Most businesses have, at one point or another, grappled with the decision of choosing between colocation and managed hosting. The latter is often chosen by small businesses who are looking to get up and running with what seems like the bare bones package. The site is up, users have access, why look into it any further? The trouble with this decision making process, is that small operations rarely stay as small as they were when they were just a twinkle in the eye of the founder and developer. Good ideas need room to grow, which brings up the first thing to consider when you choose colocation or managed hosting—flexibility or convenience.

As mentioned previously, the convenience factor has a strong pull when one has a lack of familiarity with hosting options. In providing that convenient service, managed hosting customers give up something perhaps more important: flexibility. Hosting providers often impose limits on the functionality of your site, the number of domain names you can register, address space, processor overhead available, and the list goes on. With colocation, a private server rack, you’re always in the driver seat of your service, with options to change your plan as needed. Big cost advantages—When you’re paying for colocation, you’re essentially paying for bandwidth in bulk. The more you need as traffic to your site increases, the better deal it becomes.

Reliability

In making sure your business is fully up and running without any type of delay is top priority. A colocation center is redundant making sure there is constant up-time for clients. They’re also, up-to-date with cooling, electrical systems that constantly communicate ensuring connections.

Performance

Top performance of hardware is crucial and more important than one would think. Making sure conditions for where hardware is stored is critical. A colocation center has state-of-the-art cooling systems to ensure temperatures remain cool, equipment is kept dust free with high tech systems in place. This keeps hardware operating at its best. There is also the advantage of having a professional network installation done by professionals with years of experience, instead of having the “techy” guy in the office who has a real day time job.

Cost

With every IT related service, there is a lot to do, not to mention the cost. As mentioned earlier a data center is a great low-cost solution. With colocation one will get access to state-of-the-art equipment, clean rooms, redundant systems, monitoring around the clock. A lot of time and money would go into this for an IT department.

Scalability

In a colocation center you only pay for the power you need. Which provides the flexibility as your business grows. This is great because it can allow a business to focus efforts on other IT related items that are needed.

Risk Management

This can provide a peace of mind knowing that your servers are protected and won’t encounter an issue forcing you to lose downtime. The best way is to think of a data center as another basket for your most important eggs.