Information is the worlds most important commodity. And typically, information is stored as data somewhere on the Internet.

With so much riding on the proper storage, security, and handling of data, it's essential that your business finds the right place to house it all. Proper data management is what makes data centers a valuable asset to any company, whether large or small. But with so many options, how can you decide what matters when making your decision?

This article will explore the top things you need to consider when choosing a data center so you can be sure your choice is the right one.

For many businesses today, colocation just makes sense. It provides the infrastructure and security of a dedicated data center without the costs of maintaining such a facility on your own. By housing their servers in a colocation facility, companies enjoy the benefits of having their servers in the cloud while still maintaining physical control of their systems.

When a manufacturer decides to build a new plant, most build near existing roads and utilities. Taking advantage of existing infrastructure mitigates the costs to the company. Building their own roads and power plant significantly increases the costs of both construction and ongoing operation and maintenance.

Today, information is the main commodity and that information resides on servers. Servers require infrastructure as well; such as power, cooling, connectivity, and security, all built with redundancies and backups. Colocation gives you the ability to to mitigate costs by housing your servers in a facility that provides the infrastructure and physical security to keep your deployment safe and operational.

Colocation gives you control over your systems. You and your tech team can physically access servers at a colocation center as needed.

Early in the wave of the development of the Internet, corporate data servers were typically located on-premises and every business that needed a server was forced to invest significant capital. Servers required their own infrastructure, hardware, and maintenance solutions, for physical servers sitting in a dedicated room/area of the office.

It was resource intensive and expensive, but thanks to innovations in cloud technology and the increasing availability of lightening-fast fiber connectivity, other options have opened up in recent years. While your mileage may vary with what is the right choice, we can provide you with information in the data center vs. server room debate.

Can you imagine the mess you would face if you went 23 years without cleaning out your closets? Unfortunately, that is a frightening reality for the telecom risers and phone closets in many older commercial buildings.

I was touring one building, and in one of their telco closets, there was a whole rack of equipment powered on for a telecom company that had been out of business for five years! Telecom risers play the vital role of housing data and phone communication in commercial buildings from the basement minimum point of entry (MPoE) through vertical risers to commercial tenant offices. Riser infrastructure needs to be managed by professionals to avoid the headaches caused by abandoned cabling infrastructure like fire hazards or damage.

The current state of commercial cable risers can be traced back to 1996 when the Telecommunications Act deregulated the industry. Deregulation meant better price and selection for businesses, but it also led to an influx of telco vendors who were installing cabling in commercial risers. During the same 23-year period, internet technology adoption worldwide grew over 5,944%, and business demand for data bandwidth began to soar. These factors converged into a recipe for very cluttered cabling closets.

Investing in business network performance can yield a high return on investment. Research has found that stronger network performance is associated with more profitable companies, due to cost savings, increased productivity, and lower risk. Not having to worry about the network or constantly troubleshoot it or discover bottlenecks that impede progress are result in your ability to increase the bottom line. If your organization is evaluating the best SD-WAN solutions, you’re on your way to unlocking better network availability, reliability, and reduced administration costs.

But which SD-WAN is the best? How do you know the difference between vendor marketing and solutions which will lead to superior network performance?

According to Gartner, there are over three dozen options for SD-WAN administration. The same survey found that shoppers are overwhelmed with their choices due to a lack of familiarity with the technology and skepticism about how reliably options can perform. If you feel the marketplace is confusing or crowded, you're in the majority among your IT peers. I had one CIO tell me that at a Tech Council cocktail party, he got over five different answers to the question, what is SD-WAN?

Does your business need to be proactive to prevent a distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attack? Would you leave your store or home unlocked? Would you leave your work laptop open and unattended if you left the premises to go retrieve something from your car? Why do I keep asking these blatantly softball questions?

All kidding aside, recent Akamai analysis of the DDoS threat landscape revealed that this type of attack is up 16% in the past year alone. When you drill down into how criminal actors are evolving, the stats get grim. Attacks against applications have increased by 38% in the last year.

The February 2018 “GitHub” attack was the largest DDoS attack on record—more than twice the size of the Mirai Dyn attack which took down Amazon, Netflix, and other major websites in October 2016.

New forms of DDoS are cropping up all the time, including the previously unused “Memcached” technique used in the GitHub attack.

Modern businesses are hungry for bandwidth.

IP traffic is increasing exponentially as organizations are required to support an increased number of:

• Cloud-Based Applications
• Collaboration and Conferencing Tools
• Browsing and Streaming Demands
• File Transfer, Storage, and Backup Requirements
• Mobile and Internet of Things Devices

These expanding bandwidth requirements translate to more complex and costly network administration needs. When coupled with increased cybersecurity threats such as DDoS attacks, organizations are in need of simple and secure ways to administer high-performing networks.

If you’re trying to decide between cloud vs. dedicated server as the right solution for your business workloads, the price is an important factor which can shape your final decision. From the perspective of pure operating expenses, the price tag each month on a cloud service is likely to be lower for many use cases. However, the cloud is not the right fit for every workload, and neither are dedicated servers.

Evaluating cloud vs. dedicated servers solely on monthly costs paid alone is a mistake. There are other factors which should shape your decision. There are both hard and soft costs which can impact total cost of ownership (TCO) and overall client experience.

There is a lot of hype in information technology around the cloud as the "end all and be all" solution for business data, and there’s good reason for that hype. Deployments of cloud technology can offer businesses some serious benefits for many use cases, such as cost savings, scalability, and time to market. According to RightScale research, over 9-out-of-10 enterprises have adopted cloud technologies to some degree, including software-as-a-service and other cloud innovations.

However, there are reasons and use cases where dedicated servers are a better choice than cloud. If a business workload has stringent data security requirements or high availability and uptime requirements, a business’ needs could be best met with server resources that are rented and reserved solely for their needs.