by Jason Warner
Colocation. What does this mean in an age of Cloud or Distributed Computing? Does Colocation differ from Mission-Critical Colocation? Is hosting becoming too complex for small to medium sized businesses to manage themselves? The answer to the above is Yes and No. As they say, it’s complicated.
It is accurate to say that the days of throwing a server into a rack and providing an e-commerce store that you manage are virtually over. Now the need for a scaling business to cross-connect with local partners and interconnect to distributed partners is critical. However, the very premise of colocation still exists whether customers know it or not. The name Cloud is confusing in its connotation because literally nothing lives in the cloud. Data may travel through air and clouds, but it lives and is processed in a physical server or device in a physical location. The nature of Colocation is more critical now than ever before. Due to the movement in the direction of Distributed and Edge Computing. Getting closer to the user means more local infrastructure and less centralization.
At Fortress Data Centers, we have moved to a Mission-Critical Colocation focus. Where everything is interconnected. We are approaching the need to provide downstream and upstream data pathways by working with carriers to enable 5G and multiple cross-connects. We have partners in hundreds of data centers across the country and world to create an extensive mesh network. Securing software defined network (SDN) partners to provide a layer for customers above the mesh. We believe that Managed Service Providers (MSP) will continue to carry more of the capital expenditures and drive most of the scale to operational expenses in the industry. By offloading all of your networked infrastructure and internal intellectual knowledge to MSPs also comes with risk.
To illustrate, let’s look at the current Supply Channel issues that countries around the world are facing. With a small number of countries controlling the supply of much of the world’s Personal Protection Equipment (PPE), the US and other countries have faced uncertainty in supply. The reliance on a globally interconnected ecosystem has been shaken by political and logistics issues. Relying on a single MSP may also come to a day of reckoning for many companies.
If political tensions increase, expect to see more isolationism practices put in place, shutting off some Cloud providers from nationally sensitive businesses. We already see this through the current TikTok chess game happening between governments and companies. Having an IT plan that is flexible, scalable and protective against risk is the Mission-Critical Colocation plan that can ensure continuation of your business.
Mission-Critical Colocation does not mean that everything rides on your locally hosted servers. It means having a strategic plan to place a controlled and distributed set of servers that are protecting your data and that of your customers. This is like your gold at Fort Knox or your cold wallet storage for cryptocurrency. It is part of why Fortress Data Centers exists; to provide services that ensure that your business data needs are not only burstable and scalable but also protected from any risk contingency.
Because, what is here today, can be gone tomorrow. Colocation is here to stay and that is why at Fortress Data Centers, our mantra is “We are Here.”