With great hosting comes great responsibility

With great hosting comes great responsibility!

Choosing the right hosting service for your business can be a daunting task. With so many options available today, how do you know which service best suits your business needs, whilst remaining helpful and cost efficient?

Is it even possible? Do I really need a hosting service? Wouldn’t it be more convenient to create an on-premises data centre? I hear you ask.

Well, let me tell you…

Have you ever had a bad dream where you’re at work, things are going well, then all of a sudden you log onto your device. All files are corrupted, documents are missing and vital company records are nowhere to be found? Then, you later discover that an undercover hacker tampered with your servers the night before and managed to steal classified information, whilst causing irreversible damage in the process!

I have and it wasn’t pretty.

The office can be a very vulnerable place, especially when it houses so much valuable information in its servers. However, the good news is that this nightmare doesn’t have to be a reality. Here at Intercity technology we provide world-class colocation services.

If you didn’t already know, colocation allows you to keep your own servers but store them in one of our secure data centres, owned by our partner Vodafone. With features including 24 x 7 onsite security guards, CCTV surveillance with recording and photo ID access, you can be rest assured we have it covered.

After all: ‘with great hosting comes great responsibility.’

Naturally, you’d expect us to be biased because of the fantastic service we provide.

However, when you look at the facts you can see why colocation use is on the rise:[1]

• You remain in control due to your own servers being used.
• Storing your hardware in a data centre saves room at your location and is more cost efficient than having an on-premises data centre.
• You’ll have access to dedicated bandwidth through high capacity Internet connections.[2]
• Generators and battery backup are on standby in-case of power supply issues
• Cooling and air filtration give your equipment the perfect operating environment
• Economies of scale allow smaller businesses with fewer resources to split costs with other colocation customers.[3]
• At Intercity Technology, we offer a fully monitored service, with UK based teams available 24/7 all year round.

The main advantage of colocation (in my opinion), is the security of knowing your hardware is in a protected environment. Most data centres have features that maximise the reliability of IT infrastructures by lowering the risk of outages. In fact, some hosts can provide uptime network rates up to 99.9 %[4], which can equate to higher productivity.

Ultimately, with colocation services you get the best of both worlds. You still have full control over your hardware, whilst using a third party provider to carry out the laborious tasks you don’t want to do (let’s be honest).

With that in mind, using this service can assist you in focusing less time on dealing with technical bumps and will instead help you to spend your precious time focusing on what really matters - optimising your business!

Take a look at our hosting solutions

[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/centurylink/2015/07/15/should-you-outsource-your-data-why-colocation-is-on-the-rise/

[2] http://www.peer1.com/whitepaper/web-hosting-managed-vs-dedicated-vs-co-location

[3] http://blog.caro.net/2014/01/pros-cons-colocation-hosting/

[4] http://blog.caro.net/2014/01/pros-cons-colocation-hosting/