When you need a hosting solution for your company, choosing the right solution means considering your budget, time constraints, security, and a range of other issues. Colocation hosting presents an option that makes sense for many organisations, providing a ready-made environment for storing servers in ideal conditions. If your business doesn’t have a server room or the space is too difficult to manage, colocation hosting provides an alternative to make both IT departments and the big bosses satisfied.

What Is Colocation Hosting?

If you have servers to manage but providing the ideal environment for those servers becomes too difficult, colocation hosting provides an alternative. Colocation hosting is the practice of renting a space to store your servers, while you maintain control of the hardware and software. This allows you to gain the advantage of cooling systems, power management, and on-site security, along with remote management of your servers. You remain responsible for maintaining and managing your servers, unlike when you choose managed services. Data centres are able to adapt to your needs, offering scalability and saving time and money for your IT department.

How Does It Work?

Servers take a lot of work to keep them in the right conditions and ensure they’re working optimally. Having to manage your own server room is time-consuming and costly, and not all businesses have the appropriate environment to allow it. With many businesses having recently downsized or become partially or fully remote, this is even more true for a lot of companies. Colocation hosting allows businesses and their IT departments to hand off the responsibility of maintaining the perfect server environment to someone else.

A data centre offering colocation hosting can provide:

• Cooling systems
• Climate control
• Power supply and backup generators
• On-site security and safety systems
• Storage
• Disaster recovery
• Service Level Agreements
• Technical support/remote hands service
• Remote server access

After choosing the data centre where you want to store your servers, you will need to move them in and set everything up. You will be responsible for configuring your servers, while the data centre helps out by managing the environment for you, including cooling systems, power supply, and on-site security. You can gain physical access to your servers when needed for maintenance but still benefit from remote access so that you’re not reliant on-site visits.

The Benefits of Colocation Hosting in Manchester

Colocation hosting delivers multiple advantages to businesses that need somewhere to store their servers.

Save Money – You can save on costs by reducing the expenses involved in maintaining your servers. There is no need to create your own environment capable of hosting servers because you can simply hire one instead. The necessary infrastructure is already there, ready for you to move in. You can also get a clear idea of the costs that you will have to pay for colocation hosting services, so you don’t be surprised by an unexpectedly large bill.

Support – When you use colocation hosting services, your IT team no longer needs to manage the infrastructure for your servers. You get the support required to worry about power, cooling, security, or other factors needed to keep your servers switched on. You can then focus on maintenance of your hardware and software, and other important elements of your IT and wider business.

Flexibility – Colocation hosting offers flexibility, which makes it easier for you to scale your operations and grow your assets to match your needs. With a range of flexible services available, you can scale and expand as your business grows and ensure that the resources that you need are available.

Limited Downtime – Server downtime is always a worry for businesses but using colocation hosting can help you to ensure more consistent uptime. Your data will be available to you at all times, and colocation hosting providers have disaster recovery plans in place to ensure you don’t need to worry about the safety and security of your servers. Remote access allows you to be in control of your servers. You can also access extra services on-site to help with managing your servers when needed, which can reduce the visits that are required to attend to the servers for maintenance.

Colocation Hosting in Manchester

If your business has existing servers but no appropriate or affordable environment in which to keep them, colocation hosting is an excellent choice. It can save you money and meet your needs. When you need colocation hosting in Manchester, Anywhere Technologies can help. Get in touch to find out more about our services.