Easing Hybrid Cloud Implementation Through Colocation

Hybrid cloud solves many challenges of the public and private cloud. However, deploying a hybrid cloud requires expertise. In this article, Ernest Sampera, co-founder, vXchnge, describes how colocation makes hybrid deployments easier to implement and maintain. 

Like most nascent technologies, when the cloud was first introduced, everyone was excited about the benefits. With its ability to lower IT costs by shifting CapEx to OpEx and allowing a third party to do the heavy lifting in the data center, there were many reasons to celebrate the cloud. Early adopters, though, quickly discovered the less attractive sides: headaches related to security, compliance, and cloud deployment management.

As with most new technologies, a compromise between the benefits and drawbacks was eventually reached. In this case, it was the advent of hybrids that made it possible for workloads to move between private and public clouds with the simple click of a button.

Visit the Cloud Experts: Meet Your Local MSP

Managed Service Providers (MSPs) are often sought out for their cloud expertise. But cloud deployments require a reliable infrastructure foundation, and this is where colocation providers step in as partners to support that initial legwork of MSPs. This is particularly true for mission-critical IT teams, whose data and applications must always be available. 

Colocation providers already have the existing infrastructure to securely house private servers and enable access to cloud services and applications, so colocation makes hybrid deployments easier to implement and maintain. Colocation facilities also offer cloud on-ramps. As the name suggests, it creates a direct connection between a private and public cloud and allows colocation users to move between the two environments in a safe and reliable way while avoiding public internet traffic, which is often less secure and slower. 

Additionally, the most recognized names in cloud computing – Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS, and IBM Cloud – rarely offer greater than 99.99% uptime guarantees. By comparison, the best colocation can guarantee 100% uptime. This may seem like a minor difference, but on an annual basis, it becomes a matter of being down for minutes versus hours.

See More: How Colocation Can Future-Proof Your IT Infrastructure

White-glove Care You Can Trust for Sensitive Data

Trust is a frequently mentioned barrier when considering entry to the cloud, so much so that there’s even significant researchOpens a new window on the subject. When you combine it with having to blindly trust a vendor’s word that it’s compliant with standards such as HIPAA for healthcare data and PCI DSS for credit card processing, you can begin to appreciate why trust is a huge factor when selecting the right cloud. Colocation facilities are laser-focused on compliance according to industry standards. 

You need to be able to ensure that your provider’s solution truly is compliant. A colocation provider worth their salt will offer companion solutions, such as a data center infrastructure management (DCIM) solution or mobile app. This solution will allow you to remotely monitor your environment first-hand to see compliance under the standards you require. 

Every technology stack is ultimately only as strong as its foundational infrastructure base layer. With a dogged focus on redundancyOpens a new window , security, and connectivity features, colocation offers an extremely reliable foundation to build upon. Many colocation providers also boast remote handsOpens a new window or teams standing by to offer 24x7x365 on-site technical support for the rare times when things do go awry, something that is not economically viable for MSPs.   

Flexibility for a New World

The COVID-19 pandemic forced businesses to adapt, thus accelerating digital transformation. A McKinsey Global SurveyOpens a new window of executives found that a large portion of them made the equivalent of three to four years of progress in their digital services and operations in the span of a few months. These updates include infrastructure improvements, such as cloud migrations.

By shifting some workloads to a colocation facility, it allowed these businesses to create a hybrid environment by storing some information outside of their own data center and others in colocation. This decision also powered them with a ‘cloudbursting’ alternative: a solution to temporarily give your environment more computing capacity by shifting some of the traffic from a private cloud to a public one, particularly during periods of heavy traffic such as a popular retailer’s site during an annual sale. When the peak demand period ends, the public cloud servers are decommissioned or ‘spun down’.

See More: Why Colocation Is the Best Bet for Reliable and Cost-Effective Data Storage

Ready? Migrating and Maintaining Your Data

To maximize your hybrid cloud ROI, one of the most important things to do is to create well-laid-out strategies surrounding data migration and workload redundancy to properly prepare for unplanned outages. Think of this step as your map to the cloud and ensure you consider factors that range from the simple (who will lead the project) to the trickier ones (ensure you have physical backups in the event of data loss).

Another key benefit of colocation is that they serve as a de facto digital marketplace. That’s because colocation providers act almost like a Lego mat of the cloud. They are often exposed to various new and innovative services that can make your hybrid cloud experience even simpler, facilitating your access to them without necessarily selling them to you as add-ons.

This can be handy for businesses in a world that’s still very much in a global pandemic. Businesses both big and small are still struggling to find the right mix of technologies to use amidst the uncertainty of when and if employees will be returning to the office, how feasible it is for some to continue to work from home, and other such considerations. A problem unique to a colocation customer is one that a colocation provider likely has previous experience in and can prescribe the right solutions to accompany the customer’s set-up.

According to some estimates, hybrid cloud adoption grew nearly 20 percentage points from 2019Opens a new window to 2020Opens a new window . When you pair it with the above-mentioned benefits of a de facto marketplace and direct on-ramps to cloud providers, it’s easy to see why hybrid is rapidly gaining market share. Reaching this cloud architecture utopia isn’t necessarily easy, but with the right resources and partners in place, you can get the best of both public and private cloud.

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