In simple terms, colocation (also known as outsourced data center or wholesale colocation) is high-tech real estate. Companies use colocation to solve the problems of hardened data center buildings, power, cooling, telecommunications and security. Companies use colocation to solve these problems without losing any control of their IT infrastructure and systems. Colocation is about control of IT without the worry of building facilities.

Cloud computing comes in many forms. Companies use cloud computing to access applications and resources without owning hardware or maintaining an IT staff . Cloud computing is about applications and solutions without the worry of IT staff, IT infrastructure, and building facilities.

When comparing cloud computing providers, make sure you understand the incremental costs. Simpler pricing models are usually better. Understand the built-in backup systems and redundancies and how you can build in higher reliability if you need to.

When shopping amongst colocation providers, make sure you understand the incremental costs. Simpler data center pricing models are usually better. Keep costs low by choosing a provider with low power costs. Midwest colocation providers tend to have lower data center power costs than other areas of the United States. Affordable colocation is available in many regions of the country. Most companies today look for a minimum 99.995% uptime carrier neutral data centers with no cross connect fees.

Use colocation to maintain control of your applications and infrastructure without the worries of building facilities. Use cloud computing when you’re looking to solve application problems with a minimum of IT overhead.

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Is your internal data center expensive to operate? Forget what’s in the racks. I’m not talking about servers, networking equipment and storage. I’m talking about facilities: your raised floor, your security, your power, your cooling, your telecommunications infrastructure and your fire suppression. How expensive is it to maintain?

Operating a data center in-house is expensive. Real estate floor space costs, raised flooring, reliable air conditioning systems, specialized security and fire protection all drive up the data center capital costs. Small data centers can easily exceed $1 million in capital up front.

Data center power and cooling redundancy is expensive. Multiple UPS systems are fairly common. Dual generators are rare. Rarer still are in-house data centers have two utility feeds. Data center capital costs are high, but the costs of maintaining and operating generators and UPS systems are high as well. N+N data center redundancy (two of everything) is prohibitively expensive for many organizations. You can’t deliver high uptime without power and cooling redundancy, yet uptime requirements continue to rise.

Staffing is expensive. Do you dedicate half an FTE or more to the maintenance of the data center?

Data center compliance and certifications are expensive. SAS70 (Now SSAE 16) data center certification audits start at about $20,000. Other certifications like the Uptime Institute’s Tier IV data center certification can cost more.

Not only are the data center capital and operating costs high, they’re also unpredictable.

How do you control costs?

Wholesale colocation offers an interesting solution. Wholesale data center providers build and operate high-tech real estate. Here are a few of the reasons that organizations choose to outsource the data center facilities.

You can rent the space you need in these giant data centers.

You can still have full control of your IT equipment and telecom infrastructure.

You can benefit from N+N data center redundancy in power, cooling, and telecom to improve uptime.

In a select few outsourced hardened data centers, you can protect your mission critical systems from F5 tornadoes and other regional risks.

Some Midwest colocation providers offer you access to multiple telecommunications providers with no cross connect fees. You can build telecom hubs to better manage the money spent on telecommunications.

You can trade capital costs for operating costs.

You can build a highly predictable cost model that allows for growth and change.

Sick of getting nickel and dimed to death? Call the outsourced data center experts.

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Cross-connect fees are monthly charges associated with these connections, billed to the customer by the outsource data center provider. There is usually one charge for each connection to the telecom carriers. These charges vary by data center provider. Sometimes the cross connect charges are based on the type of connection (fiber or copper), sometimes they are based on the size of the circuit, and sometimes they are just flat fees. These monthly fees can add up, especially when a customer has many connections to the Internet, remote branch offices, clients, and/or vendors.

A few wholesale data centers offer multiple carriers in a carrier neutral data center with no cross connect fees. For customers with multiple telecom connections, this cross-connect fee avoidance can mean big savings. Customers can move the hub of the network to these no cross-connect fee data centers and build a flexible, resilient network with no financial restrictions on the number of carriers they choose to employ.

Customers with a single telecom carrier can still save money. In Midwest data centers, monthly cross-connect fees average in the $50-200 per month range, so there is still financial benefit.

Looking for a wholesale colocation provide with no cross connect fees? Look here.

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Many factors play in to the selection secondary data center and office space locations. A good CIO strategy includes multiple geographies in an evaluation of disaster recovery centers. For some organizations Midwest colocation outside of Chicago might be a better solution.

