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Growing sustainability through colocation services
Balancing the desire to upgrade infrastructure and the cost and climate implications of doing so , Sarwar Khan , Global Head of Digital Sustainability , BT , considers colocation as a solution to the complex requirements of financial sensibility , business growth and being environmentally conscious .
Over the past several years sustainability has become a growing priority for most , if not all , organisations . Forward-thinking businesses , consumers and governments alike are increasingly looking at how to increase their sustainability efforts , while many decisions are increasingly being made with enhancing sustainability as an important driver .
One key trend to this end for businesses is moving to hybrid cloud services including colocation . In simple terms , colocation entails renting out a dedicated space for servers and sharing that space with others . Doing so combines a wide range of operational and commercial benefits with potentially substantial sustainability improvements .
Data centres have long been recognised as being a major consumer of global energy . In 2020 , they represented nearly half ( 47 %) of IT energy demand and is expected to grow further to 61 % before the end of the decade . Colocation is a viable solution to this issue for several reasons : it meets the exacting requirements of the IT team , makes clear cost-saving sense and opens up greener ways of hosting and processing data .
As a growing number of organisations are looking to upgrade their legacy infrastructure and move their network and server operations off-site , outsourcing to colocation services also makes sense – it frees up significant budget and space while improving energy efficiency and reducing overall complexity .
For organisations that already have a sufficient IT strategy and expertise inhouse , it ’ s an ideal arrangement . Their IT team retain control of their network , servers and storage , enabling them to manage costs and monitor performance , while the third-party provider takes charge of physical expenditure like cooling , power , bandwidth and building maintenance . Crucially from a cost point of view , the organisation only pays for the resources it uses .
The IT benefits of colocation are particularly compelling . Going the colocation route delivers easy and costeffective connections to multiple network and Internet providers , guarantees the reliability of available power with protection from outages and organisations have the flexibility to scale up and down easily – using only the space and power required at a given time .
Colocation also reduces the need for costly real estate and tenancy agreements , and many providers offer certified physical security as well as cybersecurity , www . intelligentdatacentres . com
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