As the servers that power your business continue their march out of the office in favor of cloud services and dedicated remote facilities, you may soon find yourself wondering why you ever hosted your own servers locally.

Before you can move your systems and files offsite, though, you’ve got to contend with a tough decision: to use a service for distributed cloud-based servers, or migrate to a shared “colocation” facility - or a mixture between the two.

Before we get into all of the factors to consider when making this decision, though, understand no matter which direction you opt for, you can’t necessarily go wrong. In some situations, the cloud might make more sense, and in others, a colocation facility may be somewhat better. But either way, any move that involves taking your servers off-premises is a good move.

Considering a move to the cloud? If you've been perusing information on the web and doing your research, you know the costs of moving to the cloud versus the costs of running your own data center are a big decision factor.

Don't get distracted by promises of reduced costs.

Bottom line savings are great, but there are other factors that need to be considered. In addition to price, consider these 4 elements to help you determine whether cloud-based computing or a data center is more appropriate for your organization.

If your business is struggling to keep up with growing data assets and risk management, you're far from the only one. Surveys of IT managers reveal that keeping up with capacity growth needs and securing redundancy are two of the most common hosting challenges today. The costs of creating a fully-redundant and sufficiently large on-premises deployment are just out of reach for many organizations.

Over the past year, the percentage of organizations using a private cloud server grew from 63 to 77%. The vast majority of cloud users (71%) are now using a combination of public cloud services like Azure or Amazon Web Services (AWS) and private cloud. If you're already using Azure or AWS, you may be considering a move to your own cloud server. In this blog, you'll learn about whether you're a good candidate for switching, as well as best practices for making the change.

Is colocation the answer to your search for the perfect internet infrastructure? If you run a small-to-medium business that lacks the expertise, space, or funding to operate an infrastructure substantial enough to support your growing business, the answer is a resounding yes.

Without your data, you may not have a business. However, the exploding volume of data at most organizations partnered with evolving compliance requirements have made backing up your assets more challenging than "just sticking it on a tape." Today's organizations need to consider regulatory requirements like HIPAA and Sarbanes-Oxley, geographic redundancy, and time-to-restoration service level agreements.

Data loss is the basis of every IT managers' worst nightmare. On an industry-wide basis, the cost of lost or stolen data access is estimated at $1.7 billion per year. Inclement weather, unreliable hosting, and equipment failures are just three of many factors that can result in lost data access. Depending on your redundancy and continuity planning, this lost access could be permanent.

Understanding cloud options isn't simple. While the term cloud means "moving complex computing workloads off premises," your options aren't as simple as cloud versus not-cloud. Furthermore, as Tech Target points out, a lack of standardized terminology in the cloud community makes things even more complicated. While cloud is here to stay, when it comes to picking the right kind of cloud, your options are different than they were just last year.

The role of data centers has rapidly evolved for the past decade or so. What started out as mere storage facilities for racks of servers and networking equipment are now providing full-scale interconnectivity with other networks, cloud services and disaster recovery. As a result, the digital economy has become dependent on data centers. They've become the Central Offices (the wire centers for the phone companies) of our times.

Studies have found that 93% of businesses that lose access to their data assets for 10 days or more file bankruptcy within 12 months. Let that sink in. Regardless of whether you're in the healthcare, manufacturing or retail industries, constant data access is at the core of your ability to serve customers. It can also be used to differentiate you for your competition. Making the decision to outsource your hosting to a data center is a leap of trust for many IT managers, all in hopes of ensuring better business continuity and reliability. A good choice here can be the difference between staying in business or liquidating all your assets.