Terry Storrar, Managing Director at Leaseweb UK, explains why colocation still has its place in the rapidly evolving data centre sector.

Colocation has long been a sturdy part of the data centre industry, first prompted by the demand for server rack space in the dot com era of the late 1990s. Today, colocation has stood the test of time and remains a popular and dependable option for businesses wanting to rent space, power, cooling and connectivity for their IT infrastructure housed in a data centre building. 

It has been easy in recent years for colocation to seemingly sit in the shadow of newer IT set-ups offered by data centre experts, including cloud and hybrid models. However, with around 80% of organisations predicted by Gartner to shut down traditional on-premise data centres and move to third-party colocation and cloud providers by 2025, it is worth revisiting why colocation lends itself to the growing high compute requirements of digital technologies, notably AI and edge computing.

In short, colocation combines very effectively with agile cloud services and data centre experts should factor this in when discussing the most suitable IT choices with their customers.

Years of investment into today’s services

Data centre professionals should feel confident in the colocation offerings they can provide to customers for a number of reasons.

It seems an obvious fact, but data centre operators are in business to supply physical space, power, cooling and connectivity to effectively manage servers and other hardware.  These fundamental areas are supplemented with services ranging from 24/7 on-site support, back-up and recovery options and adaptable bandwidth, all of which contribute to business performance. Any customer business has almost immediate access to these without the hefty, upfront investment that would be required for the equivalent on-premises set up. Colocation is both a reliable and straightforward choice, bolstered by service providers with years of experience in this area.

The huge investment that the data centre industry has already made into carbon neutral goals is a powerful way to demonstrate this point. Rather than going it alone, businesses can easily tap into the substantial investments that data centre experts are making into going green. For example, data centre operators are heavily focused on 100% renewable energy use and are striving to achieve various regulatory requirements to be carbon neutral by introducing energy-efficient systems.  

Using colocation means that the individual business benefits from these economies of scale, without the huge responsibility of complying with increasingly stringent regulatory environmental standards.

Colocation also contributes to robust security. While this does not inhibit a company’s own IT security provision, all data centres need to provide industry-standard physical and network security, as well as redundancy for customers’ IT infrastructures. Data centre operators also provide on-site security measures such as surveillance, access management, fire detection and backup power.

Importantly, colocation gives organisations the flexibility for managing IT infrastructure around specific business needs. With the increasing popularity of AI, it is particularly crucial for companies to be able to combine the agility of the cloud with the ability to scale infrastructure up and down to keep up with business demands. A data centre expert has a key role to play in helping its customers to optimise this.

Asking the right questions

When discussing potential colocation options with customers, it is essential for providers to match services closely to the needs of each individual business. In today’s marketplace, the subtle differences between colocation choices can impact business operations – so data centre experts who ask the right, practical questions from the outset can help to steer a well-informed decision.

• Is the data centre building a good fit for a customer’s current business operations and compatible with future plans? The right provider should be able to accommodate existing IT hardware set-up, including server racks and cages, power and cooling requirements, with enough physical space for growth. A provider should also meet a company’s network protocols and standards for smooth integration with existing services and solutions.

• Does the data centre site need to be in close proximity to the customer’s office for any reason?  For example, do IT staff need to work at the site on a full or part time basis? If so, then a convenient physical location matters as some customers prefer not to choose a full quota of data centre resources.

• Is there a business need for multiple power sources? Power is also a key consideration on which providers need to be in a position to advise. Businesses requiring scale and power to satisfy high-compute demand will benefit from a colocation provider offering multiple power sources to cope in the event of an outage and to eliminate the risk of downtime.  Modern data centres offer redundant power sources and contingency backup to optimise workload uptime and it is important to discuss the level of need for these and what provision is in place.

Supporting future compute demands

Global colocation providers can very quickly match – and get ahead of – the growth and trajectory of modern digital businesses without capital outlay.  The value that this delivers to many organisations is top of mind for both IT professionals and data centre experts. This is an option not to be underestimated in the search for fast, adaptable, scalable and secure IT services, especially where a business may need to enhance a cloud infrastructure which might struggle to meet all the demands of future AI computing requirements.