The outsourcing of IT infrastructures is a growing trend across a range of industries. No matter an organization’s sector or size for that matter, many IT leaders are realizing optimal results by implementing a colocation strategy, or in other words, hosting data in third-party locations.
For instance, some of the most notable benefits afforded by colocation providers are cost reduction, improved quality of service and infrastructure scalability and flexibility. Because organizations can place their data in a hosted location and work with partners to secure a high-quality strategy that enables business continuity and security, businesses are flocking toward this data storing solution.
In fact, recent research revealed that 70 percent of all IT infrastructures will be outsourced within in the next few years due to these numerous advantages.
So what does it take to implement a sound colocation strategy? Here are three crucial steps:
1) Find a trustworthy partner: It’s absolutely crucial that partners can put all of their faith in the colocation provider they recommend to their customers. After all, the colocation provider is in charge of managing a company’s most pertinent, and in some cases sensitive, data. Because of this, a good colocation partnership founded on trust, alignment in strategy and business goals is essential. You are the customers trusted advisor, but you need a trusted advisor of your own. That’s why it is important to have a master agent or distributor like AVANT to help you.
2) Consider the data migration process: Moving a business’s IT infrastructure to a colocation center will take time and involve a complex integration process. However, with the right provider your customers can rest assured that their data is never left unsecure and that they can maintain business continuity and easy access to their information throughout the transition process.
3) Consider your networking requirements: When a business’s data is hosted in a third-party location it is paramount to its business continuity that the location’s networking services match its requirements. In fact, it’s wise to ensure that your colocation provider offers high-performance WAN services so that connectivity missteps can be avoided along the way.
*Bonus Tip! What about compliance and future proofing: When moving to a new colocation you must consider all of the compliance regulations it could help with. This is helping drive a huge trend to the high end Colocation neutral facilities. This is setting them up to Future proof the business of IT. Allowing them to have a location that can serve them into the future by holding the capex investment or connecting to a leading Opex Cloud.
There’s no doubt that colocation is gaining popularity across organizations that need hosted IT solutions. But implementing the best colocation strategy requires partners to dig deeper and find the best possible solution providers for their customers.
We at AVANT feel that we provide the trusted advisor with the ultimate blueprint on helping their customers through the confusion and options better than any sales enablement platform on earth. We not only have the strongest contracts but we have the Intellectual property that can set them apart from everyone and help their customers with the crucial decisions they will face today and tomorrow.