Electricity and Control August 2022

INDUSTRY 4.0 + IIOT

The case for colocation

Colocation facilities (colo), where individual businesses can rent space and power for servers and other computing hardware from ISPs and cloud providers, are growing in South Africa. With the increase in fibre connectivity and the shift to work from home, facilities likeTeraco, Vantage, NTT, and ADC have opened and have grown in recent years due to the further demand from enterprises contending with continued load shedding. Andrew Cruise, MD of VMWare Cloud provider Routed, sets out the pros and cons of colocation.

Andrew Cruise, Managing Director of VMware Cloud provider Routed.

The benefits The biggest drawcard of colo facilities worldwide is the specialised services they offer. The providers have expert facilities managers who have skills in security, power, and cooling – which few enterprises will have in their own data centres. This division of labour lowers risk and addresses many of the concerns enterprises have in running their own data centres. The second reason for the growth in colo is connectivity. The better colo facilities have free peering points as well as private exchanges that serve as onramps into local and hyperscale cloud providers. The prevalence of good value, fast and reliable connectivity into the data centre makes colocation an acceptable option. In South Africa, of course, there’s a third – and very important – reason: colo offers reliable power during rolling power cuts. Enterprises using cloud gain these same benefits, reducing and segregating the operational risk by not having to rely on employees to manage the infrastructure. VMware Cloud, for example, offers migration tools as part and parcel of the solution. The pitfalls Enterprises using owned hardware in colocation facilities benefit from the reduced risk, flexible connectivity, and reliability – and they pay for it. This means it is not for everyone, but for those who do go the colo route, the pricing is generally predictable. There have been several examples in developed countriesof unexpectedoverspendingrunningwildfollowing a move of traditional IT operations-based infrastructure into

of hyperscalers such as AWS or Azure, and private cloud solutions such as VMware. And, for those currently running their own data centres, there is the colo option. This means more predictable pricing, a cloud solution suited to each particular workload, as well as reduced risk and improved connectivity and reliability. Finding the right balance The most important condition for colo and cloud to be viable is fast, reliable, cheap internet – typically provided by fibre optic cable. Fibre has finally penetrated almost all South African metro areas, making colo and cloud sustainable solutions. Realistically, most enterprises will benefit from choosing not between colo and cloud, but a combination of both – and using multiple cloud providers. International examples have made people understand ably sceptical of cloud hyperscalers. There are numerous cases reported on the internet of enterprises failing to com plete the migration to hyperscale cloud due to operational difficulties after re-platforming traditional workloads. Again, we get to learn from their mistakes: moving everything onto a hyperscale cloud seems like a straightforward solution, but the reality is that every cloud provider is not fit-for-purpose for every app. Picking a single platform with a view to keeping things simple can present performance or commercial problems. Using multiple providers introduces complexity to the final solution, but it means each set of workloads will be in an ideal place. It is important to choose the right environment for the right app. Security considerations should be overarching when looking at any kind of hybrid or multi-cloud solution. Combining colo and cloud in a well-connected data centre should facilitate fast, secure, private extension between owned hardware and private and public cloud. There is no single solution for every enterprise. For security and compliance reasons, many enterprises need to be responsible for their own hardware. The key is for businesses to do an audit of their workloads and find the ideal solution for each – whether that’s colo, cloud, running their own data centre, or a combination of these options in different measures. □

hyperscale cloud. This has led to the repatriation onto owned infrastructure or private cloud offered by local cloud operators with predictable price models. In South Africa, we have the benefit of learning from such mistakes. Without going the overspending route, we already know the next step is migration onto the cloud, with a combination

Colo facilities offer the advantage of specialist in house expertise, which few enterprises will have in their own data centres.

For more information visit: www.routed.co.za

6 Electricity + Control AUGUST 2022