Interconnection Options Enhance Flexibility, Security, and Performance
The interconnection world has evolved impressively for data center end users, making hybrid colocation a more beneficial product offering than ever before.
Here are five ways colocation and the enhanced interconnection options it provides can help any enterprise, startup, or government entity.
1. Flexibility of Multiple Carriers
Most private data centers, whether a dedicated corporate-owned building or a server closet attached to an office environment, have just a carrier or two available to them. Colocation facilities have a number of options. The dozen carriers that provide interconnection services to the Direct LTx data center give our customers multiple options that can keep you up and running in the event one of your primary carriers has an outage.
2. Resiliency
Data center managers understand the resiliency of backup power systems that a well-designed colocation facility provides along with the dedicated staff to get ahead of problems that can lead to outages. But fiber resiliency is another benefit. Many private data centers have a single point of failure in their connection. At Direct LTx fiber comes into three different physical locations on our property. Most of our carriers have two or more redundant pathways to our facility. There is no pole that a truck can hit that will take down connectivity, no fiber cut incurred during utility digging that can take our customers offline.
3. Cloud Adjacency
Most organizations have found that being all-in with the public cloud is not ideal for either cost or resiliency. That has led to a preference for a hybrid solution, and for most that’s a core IT infrastructure deployment that can also access the cloud. Software defined networks like Packet Fabric and MegaPort were ahead of the curve in allowing high performance connections to major clouds from multi-tenant data centers. They have since been joined by proprietary “Network as a Service” offerings from the carriers themselves. The optionality gained by customers with access to multiple carriers that can also quickly and easily access the cloud providers they prefer can provide financial flexibility while enhancing IT infrastructure performance.
4. InfoSec Advantages
A well-run colocation provider is expected to provide 7 x 24 x 365 physical security. More than ever before there are sophisticated options for data security as well. The carriers trenched into a multi-tenant data center offer cybersecurity services that can be supported even more fully by managed services providers that plant their flag as customers in colocation facilities and offer services to other tenants. It is always more efficient and effective to block malicious traffic at the carrier level, before it reaches your systems, rather than relying solely on your device firewalls.
5. Customer & Partner Connections:
Do you have customers, partners, sister companies, or others that require (or at least benefit from) low latency, close proximity interaction with your organization? Both the data center provider and carriers are likely to offer a range of options, both traditional cross connects and more recently developed products, to support and enhance those collaborative relationships.
The ecosystem of a colocation environment can offer options for enhancing resiliency, flexibility, scalability, and security in a way that a privately-owned corporate data center will struggle to match.
If colocation hasn’t been evaluated by your organization recently, it might be time to take another look as to whether your network and interconnection options would be best served by a hybrid colocation solution.