What Does A Colocation Service Provide?

By Author: Rob Parker
Total Articles: 312
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Knowledge is power, but information is both a boon and a bother; that is, access to information is a powerful business tool; collecting and protecting that information is another matter. Security, storage, backups... the services of a colocation company simplify the whole process on many different levels, freeing you to focus on running your business.

To truly understand the benefits of a colocation service, it's important to have a solid idea of what a colocation service is. Essentially, it's a collective for computers where data can be stored and access to technicians can be shared; the network, servers and backup gear needed to power and protect your business are all there.
Economies of scale allow these services to provide benefits to their clients that would be unattainable on their own, and we list some of these things below.

Cost Savings. Housing servers and hiring technical expertise is expensive. Priced out individually, the services of the technicians and the extra space needed to store data equipment are typically higher for an individual company than they are if the services are obtained through a colocation service. Because the colocation services have already agreed to terms and either purchased or leased a building, and hired their own technicians, the charges are spread out amongst individual companies and thus are much lower than any individual company would pay.

Improved access. Colocation services contract with high-end providers for Internet access at the fastest speeds available, and back up their systems with 24-hour monitoring to provide nearly 100% uptime. When it comes to accessing your websites or your databases, whether by your staff or your customers, the services of a colocation provider will give you reliable data access.

Security. In addition to in essence the pooling of resources across a wide spectrum of companies, colocation services also allow small businesses some peace of mind by providing security services for their critical data. Human security is one aspect, but clients of these facilities can also rest assured that their data is also safely stored and routinely backed up.

Colocation services are a good option for any business with mission critical data, including a website, as theses services allow customers to take advantage of aspects of data management that would simply not be feasible on a small scale.