Business continuity and co-location
Does your business have a backup plan for everything? With co-location, you can take advantage of all the security and business continuity benefits of having your data located off-site in a secure data center. At the same time, you retain ownership over your server software and physical hardware.
This ownership comes with important advantages, including the potential for cost-savings and easier scaling. Depending on your business, co-location may be a smarter disaster recovery solution than both on-premise data storage and cloud storage.
Let’s take a look at what co-location is and how organizations are using it as a part of their business continuity plan.
What is co-location?
In order to secure critical data and to minimize the risk of downtime, a lot of businesses today are backing up their data in the cloud. With a cloud service model, you pay for the cloud provider’s computing resources and the secure data center.
With co-location, you get the same business continuity benefits that you gain from cloud storage because your data is securely stored off-site. However, you’re not ever using third-party servers. Instead, you rent space and bring your hardware to the data center. Your engineers are also responsible for maintaining your servers.
The co-location center provides the building, heating and cooling, power, and internet bandwidth, as well as physical security. Because all of these services are shared, co-location is less expensive than paying for your own separate data center. Also, you have the flexibility to lease the amount of space that you need — you can rent a rack, a cabinet, or an entire room.
When you need more servers because your business has more data, you simply add more hardware to your rented space.
Essentially, co-location offers a balance between cost, security, control, and flexibility, making it a smart choice for organizations that are looking for shared data center services as part of their business continuity plan, yet still want to retain ownership over their servers.
How co-location can strengthen your business continuity plan
The reality is, downtime can happen at any point and to any company. For small businesses, the average cost of one hour of downtime is $10,000. Can your business afford that risk?
From an outage to a data breach, if your business doesn’t have a strong business continuity plan in place, it’s vulnerable. In 2019, 80 percent of IT leaders expected a data breach or cyberattack to happen over the coming year. So far during 2020, 158,000 cyber incidents have occurred, with nearly one-third impacting small businesses.
And it’s not just a cyberattack that you have to worry about. Anything from a hurricane to an everyday human error can lead to data loss, downtime, and huge problems for your business.
A recent survey conducted by the insurance firm, Nationwide, found that 52 percent of small business owners say it would take at least three months to recover from a calamity.
Co-location can mitigate all of these risks. When you have your data housed in a secure location that’s separate from your business, you know it’s safe. If there’s a power outage, a fire, or any other disaster, you can still access your business apps and data via your off-site servers. If a hacker breaks into your systems and steals your data, you can recover it from your servers at the co-location data center.
With co-location, you know your business is ready for anything.
Without a doubt, co-location can strengthen your business continuity plan. You get best-in-class disaster recovery and security, you can minimize downtime, and you still have full control over your servers. Contact us today and find out more about how co-location can benefit your business.
