4 reasons to leverage colocation for your growing business

When your business reaches a certain size, your budget starts to be heavily taxed by real estate and OpEx for data center maintenance and expansion. Colocation, also known as "colo," allows you to rent space for your servers and computing hardware in a third-party data provider's facility.

According to VXchange, around 2 out of 3 companies already store some of their data in a colocation data center. The benefits are many, and the drawbacks are few. Here are four reasons to leverage colocation for your growing business.

1. Reduce your operating budget
The physical infrastructure can be one of the highest costs for any growing business. On-site servers take a huge toll on the budget. Power consumption alone for cooling can be a considerable sum every month. Companies are better-served instead by finding ways to scale their business without the limitations of on-premise data server space. Outsourcing data center needs to a colocation facility will free up your data storage capacity, allow you to avoid electricity and real estate costs, and still having scalable IT resources for company growth.

2. Eliminate the need to relocate
When you're expanding your business, you will require more space to house your growing volume of data. New premises capable of housing an on-premise solution can cost you a ton while also disrupting your services. Colocation can help you free up space you already have. This gives you more options for using your physical space and omits the need to relocate altogether. The additional cost-saving benefits that come from outsourcing your data storage needs are significant.

3. Minimize the risk of downtime
On-site data solutions may not have the best track record for uptime reliability due to inconsistent power supply and the cooling infrastructure. System downtime is a huge liability to the organization, and this is why the more reliable infrastructure of a quality colocation facility may be an essential upgrade. LifeLine Data Centers notes that customers expect continual uptime, and many service level agreements guarantee 99.995% uptime or are required to pay heavy penalties to clients. If something does happen, having redundant backups can help you recover quickly and maintain business continuity.

4. Improve data security and compliance
As a business owner, data security threats are at the top of the worry list. Ensuring your data is protected is a necessary resource and a constant budgetary expenditure. There is always a possibility of data security breaches, reputational damage and fines, even with an on-premise or cloud storage system. With the rising costs of security breaches incurred to businesses, using colocation can shift the stressors of compliance and security to the data security enterprise. The shared data center offers round-the-clock protection, upscaled security, encryption and firewalls for data protection, and simplified compliance. This lets you avoid the risk of non-compliance a potential losses of  millions in data breach fines.

Moving forward with colocation for your growing business
While data center migration is a major undertaking for any organization, the benefits are substantial. By moving from an on-premise data server to a colocation provider, you will reduce costs, improve scalability, reduce the risk of downtime, and improve security and compliance. Perle can help you upgrade your on-premise network even as you move data storage off-site. Perle can help you prepare for the future with the components you need to support your infrastructure. Read our customer success stories today.