Planning and implementing your IT infrastructure is one of the most important decisions you will make for your business. Having a plan for your IT infrastructure can lay the pathway for future growth and new business opportunities. Knowing when to scale up versus scaling out will help you set this plan effectively and efficiently.
How to know when to upgrade your in-office servers?
Things might have changed in your business since you acquired your IT equipment. Your business may be growing faster than expected, and your equipment just isn’t working anymore.
- What do you do if you don’t have access to the servers in your office? Unlike natural or man-made disasters, a pandemic could affect multiple areas at the same time, and makes it necessary to tell employees not to come into the office, how will you have access to your mission-critical data or IT resources?
- What are the potential physical risks to your data if it is currently stored in an onsite server?
- Do you have an effective backup plan in place for your critical information, and has it been tested recently? Have you been able to recover data easily and quickly?
Having your servers physically in your office takes up space for a rack or server room/closet, in addition to dedicated IT support. Your business may even be required to comply with new regulations mandating additional security and storage. Unlike your office server room, data centers deal with risk assessment and management every day as well as play a crucial role in being the central point of access for data and essential business applications. Moving a business’ mission-critical data, IT resources, or backup systems to a colocation data center is an attractive option for any business worried about business continuity if they are not able to access their servers.
Scale up your IT infrastructure – How a data center can help
Businesses need to grow in order to be successful, and if your business isn’t prepared for that growth from an IT perspective, it can crash and burn. Scalability is a must-have for any IT environment. At some point, after you buy your initial storage solution, you will most likely have to expand it. Resources such as CPU, network, and storage are common targets for scaling up. The goal is to increase the resources supporting your application to reach or maintain sufficient performance. The choice to scale-up vs. scale-out storage is fully dependent on the kinds of workloads you’re running and your expansion needs.
For expanding businesses, colocation is often more cost-effective than in-house data storage. Storing your data in a third-party data center reduces IT costs and eliminates the need for onsite IT professionals. Renting space in a shared co-located facility reduces overhead costs, including cooling and power. The other advantage is the availability of expertise to help you decide when and how to expand your IT infrastructure. Moving a business’ mission-critical data, IT resources or backup systems to a colocation data center is an attractive option for any business worried about business continuity if they are not able to access their servers.
Check out our recent post that may help you decide on how to choose the best infrastructure technology for your business?
Digital Transformation FAQs
Digital transformation is the process of using digital technologies to create new — or modify existing — business processes, culture, and customer experiences to drive growth in new and existing markets.
The speed of digital processes is considered to be way faster than the traditional processes. A strong digital workplace can revolutionize any business. Adapting quickly to digital technology is becoming crucial for businesses to stay in the race. Any business not undergoing a digital transformation risks commercial obscurity as it gets left behind while its competitors evolve to meet the new reality.
Digital transformation can help you reshape your business to create value, gain a competitive advantage, meet your customers’ expectations, and drive more revenue.
Engage Customers
Empower Employees
Optimize Operations
Transform Products
Across any business, regardless of size, industry, location, or profitability, changes that impact the entire organization need to be planned and managed to ensure success. In order to implement a successful digital transformation, you will need a strategy:
– Why does this need to take place?
– Which departments would this impact?
– How long would it take to complete?
– Is this internal or would it impact our customers?
– What would happen if we do not do this?
A colocation provider can offer you predictable costs and dynamic scalability that gives your business the flexibility to respond faster to the ever-changing business environment. Colocation can also prepare your business for (future) expansion. To learn more about how ColoHouse help scale your business, Please contact us at sales@colohouse.com or +1 305-731-2225.
