Introduction
Terms like cloud and colocation might sound relatable, but their meaning is quite different. Colocation facilities will rent physical storage to businesses and organizations to house their servers. The cloud, on the other hand, offers a ‘pay as you use’ model for computer resources and servers. Businesses don’t pay for a physical space, but rather a set of services, technologies and tools accessed online.
What is colocation?
Colocation is a form of data center that allows clients to rent power, space, and bandwidth. Organizations will frequently choose to locate their servers and hardware in such data centers, and there are many advantages of doing so.
Businesses opting to house their equipment in data centers automation typically gain access to far better connectivity, reliability, and security than they might otherwise have been able to provide in-house.
Working costs are shared between organizations using the data center, meaning that tenants share the cost of power, cooling, bandwidth, and security measures. Colocation also gives businesses access to things that could otherwise have been preventively costly, such as multiple backup generators, power grids and HVAC units.
The cloud is a huge collection of different servers, all of which host many different types of infrastructure and software. It is not a manual place you rent, but rather a remote network of servers providing servers that can be obtained from anywhere in the world.
Everything housed within the cloud can be accessed using an internet network. The global network of servers that make up the cloud reach a multitude of functions, and its interconnected setup allows it to work as a single ecosystem.
Advantages and disadvantages of the cloud
There are advantages and disadvantages to adopting the cloud, just as there are with colocation.
One of the primary benefits of the cloud is its low entrance cost. Companies wishing to expand beyond their servers frequently turn to the cloud as a starting point.
The cloud is simple to scale as business needs grow, and it can also be scaled down fast during times of low demand. Such also happens to be fundamentally accessible, which makes it an excellent choice for many enterprises.
There are some disadvantages to using the cloud. As the amount of data saved increases, so do the costs associated with using the cloud. Businesses will eventually realize that hybrid data center, or even fully colocated, edge infrastructure is a more cost-effective and secure solution.
Centralisation can, and does, lead to fragility. And as the difficulty of cloud-reliant systems grows, so too does the level of risk. When cloud-dependent applications go down, they can indirectly impact a whole host of other procedures within the system, and that’s why the risk of unexpected downtime can be massively higher with systems like these.
The cloud is capable of supporting a huge amount of complexity. But we’d suggest you ask yourself first, does your business require that level of difficulty? Because if it doesn’t, opting for a simpler system would reduce risk. Secondly, it’s worth considering whether the benefit of the flexibility that the cloud provides is worth the compromise it brings in terms of complexity?
Cloud-based systems could never provide the dependability that colocation does, and it’s this dependability that matters in today’s markets.
Security is another huge problem to consider when weighing up the pros and cons of cloud vs colocation. There are enormous security violations that can happen with the cloud that simply wouldn’t occur with colocation. At good, the cloud could never be safer than colocation. But at worst it can stop businesses vulnerable to all kinds of attacks.
In terms of staffing, the cloud doesn’t give any advantage over colocation. Companies now require increasingly difficult cloud licenses, cloud training certifications – and these are growing more costly as time goes on. The cost of hiring and keeping the highly specialized staff required to run this system is on the rise.
Businesses that rely on the cloud required as many or more people as those using colocation – and those people are becoming harder and harder to find as the level of skill and certification they need rises.
SaaS is hugely valuable for applications that don’t require customization. But hosting infrastructure on someone else’s servers doesn’t bring enough benefits to avoid the disadvantages it brings in terms of difficulty, security, and additional staffing required.
Advantages and disadvantages of colocation
Colocation is highly beneficial for companies that are looking for a mixture of hybrid and multi-cloud storage choice. Frequently, companies will also be required to store data nearby to confirm data center compliance, and collocation can provide the means to do so securely and cost-effectively.
Many companies find themselves in a difficult situation when their requirements have outgrown their in-house facilities, but they don’t have the skilled or budget to build a data center of their own. In such cases, colocation is ideal.
Colocation is not without its disadvantages, however. To make use of colocation facilities, businesses must give their servers and storage. This can initially be more costly than relying on cloud services, however, colocation can frequently save significantly on monthly costs for heavy cloud users.
The location of colocation data centers is also crucial. Bear in mind that maintenance will be required to be carried out on servers from time to time, so journey time should be considered before making a choice. At TRG we offer free remote hands-on so this isn’t a problem for our customers.