also own their own data center facility. Many large corporations have both in-house data centers and third party colocations providers, depending on the type of project.
Leveraging a Colocation Strategy
Colocation at an Arizona data center can enhance a company’s IT operations. Because solutions don’t come in a “one size fits all” configuration, organizations should spend time and resources developing a data center strategy in order to determine their short and long term requirements. A major benefit of colocation over outsourcing is the ability to expand more easily as requirements change.
When a company wants to innovate, colocation makes perfect sense. If an existing infrastructure must be upgraded and legacy equipment reconfigured, moving to a new Arizona data center could be more economical and efficient. Companies can migrate to new computing platforms more quickly and easily by finding a facility to match their requirements.
Because companies own their IT assets, they can upgrade whenever they want. Flexibility is a key characteristic with colocation at an Arizona data center. Organizations can add, manage and control new technology as it becomes available. Outsourcing contracts, on the other hand, may require a longer term commitment and more rigid terms.
An increasing number of companies are moving to colocation strategies. In fact, colocation in the U.S. over the next few years is expected to rise significantly. More and more organizations continue to discover owning their own company data center can be expensive and overly complex.
It can also negatively impact innovation. Legacy infrastructures limit companies from taking advantage of new technologies. Any Arizona data center over 10 years old will need extensive upgrades to keep up with today’s IT demands.
Accountabilities in Colocation
When an organization enters into a colocation agreement with an Arizona data center, it needs to keep some things in mind. First, companies need to know exactly what services they are getting with each provider. Colocation varies from one provider to another. And, as state earlier, no one size fits all.
Another important aspect of colocation a company needs to fully understand is disaster recovery. How will the colocation provider’s Arizona data center operate in a disaster? What exact services do they provide and what level of availability do they guarantee?
Time frames for planning purposes should be three to five years. Most companies will undertake at least one major technology refresh during this time period. Colocation can be the perfect strategy to help a company leverage uptime, innovation and cost management.
CyrusOne currently provides more than 1,000,000 square feet of colocated floor space in top tier data centers across the nation. Colocation facilities are located in Houston, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, Cincinnati, Chicago, London and Singapore. Our services are targeted to enterprise clients throughout a wide range of industries. For example, we serve businesses in industries such as energy, oil and gas, medical, technology, finance, consumer goods and services, and more.
Our advanced, highly flexible design architectures support power requirements exceeding 250 kilowatts per square foot to meet the needs of the most demanding enterprise requirements. Each facility is designed to provide optimal redundancy, efficiency, security and future-proof reliability.
