Don’t Go it Alone: Take Advantage of Managed IT Services from Your Colocation Provider

By Autumn Salama, Vice President, Cloud Operations, DataBank

Companies of all sizes rely on their IT infrastructure to drive productivity, efficiency, and innovation and to help their businesses achieve their most critical goals.

However, behind the scenes, it can be exceedingly difficult for some companies to manage all aspects of their IT environment and operations in house because the overall effort is usually extremely resource-intensive, expensive, and challenging for many other reasons.

One challenge many companies face is struggling to have the right employees in place, particularly those with specialized skills, experience, and required certifications. Attracting, hiring, and retaining these key employees can be tricky, especially for budget-constrained companies or those that don’t have a large IT staff in place.

The brightest technical talent might be attracted to larger technology companies where they can continue to work with bleeding edge technology not often found in everyday business. Even when a company has hired great technical talent, retaining this talent often means allowing them to work on new and exciting projects that bring value to the business.

For companies facing these challenges, it may make sense to partner with a managed service provider (MSP) to offload important IT services such as upgrades, ongoing maintenance, help desk and troubleshooting, and general support. In general, these tasks might be considered mundane and boring by their in-house IT staff but are essential to the security and availability of a company’s IT infrastructure.

Yet, there may be a better model related to outsourcing managed services: partnering with a colocation data center provider who is capable of delivering a comprehensive suite of managed services.

Managed services offerings in a colocation environment can be an extremely effective win-win: Not only are you able to reduce costs by offloading manual, time-consuming tasks, but you also gain access to a wide range of service offerings and expertise to overcome daily challenges and position your company for long-term success – all where you maintain your IT infrastructure.

Let’s take a closer look at many of the specific services and powerful benefits delivered by colocation providers, such as DataBank.

1. Enhanced networking monitoring and management: Reliable managed services within a colocation environment can provide continuous monitoring and management of critical network infrastructure. These service teams use highly skilled staff and the most advanced monitoring tools to proactively detect and troubleshoot issues to ensure smooth network operations.

Such a proactive approach prevents network outages, minimizes downtime, and optimizes network performance—all vital in supporting the company’s daily processes and business goals.

2. Comprehensive security services: All you have to do is look to the latest high-profile cybersecurity story in the news to realize that cyber threats pose a real—and significant—risk to any company today.

Colocation providers are now better equipped to deliver everything you need to make your IT environment safe and secure. Many, such as DataBank, offer a multi-layered defense-in-depth approach including controls for physical security, the network/perimeter, user access, and servers and internal systems, as well as continuous monitoring.

These managed service teams implement and manage innovative security measures such as firewalls and intrusion detection systems and intrusion prevention systems (IDS/IPS). They also conduct regular vulnerability assessments. All of this helps fortify your IT infrastructure to help ensure the availability of your critical data and systems.

3. Powerful data backup and recovery: Let’s face it: Data loss can be catastrophic for your business. The good news is that with colocation managed services, ensuring the continuous availability of your data and applications doesn’t have to be a time-consuming, expensive process.

For example, powerful disaster recovery-as-a-service offerings can protect your IT environment and enable your business to quickly resume operations in the event of a disruption.

Additionally, colocation managed services teams can perform regular backups of critical data to safeguard against potential loss and implement well-designed backup strategies. They also employ redundant storage systems to ensure data resilience.

4. Cloud services: Today, the cloud has become an integral part of modern business operations, offering on-demand scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency. Managed service teams in the data center possess extensive experience in managing all aspects of cloud infrastructure.

For example, managed services teams can provide guidance and support when it comes to migrating to the cloud, managing cloud-based storage solutions and interconnection options, and deploying cloud-based software applications. By tapping into their expertise and related services, you can reap the full potential of the cloud, scale your IT infrastructure, and further optimize resource allocation.

5. Efficient software and hardware management: Managing software installations, updates, licensing, and hardware devices can be time-consuming and resource-draining.

Turning to managed services teams in colocation data center facilities will streamline software and hardware management processes. These teams handle software updates, ensure license compliance, and perform regular maintenance of hardware devices. This approach reduces the burden on internal IT teams, freeing up valuable resources to focus on core business activities and more strategic initiatives.

6. Improved IT consulting and strategic planning: Finally, managed service teams within data center colocation facilities serve as trusted advisors and provide valuable IT consulting and strategic planning services.

They possess a deep understanding of technology trends and industry best practices. By aligning IT infrastructure with business goals and objectives, these managed service teams can help you make more-informed decisions about technology adoption, system architecture, and digital transformation strategies.

Such a strategic partnership—and one backed by these comprehensive services—helps maximize your IT investments, increase productivity and innovation, reduce costs, and stay a step ahead of the competition.

Interested in learning more about DataBank and our comprehensive suite of managed services? Visit our managed services site or www.databank.com today.

About the author: Autumn Salama is a proven tech operations leader with nearly 20 years of experience in product management, sales enablement, customer support, engineering, critical infrastructure, and service delivery. She is dedicated to success in every aspect of life and
thrives on creating operational efficiency through collaboration, tools, processes, and, most importantly, people.