How to determine which colocation fits you best?

There really is no short answer to that question since it varies by company requirements. The first step in the process would be to identify your specific requirements. Here are some of the key deciding factors to review:
• Location – How important is the proximity of the colocation facility to your IT staff? Can managed services help off-set distance to your equipment?
• Location vs. Costs – We find that pricing for colocation space can vary tremendously by city and state. Some areas offer low cost power and colocation space and some areas offer tax incentives.
• Data connectivity – While pricing for internet access is fairly consistent from data center to data center, you can save an additional 25-50% by selecting the right colocation facility. Another consideration is whether the colocation facility is bandwidth neutral or not. This allows you to buy services directly from the carriers without a markup from the data center.
• Power back-up – Make sure you thoroughly understand how your equipment is supported in the data center. Do you require multiple redundant UPS and diesel generator power systems?
• Watts per square foot – Colocation facilities are evaluated based on watts per square foot as it relates to cooling and power service delivery. Try to select a colocation facility with slightly higher watts per square foot than you require for future growth. If your power requirements per square foot are low and you are in a data center that has a very high power per square foot ratio, you will probably pay a lot more for that space because the ROI requirements of the data center are much higher.
• Reputation – Make sure you check with existing colocation customers and ask how well they are treated at the data center. You might be surprised!
• Special requirements – Do you have PCI, CISP, ISO, HIPAA and SARBANES-OXLEY compliance requirements? Make sure your colocation facility can meet your current requirements and any requirements you might have in the future.
• Natural Disasters – Various areas of the US have natural disaster issues. If they are significant, you might want to consider another area or make sure the data center has mitigated most of the concerns by putting things in place to offset them.
• Contracts and SLAs – Make sure you review the contracts and Service Level Agreements carefully. They vary considerably by data center especially when it comes to penalties for not meeting certain service levels.

This is only a partial list but will get you going in the right direction. There are well over a 1000 data centers nationwide to choose from. If you have further questions, you can contact us at www.DataCenterAndColocation.com or 619 365-9236. We are a data center site-location consulting firm.