Colocation &
Outsourcing
Priorities
John Volanthen, CEO at Hub Network Services (HNS) discusses
the importance of making network diversity a priority.
M
oving IT infrastructure
to one or more
colocation data centres
or cloud services
providers and putting
it in the hands of industry experts,
can be a vital first step in ensuring
business continuity and data
security. However, in the headlong
rush to the cloud, many businesses
are overlooking the principles of
good network design, sometimes
resulting in increased, rather than
reduced downtime.
The trend to move data off
site is gathering unstoppable
momentum. The outsourcing
22 | September 2017
of physical infrastructure from
desktops to data halls provides
many advantages to the modern
enterprise. Converting capital
expenditure to operating cost and
removing the need to manage
hardware are key drivers. The
desire to improve uptime and
reduce costs also factor in the
decision making process.
In the head-long rush to the
cloud, businesses often overlook
the impact on uptime that housing
infrastructure on premises
previously provided. Locating
servers at headquarters or in
each satellite office often enables
workers to continue to function
in the event of a communications
network failure.
Centralising, and moving
that infrastructure off site
either to a data centre, or to
a cloud provider leaves the
business totally dependent on
the network infrastructure to
function. This is especially true
for organisations operating call
centres. Moving telephony to
cloud platforms offers significant
benefits, however without
suitable backup connectivity loss
of data services leaves operations
dead in the water.