Compliant Colocation is revolutionizing the way businesses perform, which is why many are diving head-first into it. In fact, Zion Market Research published a new report saying the global data center colocation market was valued at approximately USD 31 billion in 2017 and is expected to generate revenue of around USD 105 billion by 2026.
Colocation has transformed enterprise IT, and many have turned to the benefits that data center providers offer. Most organizations are not in the business of owning and operating their own data center because it does not align with their core business model. Managing and maintaining the rigors of compliance and security alone takes time and money that most do not possess. Thankfully, companies can outsource their IT infrastructure to a partner who has met the demands of compliance regulations and can relieve the initial investment and ongoing daily compliance burdens.
To help you figure out if colocation is a viable option for your growing company, I have created a list of the top five benefits colocation offers. If one or more of these stand out as something your company needs, colocation is worth considering.
1. Reliability
100% uptime. Beyond making fast and reliable connections available to customers, many data center providers take additional measures to ensure uptime. Companies choose facilities for their resiliency. Usually included in a data center provider’s arsenal are safeguards like enterprise-class, uninterruptible power supplies. This can keep servers running for hours in the event of an outage. Other layers include generators that can supply equipment with power for days for more serious power outages.
Redundancy
As the data center increasingly becomes the heart of an enterprise, data center redundancy needs to hold that same weight. When it comes to creating resiliency to ensure system availability, choosing the right level of redundancy for your virtual infrastructure is crucial. Power loss, even for a short time, can cause major damage for a business.
Every growing business needs reliable servers. If not, expect to lose money for every minute your business is offline. In fact, Gartner reports that an average network downtime means the loss of $5,600 every minute.
All LightEdge facilities are built to Tier III standards, meaning they are concurrently maintainable. This means that the electrical and cooling systems in our facilities are fully redundant. The goal is to get your computer equipment into a facility with tested redundancy plans that will never go dark. LightEdge stands behind our facilities with a 100% availability SLA.
Disaster Recovery
At the core of any emergency preparedness plan is a facility that will maintain operations during an unplanned outage. Your colocation provider should have a data center designed to provide:
- N+1 redundancy on every main component
- Multiple power feeds for redundant loop connectivity
- Uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) and backup diesel generators
- Multiple carriers and physically diverse connection points to ensure network availability
- Flexible hybrid hosting solutions that blend colocated equipment, managed private clouds, and managed services
- 24/7/365 full hybrid IT support—an onsite team of expert engineers
- Customized solutions—based on your specific business needs, RPO/RTO requirements, and budget
- Compliant DR services—designed for banking, healthcare, e-commerce, and other highly regulated and high-security businesses
2. Connectivity
Diverse connectivity provides protection for your critical infrastructure. Connectivity guards against unplanned interruptions by delivering redundancy for data transfers through unique carriers and network providers. Most colocation providers should be able to offer a fast and reliable connection via fiber. In many cases this connection will be better than any major internet service provider in an office.
This is another reason why your growing business needs compliant colocation. If your business relies on a consistent internet connection, then compliant colocation would be the best bet for hosting your data. Even if the internet connection at your office is up, the connection may still be vulnerable.
LightEdge data centers are carrier neutral facilities, meaning that customers have access to a variety of public and private telecom options. Additionally, our facilities have redundant fiber entrances, so you are not depending on one entry point. LightEdge also has high-speed private fiber backbone that interconnects each of our data centers, making disaster recovery or second data center presence an easier target as opposed to relying on a third-party telecommunications provider. Each of LightEdge’s colocation facilities are also connected to the Carrier Hotel in each of our cities, taking the list of available telecom providers into the 100’s.
3. Scalability
Whether you have one server or many more, it does not matter. With colocation, you will always have the option to upsize or downsize depending on your needs. Yet, scaling up has particular benefits to housing your servers at a colocation facility, and as a growing business this would be a perfect fit for you.
The need for scalability makes the choice to use colocation data center services very attractive. Scalability is a key reason for a business to migrate to a colocation provider’s facility, according to Data Center Knowledge. Turning to a data center colocation provider allows you to “pay-as-you-grow.” You simply lease more data center colocation space whenever you need it – no need to wait months or years for a complex and costly construction project to be completed.
Options for colocation may be as small as 1 rack unit or as large as 10,000 square feet or more. LightEdge has solutions to meet you were you are today and grow with your business. Do you need three racks and 15kW of power today and then in 12 months’ six more racks and 30kw of power? Not a problem. LightEdge can provision the space and power with the foresight to help you plan for your growth requirements.
4. Compliance
It can be difficult, costly, and time consuming for many companies to meet compliance requirements for their servers and applications. Thankfully, colocation puts your equipment in a secure and compliant environment. Compliant colocation providers are always looking for ways to better serve their customers, increase efficiency, and drive profitability. As a result, the world-class providers will provide businesses with robust compliance programs to protect their data.
Colocation providers that are able to support diverse compliance requirements such as NIST, FISMA, FedRAMP, CJIS, HIPAA, PCI DSS, ISO 27001, ISO 20000-1, SSAE18 SOC 1, SOC 2, and SOC 3, etc., are the facilities to consider. Regulatory compliance is a non-negotiable requirement for many companies that are heavily regulated like healthcare, manufacturing, and the financial industry.
