Colocation is not a new concept, though it has become more popular in United Arab Emirates (UAE) in recent times in the wake of many IT start-ups. As the multi-million dollars of funds flow into the system from investors looking for good returns, many small, medium and large enterprises have been set up. Colocation server hosting is, therefore, gaining importance. Colocation service providers provide physical security, networking backbone, cooling and power back-up whereas the clients own the servers and the storage infrastructure. Service Level Agreements (SLAs) define the scope of relationship between the hosting provider and the client. In UAE, the concept is already in place as many companies use this service for outsourcing non-core works of maintenance. So, which types of businesses generally use colocation server hosting service?
Ecommerce Ventures
Big ecommerce companies find it safer to own their servers and gain full control over these machines for customization. Last few years have seen a number of ecommerce start-ups and many more are likely to come up in future. These companies process millions of transactions on daily basis and this load of traffic and transactions is borne through their servers. To ensure safety and privacy of monetary transactions, ownership of servers is preferred but maintenance is entrusted to expertise and experience of colocation service providers.
Large Corporations
Big conglomerates have huge amount of data which needs to be backed-up and protected. They might use data centres of colocation server hosting providers for creating off-site backups and adding some layers to their data-protection measures. Even if their own systems crash or any disaster happens, there is suitable back up to ensure that no data is compromised and least inconvenience is caused to customers. So, these centres are used as back-ups for data-safety.
Since these centres are located at opportune geographical locations which are protected from natural and other hazards, these offer opportunities for total data protection irrespective of the location of business.
Telecommunication Companies
Colocation server hosting providers have a number of clients, called tenants or carriers, at a single location. This gives certain types of businesses which are dependent on networking to share or exchange data with ease. In that scenario, physical proximity of servers is put to good use. It acts as a connection among the tenants themselves or among the clients of own tenant. Either ways, the management is rendered easy and the process is facilitated without any issues.
Providing racks, cabinets or server rooms on rent with complete assurance of physical safety, robust networking infrastructure and data protection to many clients enables these data centres to reap economies of scale. Same personnel perform various functions for all tenants. These could be security staff who perform round the clock monitoring of physical security of servers, provide engineering support and many other specialists in their domain. Hiring all these personnel could be a very costly proposition for many small or medium size businesses. Colocation server hosting centres provide seamless connectivity, scalability and total flexibility of operations to its tenants.
