As your business grows, so does the demand on your technical infrastructure. Your technical resources must be ready to support your growth. If they aren't, you risk slowing down your growth rate while you spend time and money catching up the infrastructure to your needs. You can smooth out this process by using shared data center resources. Here is how the colocation concept can keep your small business on its rapid growth path.

The Colocation World

Providers of colocation resources maintain large data centers running the latest technology. They handle the data center management for you while you focus on your company's expansion. These resources are shared among many businesses as well as the expenses required to support the hardware, software, network, security, power and environmental requirements necessary to keep such a large infrastructure running efficiently.

Your Business Moves Its IT Costs to the Colocation Provider 

When using colocation, you become the consumer of the technical resources, but you no longer have the burden of managing them. This affects your budget and your staff's time in several ways:

• You'll no longer need to manage the physical environment needed to support your infrastructure requirements.
• You'll only need a small number of technical staff in-house to support the business.
• You'll quickly have access to additional resources as your company grows.
• You'll shift equipment costs from your capital to your expense budget.

Shared Resources Still Gives Your Options to Customize

Colocation does not force a one-size-fits-all model on you where you must adapt your business to their offerings. Your technology needs may be met by the current servers and network equipment provided by the colocation vendor. This immediately gives you access to the latest technology available.

But should your business rely on custom solutions, such as for data collection and management, the provider can host your equipment. You still gain the benefits of the provider's facility, security and environmental controls.

Your Growth is More Manageable

Planning the technical resources for growth can be daunting. You may be unsure of how much growth will happen over a period of time. You can end up with more capacity than you need or not enough to meet the growth. With colocation, you'll gave access to additional resources as you need them.

Your provider can give you additional resources to parallel your growth rate. You won't be paying for resources you aren't currently using and you won't have to worry about a lack of resources slowing down your growth rate. The colocation model is a good choice to make sure your technology needs are met at whatever growth rate your business is experiencing.