Colocation is an obvious and effective choice for remote work infrastructure. Here is a quick guide to how using colocation helps provide distributed teams with the support they need.
Colocation is often an ideal solution for businesses implementing remote work. Here are five specific ways colocation solutions support the infrastructure needs of organizations with distributed teams.
One of the major drivers behind the adoption of distributed work is the drive for cost-efficiency. Many businesses want (or need) to scale back their real-world overhead costs and cutting back on real-estate costs can go a long way to achieving this.
At the same time, businesses do not want to make their operating processes unnecessarily complicated. They also tend to be well aware that complication tends to increase costs.
For many businesses, colocation is the perfect solution. It has minimal to no upfront costs and economical ongoing costs. In particular, businesses can benefit from sharing infrastructure costs and potentially unlock economies of scale. They also have the option to scale their provisioning so it aligns with their workload throughout their business cycles.
Many businesses have already implemented agile processes. Many others are in the process of doing so. Businesses that support distributed work are particularly likely to be forward-thinking and, hence, focus on agility.
Colocation is a uniquely agile solution. It’s highly scalable and can be made even more so by integrating it with the public cloud and/or edge infrastructure. At the same time, it’s also both private and highly customizable. This combination gives it unique advantages over both on-premises data centers and the public cloud.
Although just about all modern businesses depend heavily on digital networks (private and public), they have particular relevance for distributed work. In an on-site environment, staff usually have some options for continuing work even if the network goes down. At a minimum, they can usually communicate with each other.
Remote workers, by contrast, typically depend on their network connection for everything including basic communication. The fact they communicate purely through digital channels also means that they usually generate much more traffic than on-site workers.
Similar comments apply to geographic diversity. Many businesses with on-site workers have those workers spread out geographically. In fact, they may be located all over the world. Again, however, geographic diversity has particular relevance for businesses that support distributed work.
Using colocation enables businesses to run distributed infrastructure to support distributed workers (and possibly distributed customers as well). It may also be used to keep data within specific regions (or out of specific regions).
Dealing with equipment failures is often easier than dealing with infrastructure failures. It’s even easier in colocation facilities that offer colocation management services (like remote-hands support). Businesses in a well-designed colocation facility can seamlessly swap out one component for another and carry on with minimal to no disruption.
By contrast, dealing with infrastructure issues can be a lot more challenging. With colocation, however, businesses do not have to worry about these. Reputable colocation providers will offer contractually enforceable uptime guarantees. The industry standard is currently “five nines” (99.999% uptime). Some colocation providers guarantee 100% uptime.
Again, resilience is not just a benefit in the remote world. It does, however, have particular relevance for remote work. This is because remote workers are totally dependent on digital infrastructure.
Colocation providers completely understand that secure and reliable connectivity is particularly important for businesses implementing remote work infrastructure. Here are five specific measures they routinely implement to ensure that happens.
In addition to taking measures to prevent intrusion, colocation facilities also take measures to protect themselves from environmental threats. These measures will depend upon the hazards in the area. All colocation facilities will, however, deploy top-notch fire detection and suppression systems.
Network-security measures typically mirror physical security measures. In particular, automated tools undertake continuous traffic monitoring. This happens at both the perimeter of the network and inside it. Moreover, the tools used frequently overlap in workload to some extent. This increases the likelihood that one of them will pick up a threat.
Colocation facilities operate zoning of their physical data centers and segmentation of their and their clients’ networks. These zones/segments are protected by access controls. These are, in turn, enforced by sophisticated authentication mechanisms. Multifactor authentication is standard at both physical and digital access points.
Undertaking regular security audits enables colocation providers to ensure that their security measures are always meeting, if not exceeding, current industry standards.
Colocation providers have robust and tested disaster recovery and business continuity plans. This is a key part of ensuring that they can meet their uptime guarantees.
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