If you are a small business owner, you know the importance of having an online presence to reach customers in the digital space. Unfortunately, the cost of building, powering, and maintaining a local data center is prohibitively expensive for many small businesses. Colocation services can help circumvent these costs by maintaining your servers for you. Here are four of the biggest benefits of renting server space in a colocation center.
24/7 Maintenance
Every minute that your business is offline is money lost. With colocation services, you can rest assured that your servers are being maintained around the clock by highly trained technicians. This saves your in-house IT department from having to spend time troubleshooting infrastructure problems, allowing them to focus on improving your business website and adding new features.
Storing your servers in a colocation center will also ensure that they are in the optimal environment for long life and performance. Colocation centers are climate-controlled, preventing unexpected equipment damage caused by overheating. High-quality racks ensure that your servers are safely stored and eliminate the risk of fall damage and suboptimal performance due to ventilation problems.
Top-Notch Data Security
An online security breach is one of the biggest problems modern business can face. Using colocation services is one of the best ways to ensure that customers' personal information is safe and secure. Technicians will equip your servers with state-of-the-art anti-virus and data encryption software, protecting your data from remote cyber attacks, employee mistakes, and other common data security issues.
In addition to cyber security, colocation centers provide excellent physical security for your servers. On-site security measures include closed-circuit surveillance cameras, entryways protected with biometric scanners and key-card entry, theft alarms, and security guards. By using colocation services, you are able to take advantage of these security features without having to pay for them separately out of your company's budget.
Power and Data Redundancy
In computing, redundancy is synonymous with reliability. Disastrous weather and unexpected power outages are two problems that every business needs to be prepared for to avoid lost and corrupted data. Colocation centers will have several redundant power systems in place to protect your data. These often include power feeds from multiple plants and large diesel generators that can keep your infrastructure running when the grid is down.
No matter how many redundant power sources are in place, it is impossible to prevent data loss or corruption 100 percent of the time if the data is located only on one machine. To this end, colocation centers provide multiple complete backups of your server's hard drives. You can also rest assured that these backups are fully accessible by your in-house IT department at any time and will be deleted if you decide to terminate your service with the colocation center.
High-Bandwidth Connectivity
Your server bandwidth will determine how many customers are able to access your website(s) at one time. When a small business experiences a sudden increase in online sales, it can be difficult for them to upgrade their bandwidth fast enough to keep up with demand without downtime.
Using colocation services will guarantee that your servers have all the bandwidth they need to meet the needs of your customers. Colocation centers maintain contracts with multiple internet service providers, ensuring that you are always getting the highest amount of bandwidth for the lowest price.
With the importance of maintaining an online business presence and protecting customer data, the benefits of colocation services cannot be overstated. Before you begin construction of a local data center, contact colocation centers in your area or visit a site like http://colocationnorthwest.com to find the best data center solution for your business.
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