As the evolution of data continues to drive requirements for high performance scale at lower cost, cloud computing is inevitably a topic of discussion. Enterprises are increasingly migrating select applications and workloads from a dedicated, on-premises data center to public or private cloud environments as business requirements fluctuate. When IT departments move to this hybrid IT architecture, they need to consider how easily they can connect to the cloud providers they leverage today, and which clouds they may need to access in the future.
Considerations When Building a Hybrid Cloud Solution
An enterprise that hosts its own data center solution on-site and chooses to move specific workloads into and out of the cloud will need to build out separate network connections to each cloud or supporting provider that it employs. Many businesses require secure, highly-available solutions and subsequently invest in redundant paths and/or layer two connections to support those requirements. These costs add up quickly and often result in significant investments in network connectivity before the cost of store-and-compute is even factored in. When organizations place their hybrid clouds within a high-performance colocation facility, they immediately address concerns around latency and cost from both an infrastructure and a connectivity standpoint.
Colocation Addresses Performance, Complexity and Cost Challenges
Hundreds of major cloud and IT providers entrust their mission-critical infrastructure to the extremely performance-sensitive environment of our colocation facilities. That same environment is also offered to our enterprise end users. This means not only can an enterprise build its private infrastructure in the same data centers trusted by world-class cloud providers, it also can link to those clouds within the facility through real-time, high bandwidth one-to-many connection options. These connections provide a higher performance, lower latency alternative to network builds—at a fraction of the cost.
While SLA-backed performance and reduced networking costs sound attractive, many IT executives find the idea of migrating data to a new facility daunting. Look for a colocation provider with an ecosystem that can help to mitigate these concerns. In addition to the cloud, network, and enterprise customers that reside within the facility, a colocation provider should also host an array of managed service providers. These organizations can help with data move and migration, onboarding, orchestration, and more.
Learn about how CoreSite can help you with your hybrid IT infrastructure.
