Data center colocation and virtualization of IT resources are quickly becoming two exceptionally valuable aspects of today’s data-driven enterprise environment. By combining the benefits offered by both, enterprises gain new-found cost and productivity efficiencies that would otherwise go unrealized.
There are ten compelling reasons why colocation and virtualization should be treated as two components of a unified strategy for managing Big Data and enterprise IT operations:
- Improved virtualization strategy – Today’s CIOs see the big picture when it comes to virtualization. It is little wonder that an increasing number of enterprises have brought colocation facilities on board as full strategic partners for their data management roadmaps.
- Use of colocation environments as a sandbox – Not only can enterprises safely experiment with Big Data within a virtual environment set aside at a colocation center, said environment can be safely disposed of afterwards. Many colocation facilities perform housekeeping tasks that would normally be done by in-house IT staff.
- Availability of colocation expertise and tools – Through on-staff expertise, colocation facilities can help enterprises can gain experience and insight into the latest tools, methodologies and best practices.
- Online training – Conducting employee orientation and training classes within a collocated virtual environment eliminates costs that would otherwise be borne on internal IT staff and data center resources.
- Availability of secure multi-tenant environments – Groups of small and medium-sized businesses can realize cost savings on core system data storage and software licensing by forming their own collocated spaces, where each business operates its system within secure separate virtual partitions located on a single host server.
- Outsourcing of virtual desktop infrastructure – Enterprises that don’t see VDI is a mission-critical application can save time and costs by outsourcing this asset to a third-party data center. In addition,
- Improved disaster recovery – Multiple virtual systems within geographically dispersed colocation facilities ensure 24/7 system uptime while eliminating the need to build physical data centers at these same geographical locations.
- Cost-effective video conferencing – The ability to store on-demand video presentations in virtual storage and processing environments reduces costs for corporate clients.
- Improved management of resource spikes – Colocation resources can be deployed quickly to cover spikes in resource requirements during resource-intensive periods.
