As IT functions evolve and businesses find themselves laden with more and more data to handle, data center colocation presents a unified solution. In the current and future landscape, companies need a robust, reliable network to meet the demands of growing data volume and an increasingly complex variety of information and geographical locations to be connected.
When choosing a colocation center, IT organizations benefit from focusing on the quality and flexibility of data center connectivity to ensure the best performance. Consider these key factors of connectivity for your data needs:
Conduits of Change
As technologies continue to develop and data requirements evolve accordingly, businesses need data center solutions that can efficiently adapt to network demands in the future. When your organization needs to pivot, colocation offers the flexibility to connect different kinds of data — a vital consideration given that many businesses will need to significantly change network configurations over time. Colocation offers the necessary bandwidth for increased network demands and the resources to adjust to disruption without eating capital costs.
Colocation to Strategic Routing
Businesses with multiple locations, or with the need to support content for customers in different geographical regions, require a data center with strong and diverse connectivity. This can eliminate the need for multiple data centers if the colocation provider has strategic connectivity between different cities.
In addition to vetting the on-site quality of a data center, businesses should investigate the operator networks used by the colocation provider. The best providers will have interconnectivity between the locations of the company and its audience.
Weaving Together Cloud Services
The capabilities of cloud must be harnessed by a network that can connect and communicate data efficiently and seamlessly. Colocation centers solve the problem of combining data sources with a singular network that integrates data in the cloud. Connectivity performance becomes crucial to the data center’s ability to gather and deliver data across various locations and departments.
Scalable Solutions for Bandwidth
Growing amounts of data not only need to be stored efficiently, but also made consistently available for use. From internal data to customer-facing audio and video content, businesses must have strong network connections from the data center. Providers can also create solutions that tie bandwidth use to costs so businesses only pay for higher bandwidth when necessary.
Supporting Video
Colocation services were born from the needs of automated stock trading, so the operator networks naturally support high speeds with low latency and fewer dropped packets. Because video content presents these same challenges, data centers also provide a solution for consistent, high-speed video. Businesses should look for providers that offer routing resources and bandwidth to overcome the particular demands of the kinds of data needed to transmit.