Location, location, for colocation?

In recent years data centres have become increasingly important to businesses of all sizes, as a higher volume of customers choose to host their IT systems with a third party provider. These third parties have purpose built, high specification, secure facilities, which are seen as a more desirable option, rather than committing to the considerable and on-going expense of on-premises solutions.  Third party data centres allow businesses to achieve their organisational objectives by providing mission critical infrastructure, without the need for lengthy and costly capital expenditure on their own facilities.  

How far are you willing to go?

The many advantages of hosting your IT infrastructure within a third party data centre can often be overlooked by one simple, frustrating requirement for your IT support staff – the long, traffic-congested journey to the service provider’s data centre.  Cloud infrastructure, in comparison, is location-neutral and can be easily managed online, but when an organisation outsources or collocates within a data centre, your support staff may need to travel regularly to the facility. Choosing a data centre that is close to home makes it easy for them to respond to issues or conduct moves, adds and changes to your IT infrastructure.  Journey times in excess of an hour can have a detrimental effect on your support staff as they plod through rush hour traffic, road works and contraflows. So ideally, the data centre would not be located more than one hour’s drive from your home base.  Another requirement you should consider is if there are any restrictions placed on accessing your equipment. Restrictions should not be in place and your colocation provider should enable physical access to your equipment 24/7/365, and offer a basic ‘remote hands service’ should your systems need a power cycle in the middle of the night.  

Fareham data centre

SCC’s Fareham data centre is located between the large metropolitan areas of Southampton and Portsmouth. With excellent access links by road, air and rail, the facility is ideally located for organisations that require access to their equipment at any time from areas such as Dorset, Hampshire, Surrey and Sussex. Located just one hour’s drive from London, the trip to our data centre could be even quicker than some cross-town data centre facilities. So don’t let the physical location of your service provider’s data centre facility be a drawback. Choose a provider and facility that meets all of your organisations business and technical requirements but also allows for time-effective journeys and easy access for your IT support staff.  So a major consideration should be… location, location for colocation?  

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