Benefits of a Compliant Data Center
Compliance standards are continually evolving. Finding a provider with an impressive compliance badge portfolio that can keep up is critical. Regardless if your organization is heavily regulated or not, it pays to use a highly compliant data center. Here are a couple of benefits a compliant data center offers:
- Reduced Complexity: Colocating your servicers in a compliant data center takes the burden and complexity out of your business’ hands. Data center facilities typically have highly-trained compliance and security experts on hand to take the guesswork out of keeping your business protected. Their expertise ensures you are covered with risk management, information security, audit preparedness, and support.
- Cost Savings: Maintaining compliance badges is not only time consuming and complex, but costly. When your data is in a compliant colocation facility, the financial burden is no longer your responsibility. In addition, a compliant colocation provider allows your team to focus on its core business objectives.
- Physical Security: Layering security through the physical infrastructure of a data center is the first step towards complete peace-of-mind when storing your servers and data. Your colocation provider should never compromise on the latest and greatest measures to strengthen its infrastructure. From the hardened shell to access control systems and surveillance, the physical security of a colocation facility is a huge benefit of a compliant data center.
- Gaining Dedicated Compliance Experts: When trained security staff is available, a data center colocation provider can become more than a facility. They can become a trusted adviser, giving you access to leverage their depth of expertise. When a data center provides top-of-the-line infrastructure, security technology, compliance, and experts with the knowledge to guide and advise you, they become a Hybrid Solution Center.
By virtue of colocating in one of the LightEdge compliant data centers, companies can get a leg up on their regulatory needs as it relates to the facility their data and applications will be hosted in. Lightedge is vigilant in our commitment to compliance, ensuring all industry standards are being met with the correct controls, processes, and procedures in place to ensure we meet SSAE18 SOC 1, SOC 2, and SOC 3, ISO 27001, ISO 20000-1, and PCI DSS and HIPAA through third-party annual audits.
5. 24x7x365 Access, Monitoring, and Support
Every data center offers some measure of on-site support, but few go above and beyond to benefit colocation customers. The best colocation facilities offer live support technicians at any time of the day. Issues rarely give notice, so when an unexpected problem arises, having 24x7x365 support can be imperative to your business operations.
Whether the worst scenario occurs during peak business hours, in the middle of the night, or during a holiday, having live technicians at your disposal can be vital to delivering peace of mind to leadership and clients. By maintaining a close watch on the data center network, these technicians will often spot problems before companies even become aware of them.
In addition to providing services around the clock, live technical support excels at identifying problems quickly and addressing them immediately. Since technicians are always on-site, there is no risk of service lag due to waiting for a response team to travel to the facility. Even when everything is running correctly, but a customer wants to alter something about their deployment, data center support teams can move physical equipment quickly, efficiently, and correctly.
LightEdge NOCs are staffed 24x7x365 with technical resources that can assist customers as needed. Additionally, all facilities are being monitored actively for power availability, temperature, and humidity and accessed controlled through our Building Management System. Formal monitoring, logging, and event management processes are employed in the NOC to ensure that pertinent information is recognized, identified, recorded, and processed in a timely manner.
This level of technical support is included with every level of service offering from LightEdge and is designed to accommodate all of the needs of customers utilizing LightEdge services. We are constantly watching, so the customer doesn’t have to.
Why Your Growing Business Needs LightEdge’s Compliant Colocation Services
As a top-tier colocation services provider, we deliver a high level of availability and reliability through secure, certified data centers and dedicated staff onsite. Our customized and scalable services give you the control, whether you need a colocation rack, cage, or custom suite now or in the future.
LightEdge’s highly-trained compliance and security experts take the guesswork out of keeping your business protected. Trust our expertise to ensure you are covered through our security and compliance services, including risk management, information security, audit preparedness, and support.
With geographically-dispersed facilities across all of the US power grids, our data centers are the heart of our operation and yours. We have a wide range of colocation and disaster recovery solutions delivering advanced shared infrastructure designed to enable operational and financial efficiency, reducing the burden on your IT staff.
LightEdge business support services are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, no exceptions. Our technical support starts with direct access to technicians in LightEdge’s Network Operations Center (NOC) via a toll-free number for emergencies. The MyLightEdge Portal allows you to open tickets, track progress and more for all of your services.
Our LightEdge facilities are more advanced than traditional data centers. We have created true Hybrid Solution Centers designed to offer a complete portfolio of high speed, secure, redundant, local cloud services and managed gateways to public clouds through our hardened facilities.
Customers turn to LightEdge to reduce risk of non-compliance, scale security, and for the predictably and cost-effectiveness. LightEdge provides customers with an extended team of experienced engineers and helps to focus resources on agility and differentiation. Are you curious how your current provider stacks up? Our security experts will provide a free security assessment to see how you measure up against the latest compliance and security standards. No risk, no commitment. Contact us today to get your free security assessment.
