Colocation Services Offered – It is really very important to understand clearly the type of colocation services a company is considering to outsource to a data center relative to their requirements for infrastructure, services, and applications. The company should always consider the full extent of colocation services being offered by data center providers keeping in mind the existing requirements as well as future growth needs. At this current moment, some services might not be needed, but it is always a good strategy to have these future options available to choose from in the event that you require additional data center provider’s offerings for a complete suite of data center and colocation services. This will help a company achieve and delivering a dynamic IT strategy and absorb changing needs quickly without the need to search for other provider when the need arises.
Colocation Services and Cloud Services
In most instances, colocation and cloud services are one bigger IT picture for companies choosing a data center provider. Most modern data centers are offering a complete portfolio of services under one roof, some of which include:
1. Colocation
2. Cloud Computing
3. Managed Hosting
4. Dedicated Servers
5. Virtual Private Servers (VPS)
6. Content Delivery Network
7. Data Storage and Backup Services
8. Disaster Recovery Services
9. Business Continuity Solutions
10. Managed Services
It would be always a wise decision to choose a data center provider that can offer a majority of these services if not all that can help achieve a flexible and better performing infrastructure for future solutions. Another aspect is to look into the provider’s technology including network and system infrastructure and how advance it is to support all these services and solutions. The detail deliberation in this context should be made by looking at whether these solutions offered by the data center providers are pre-packaged services or they are custom-built for individual client. What are all the costs associated with utilizing these services and solutions? How quickly these services can be integrated with existing products?
Managed Services
Another key aspect is to look for a list of managed services that a data center is offering and what they are charging for these services. The list of managed services may vary from provider to provider. A few of the most common services offered are:
- migration services
- compliance solutions
- server management
- network related services
- load management
- patch management
- deployment services
- rack and stack services
- antivirus, intrusion protection and spyware detection
- firewall services
- event monitoring
This list of managed services are not limited to only these services as the data center providers offer different services and can also accommodate any specific need or demand depending upon the availability of the resource. A company should always ask if these managed services are provided by the data center provider or are they provided by a third-party.
A fully equipped data center provider offers various services including colocation, cloud, virtual infrastructures, storage and backup solutions, traditional and dedicated hosting solutions, application management services and much more. An intelligent decision involves choosing a service provider who can offer a range of services and support to avoid the unnecessary complication and cost involved in switching to a service provider that offers a broader portfolio of services at some later stage.
www.DataCenterAndColocation.com is a free service provided to clients for selecting the right data center, colocation or cloud facility for their requirements. DataCenterAndColocation is one of the largest colocation site consulting firms in the United States. They represent approximately 3000 data centers and colocation centers. At no cost to clients, they identify specific space, location, power and security requirements, solicit proposals, professionally analyze the responses, compare the strengths and weaknesses, negotiate pricing and deliver highly competitive bids for colocation. They also perform comparative analysis for in-house vs. design build services, wholesale data center space and data connectivity.