Recently, Ron Vokoun wrote a piece for Data Center Dynamics where in he discussed his predictions for the data center market for 2017. In this article, you might be surprised to learn that he discusses the continued requirements of server huggers. When everyone is talking about the cloud and virtualizing just about everything, those in financial services, healthcare, government, and other regulated industries, are still seeing the need to be able to touch and closely manage their servers. Often, this is with good cause as compliance and security concerns can mean keeping a tight rein on not only data, but the equipment that hosts it.
The challenge for a typical server hugger comes in keeping their equipment highly connected, protected from a wide range of disasters, with the power and cooling redundancies required to ensure 100% availability. These requirements can be a tall order for on-premise data centers, which are vulnerable to localized power outages, require tremendous resources, and demand IT support for basic maintenance. The end result is that the server hugger spends more time ensuring the proper conditions in the data center and less time on strategic initiatives.
The answer? Colocation. Highly secure, fully redundant data centers are available around the country that free the server hugger from the menial tasks of ensuring data center uptime, and protect those servers and your data with blended bandwidth, power backups and redundancy, and consistent cooling. Another bonus is that data centers with bandwidth blends can enable you to connect the applications you host on your servers to the public cloud to create a hybrid environment. For many, the choice is between on-premise and the cloud, but colocation provides another option that gives you optimal control with minimal distraction. Find a data center near you and give your server the home it deserves.
