Colocation centres provide a shared space, enabling companies to have advanced enterprise-grade IT infrastructure based on OpEx and CapEx models. OpEx stands for operating expenses, and CapEx stands for capital expenses. Advanced colocation centres or Colo offer carrier-neutral connectivity along with power and network redundancies.
Before selecting a colocation centre provider, you should know what you want to achieve with business and IT requirements. The colocation centres must have all the facilities suiting your IT needs.
5 Things to Look for While Choosing a Colocation Centre
- Power Density
Advanced colocation centres offer high power density per rack/cabinet to support both current and future technologies with sufficient backup facility. They provide adequate cooling and air conditioning resources to maintain operations without interruptions. For instance, STT GDC India has power density ranging from 3kW to 27kW per rack/cabinet to handle the load of modern technologies. While standard applications can run on lower power and cooling loads, internet of things, big data, machine learning require significantly higher levels of loads for efficiency.
- Carrier Neutral Facility
An on-premises data centre facility is generally limited to a single network carrier supplied by its network service provider. However, modern colocation centres are carrier neutral. It means you can choose your preferred one or multiple interconnection service providers as per suitability. Advanced colocation centres are equipped to provide network carrier redundancy.
- Location
Location is an aspect that affects recurring costs, disaster recovery, and networking challenges. One of the factors that affect an enterprise’s operations is the regulations that govern the use and access to data. Some other factors that an organization must look for while selecting the data centre location include air quality, seismic zones of their preferred colocation facility, proximity to power and network substations, and regional security and stability.
- Security
Security is essential to protect data. Ideally, a colocation centre must offer physical security of multiple levels both inside and outside its premises. Ideally, multilayer physical security includes fencing, sensors for secure access, personnel, and 24*7 video surveillance. It can help eliminate the threats of intrusion or security breach in a colocation centre. STT GDC India offers 5-layers of physical security including X-ray scanners and crash barriers for enhanced protection along with hi-tech security devices like under vehicle scanners, motion sensor cameras, and weight sensors.
- Compliance & Future Growth
Many colocation centres undergo various audits to get multiple certifications for running facilities and become compliance-ready to offer specific tier availability with high uptime facility. Some colocation centres also give up to 100% uptime commitment pertaining to their advanced facilities and multiple layers of redundancy across power, cooling, network, and security. Besides, colocation centres with dedicated infrastructure ensure the highest standards of safety compliance along with necessary service-level agreement demands like uptime and interconnectivity. Colocation providers like STT GDC India offer high security ‘SISA PCI DSS’ certified data centres with carrier-neutral facility and scalability options. It assures customers that the colocation centre’s services are safe to use, and consumer data will remain secure.
Besides, colocation centres must also support their clients to expand in terms of power, space, and similar aspects as per requirements.
Benefits of Colocation Centres:
- Using colocation services allow organizations to move from capital expense to operational expense. Choosing a colocation centre lets an organization focus more on their customers and service/product than maintaining an IT infrastructure.
- Colocation centres facilities are flexible. You can scale according to business requirements.
- These centres offer enhanced physical security with technical expertise.
Choose Your Colocation Partner in India
The physical attributes of a colocation centre are only a start. How a colocation centre operates – its power density, cooling, air conditioning, carrier neutrality, space – are all up for consideration. So, you should deliberate every aspect of a colocation centre while choosing the right one for your organization.
STT GDC India is a reliable colocation centre provider that has won numerous awards, most recently the Frost & Sullivan Colocation Service Provider of the Year by India ICT Award 2020. At their carrier-neutral colocation data centres, you can connect with multiple global telecom service providers. While monitoring your infrastructure 24*7, they also offer on-demand technical support facility for your convenience. Their colocation centres provide security, reliability, connectivity, and modular infrastructure design.
