When it comes to choosing a colocation or a data center provider, for your business, you’re in for quite the hassle since this is a critical step. For most, this means that they’ll be integrating someone else’s facility with their intricate infrastructure. So, before you jump in and select a company, there are several criteria that you should firstly think about. Read on as we dive into these as you conduct your basic research for a data center.
1 – Location
The location of a data center is a critical factor for your business. One of the main things to consider is the length of time it takes for someone to travel from the data center of your company. If for some reason you’re interested in upgrading your equipment, this is a huge factor. London businesses should consider Beeks and Equinix LD5 partnership.
In essence, you’ll experience a ton of downtime which becomes even more costly for you. Additionally, natural disasters sometimes occur no matter where you’re located, but it might be a good idea to think of a location that isn’t prone to tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, and others. If for some reason you didn’t already think of this, there’s a good chance the provider thought of this.
With that said, it’s never too late to be cautious and take the necessary precautions. Another main factor to consider is the fact that there should be a ton of available power. Fiber paths to and from are also a great thing to consider.
2 – Flexibility And Expansion Capability
Most clients select data centers based on their ability to meet the demands of the present and the future. However, data centers tend to offer their clients various forms of flexibility. In essence, some providers are known for providing great solutions and ideas. While this is often done, not all are capable of providing the amount of flexibility that is needed.
So, before signing up with just any provider, it’s a good idea to enquire about their power, space, and connectivity capabilities. It’s not a good idea to prevent your business from flourishing by working with unreliable providers.
3 – Reliability
Data centers should be able to provide a certain sense of reliability. Within the industry, reliability is better known as the total uptime in data center services. Most reliable providers tend to have 9s uptime while just simply means that they’re up and running for at least 99.999% of the time.
One particular company known as CoreSite has a performance index of six 9s. This pushes their uptime to 99.9999% and an SLA of 100%
4 – Deployment Efficiency
If you need your infrastructure up and running faster than the speed of light then you’ll need to look further into the capabilities of your potential company. Most if not all businesses expect that their services are running as efficiently and as quickly as possible. When these efforts are difficult to quantify, things might be too good to be true.
5 – Network Ecosystem
Colocation provides users with the opportunity to interconnect with the shared data center. So, whether you’re interested in connecting with your distributors, your partners, or even peering with the competition, interconnectivity is a great option. Before you make your selection, it’s a great idea to determine the connectivity options. Determining if they have large ecosystems that function in harmony is a great way to figure out if you want to work with a company.
