May 13, 2010

Advantages of Collocation

By:

Hostway Team

By Samantha Gluck

Choosing a server collocation provider is growing rapidly in popularity among small business owners. These businesses have invested a fair amount of money in their servers and peripheral hardware, but don’t have the budget and facilities necessary to reap all the potential benefits of having this equipment.

What Is Server Collocation?

Rather than invest the large amount of capital necessary to build their own data center facility and hire an IT support team, businesses are housing their servers at a collocation facility. These facilities offer physically secure environments for the servers as well as providing 24/7 network monitoring against cyber intruders. The network at a collocation data center is state-of-the-art and always up to date. The customer retains ownership of the server and all data, software and devices associated with it.

Benefits of Server Collocation

In addition to saving money in overhead and human resources, small businesses get the bandwidth and high caliber network usually only available to very large enterprises. Most collocation companies charge for bandwidth based on total traffic consumption per month. This way, businesses only pay for what they use. The high bandwidth also allows for faster, more reliable Web page loading. The collocation facilities usually give two IP addresses to customers upon server activation. Customers can purchase additional addresses for a nominal monthly charge as they grow. The facility is responsible for network security and usually has sophisticated intruder detection routines that monitor the network for attacks. Customer data is backed regularly and stored in a remote location. In the event of a system crash, customers can recover sensitive data quickly.

Who Should Consider Server Collocation?

Small businesses hoping to grow in the future are good candidates for server collocation. They can upgrade their servers and systems as necessary, but at their own pace and with the support of a full time IT department. The high speed Internet bandwidth is ideal for small business owners who wish to add an ecommerce component to their Web site or simply want visitors to enjoy fast page loading without waiting. Resources and time that would be spent on server and network maintenance can now be reallocated to revenue producing areas of the business.

About the Author

Samantha Gluck has had over a decade of experience helping businesses better focus their Web sites to enhance ecommerce and Internet presence by utilizing Web analytics, relevant design elements and marketing campaigns.

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