Standard features that many organizations look for when considering disaster recovery centers include:

Hardened data center facilities – With Midwest colocation, F5 tornado resistant data centers building are important, along with earthquake resistant facilities in some areas.

99.995% uptime or better – This is the uptime level expected from Tier IV data centers. Some IT professionals consider the uptime is a DR center to be less important than in the primary data center. If your organization is doing real-time or near-real time data replication, data center uptime in your disaster recovery center is likely as important as in your primary enterprise data center.

Multiple carriers with no cross-connect fees – Access to multiple telecom carriers ensures diverse and reliable connectivity in the event of a disaster, or on an ongoing basis with real-time replication. Data centers with no monthly cross connect fees significantly reduce ongoing costs.

Data center compliance and certification – Compliance and certifications in the disaster recovery center are just as important as the primary data center.

Data center pricing model – Simple is better. Most organizations seem to prefer to pay for power, cooling and space incrementally as they use it.

Advantages to Midwest data centers located outside of Chicago include:

• Geographic diversity, especially for Chicago-based organizations.
• Overall lower costs, including, lower data center power costs, lower costs of construction labor, and lower data center capital costs.
• A theoretically lower risk from placing the disaster recovery center outside of one of the USA’s five largest cities.

Wholesale colocation providers offer the most flexibility for organizations that prefer to own and control their own telecom connections, network, servers and storage. Some wholesale data centers offer disaster recovery office space. This space can be custom fit by the organization to use for emergency call centers or workspace recovery.

Considering disaster recovery options in Chicago? Consider Midwest colocation providers outside of Chicago in your search.

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It’s an expensive proposition. You might want to investigate your options, including infrastructure as a service (IaaS) , and outsource data center facilities, also known as colocation.

IaaS give you the ability to get out of the computer hardware business. You can move your server images to a shared, virtualized environment and run your servers from the cloud. This is very attractive to many businesses, because of low capital costs and low internal employee requirements.

Colocation, also known as outsource data center, provides hardened data center buildings, reliable power, cooling and access to telecommunications. Many companies move their primary data centers to colocation facilities. These companies reap many benefits from colocation:

99.995% uptime, if the facility meets Tier IV data center uptime standards
Fully redundant data center power and cooling for minimal downtime
Data center security including multiple factor authentication, background checks and physical access control
Access to multiple telecommunications providers

A few outsource data centers offer additional benefits:
Private cages for workspace and growth
Pay-as-you-grow pricing
Carrier neutral data centers with many telecom providers and competitive pricing
No monthly cross connect fees, so telecom pricing is reduced even further
Private office space for business continuity or primary offices

Moving your data center to an affordable colocation facility can be the last data center move you need to make. For many businesses, it makes financial sense to de-couple the data center location from the location of the business headquarters.

Want to learn more? Call Midwest data center facilities provider Lifeline Data Centers at 317.423.2591.

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Level 3 Communications (News – Alert) is buying Global Crossing, a move that will bolster the half of Level 3′s business that represents retail services to enterprises and mid-market customers. About 48 percent of Level 3 Communications’ revenue is classified as “wholesale.” On its own, Level 3′s product mix includes 13 percent voice services, 25 percent data services, 41 percent wavelengths and private line and 21 percent dark fiber or data center services.

The Global Crossing (News – Alert) acquisition will strengthen the volume of retail sales to enterprises. Global Crossing also will bolster Level 3′s operations in Europe, where Global Crossing has a big sales footprint, and add Latin American operations where Level 3 has chosen not to compete, up to this point. The Global Crossing deal also adds Asia-Pacific long-haul routes, where Level 3 has focused on North America, Europe and trans-Atlantic routes, up to this point. Right now, Level 3 operates in 23 countries, where Global Crossing operates in 70 countries.

More of the TMCnet.com post

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• Low data center power costs
• Low costs of construction
• Great access from the rest of the country

Why might Indianapolis be your best choice for your colocation provider?

• Dense concentration of telecommunications fiber
• Low data center power costs
• Strong pool of talented information technology professionals from Purdue, IU and Rose-Hulman
• Vibrant, easy to access technology community

Why might Lifeline Data Centers be your best choice for a Midwest data center provider?

