As the expense of operating and the risk of maintaining uptime with on-premises data centres grows, enterprises are rethinking how they deploy their critical IT infrastructure to optimise costs, operational efficiencies, and resilience. For this reason, deploying in vendor-neutral colocation facilities is steadily emerging as a favourable alternative.
Benefits of colocation for network optimisation
Today, most IT leaders not only use space, power, and cooling capacity as their primary considerations. The strategic aspects of connectivity, network choice, performance and several other benefits of colocation services are equally as important.
1. Connectivity options
Colocation facilities that offer vendor neutrality allow businesses to choose from multiple network service providers rather than being bound to one. This vendor neutrality enables clients to select best-of-breed and multiple providers as and when required without physically moving IT equipment. Furthermore, vendor neutrality can lead to cost savings due to a greater choice of connectivity providers.
2. Direct connection to hybrid and multi-cloud
Direct connectivity to public cloud providers is another advantage of colocation. Having the ability to either directly connect to public cloud on-ramps or connect to platforms that serve as on-ramps into local and global cloud providers, ensures enterprises connect to different clouds easily.
The biggest drawcard of these services is that they bypass the public internet, thereby reducing costs along with the benefits of being a more secure, reliable, and predictable connection. The result is direct, secure, ultra-low latency network access to the cloud services that businesses demand.
3. Improved availability
Multiple connectivity options provide greater flexibility, allowing enterprises to build resilience into their operations. Organisations can switch to their backup connectivity provider easily if the primary connectivity option is disrupted, ensuring always-on network availability.
4. Bandwidth flexibility
Ordering new capacity circuits from a carrier can take weeks if provided to an enterprise-owned server room or data centre facility. By deploying in a vendor-neutral facility where carriers have deployed their primary nodes, enterprises are able to get new services up and running faster by taking advantage of readily available capacity.
This also presents an opportunity to modify capacity arrangements to meet changing network requirements, which helps clients react quickly and reduce costs.
5. Access to digital ecosystems
A vendor-neutral data centre – with interconnection to multiple clouds, partners, clients, and other service providers – presents a unique opportunity to efficiently integrate services and business processes, making it easier to collaborate and save on network costs.
An interconnection-focused network that links participants in the digital supply chain provides lower latency, fast and easy data sharing, and an improved user experience.
6. Consistent network performance
Consistent, high-performing networks have become a reality thanks to flexible, scalable connectivity options, always-on availability, and direct connections to clouds and business partners.
7. Availability
Colocation facilities are served by facility infrastructure services, such as power, electrical and cooling that guarantee the uptime of critical IT infrastructure. Added to this resilience is interconnection that allows diversity within the facility, such as guaranteeing the overall availability of the network and related services.
8. Enhanced security
Direct and private connectivity provided by interconnection options within the ecosystems of vendor neutral facilities ensure secure interactions. Moreover, colocation in certified environments mitigates risk by covering all the regulatory and compliance requirements for enterprises that operate sensitive data infrastructures, including the financial sector, healthcare and business that are required to comply with data privacy regulations.
9. Global Platform
While colocation is an essential component in any enterprise IT strategy, the real value lies in how vendor-neutral colocation facilitates digital transformation. The right approach to building infrastructure at the digital edge can unlock significant technical and business advantages, of which improved network performance plays a critical role.
When deciding whether to move on-premises data centres to a colocation provider, IT leaders should consider looking beyond their traditional boundaries and rethink how they can future-proof their infrastructure for the next generation of innovation and challenges.
Why Platform Teraco
Teraco offers vendor-neutral data centres in South Africa. Our data centres are built to global best practices and designed specifically with your business needs in mind. We provide cost savings to our clients by housing their equipment within secure, purpose-built locations.
Teraco is part-owned by Digital Realty (NYSE: DLR) – offering clients a global data centre platform designed to enable digital business to scale within a highly connected data community across more than 285 data centres in 50 metros and 26 countries on six continent – and a consortium of private equity investors, including Berkshire Partners LLC and Permira.
Deploying critical infrastructure in Teraco means clients have access to an ecosystem comprising more than 250 network and connectivity providers, all the local and global cloud onramps, and over 80 financial services providers. As the recognised African leader in data centre infrastructure, Teraco provides world-class infrastructure facilities and access to a business enablement platform assisting enterprises in their digital migration strategies.
Learn more about South Africa’s National Data and Cloud Policy.