• Ten years of history delivering affordable colocation with 99.995% uptime
• Privately held and owner-operated by veteran IT professionals
• Fifteen carriers with no monthly cross-connect fees
• SAS 70, TIA 942, HIPAA, FISMA, NIST, PCI, FDA compliant
• N+N redundant architecture (equivalent to a Tier IV data center)- better design means less downtime
• Private cages or shared space
• Secure office space on a 41 acre campus
• 10,000 square feet available

Want to know more? Call Lifeline at 317.423.2591

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The answer is yes for many companies. Data center outages can mean lost revenues, lost profits, and lost clients. These outages, also known as data center downtime, can disrupt the way service companies deliver their services. Outages can stop a manufacturer from outputting finished product. Downtime means that e-commerce businesses can’t sell goods.

Managing data center uptime is a game of risk management. And the cost of data center downtime for your business is the key factor to determine what you should do. If the cost of downtime is high, it makes sense to employ multiple measures to reduce risks of downtime. Even if the cost of downtime is low, you need to give consideration to the risks of an extended outage, and what you might do to protect the business.

One of the easiest ways to reduce the risk of downtime is to use wholesale data center facilities for your primary computer room. Wholesale data centers, also known as wholesale colocation and outsource data centers, provide hardened buildings, highly reliable power and cooling, and access to multiple telecommunications providers. Many companies have reduced power, cooling and telecom downtime to zero simply by moving into a wholesale data center.

How easy is it to move? It depends on the size and complexity of your primary data center. Technologies like virtualization and SAN have made it much easier. Moving to an outsource data center can be the last move your data center makes.

What about costs? As with most projects, there are ways to keep the costs down. Affordable colocation does exist. Look for owner-operated facilities with plenty of experience. These data centers tend to manage costs better than the large corporations. Midwest colocation provides low cost of power. Look for a simple data center pricing model that lets you pay as you grow. A few outsource data centers offer multiple telecom companies with no cross connect fees. All of these factors can significantly impact the affordability of outsource data centers.

Is your cost of downtime high? Does your business need better data center uptime? Talk to Midwest colocation provider Lifeline Data Centers at 317.423.2591.

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• Reaching limits on power, cooling, or floor space
• Improving primary data center uptime (reliability)
• Meeting data center compliance or data center certification requirements
• Consolidating data centers
• Moving out of an existing building; moving a data center
• Reducing power costs
• Swapping primary data center and disaster recovery center sites
• Centralizing the hub of a wide area network

Selecting the right wholesale data center is one of the most critical strategic IT decisions a company will make. A sensible CIO strategy would include these data center requirements:

• Industry veteran data center leadership, directly involved in day-to-day operations
• True N+N data center redundancy with 99.995% uptime (Tier IV data center uptime levels)
• Data center certifications – SAS 70 data center, TIA 942 compliant data center, and industry-specific compliance
• Highly-customized data center consulting and managed services
• Simple data center pricing model
• Low data center power costs, billed on usage
• Private cages for security, high density and long-term growth
• Access to multiple telecommunications providers
• Carrier neutral data center with no cross connect fees

The primary data center is the heartbeat of a company. The wrong decision on data center providers can cost a company dearly for the life of a contract. Choose a wholesale hardened data center facility that works to support the company’s specific data center requirements. Consider affordable colocation options. Consider Midwest colocation provider Lifeline Data Centers.

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Wide area networks can be complex. The hub should have low-cost access to multiple carriers. This benefits companies that must use more than one telecom carrier. Some companies must blend carriers because of the location of their remote offices. Many companies are building in Internet redundancy and wide area network redundancy into their corporate networks . Access to multiple telecom carriers also puts the carriers in a more competitive pricing stance. Carriers know that companies which operate the network hub from wholesale data center have many telecom choices. Internet bandwidth is also competitively priced at outsource data centers.

But an outsource computer room must be a carrier neutral data center to offer the most benefit. That means that multiple carriers are available, and that the outsource data center shows no favoritism. The telecom contract is directly between the company and the telecom carrier. The data center is not involved.

To be the most financial benefit, the data center must have no cross connect fees. Cross connect fees are monthly add-on fees that a data centers charge to allow companies to remain connected to the telecom carriers. Look for outsource data centers that charge no cross connect fees.

Why are companies moving primary data centers to wholesale colocation facilities? Carrier neutral data centers with no cross connect fees give companies the ideal venue to reduce costs and to build diversity into a wide area network.

In Part 10 of this series, we will summarize why companies are moving primary data centers to wholesale colocation facilities.

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