Infrastructure Hosting Services
Often referred to as co-location or hosting, these services are offered through providers that supply space, bandwidth and sometimes full configurations for web hosting, disaster recovery or hot and cold backup sites. While this market flourished in the era, it has lost some momentum as the predicted market failed to materialize. However, there are numerous well funded, well managed providers of these types of facilities across North America. In many cases they offer the needed facilities that can link a corporation to the Internet and keep it connected 24 hours a day.
Key benefits and considerations for these facilities include
Reliability of the facility that is providing the hosting. Provides access to the facility if client equipment in is on premise and then provides fire suppression, and overly sturdy physical building, as well as redundant Internet connections, redundant power grids and then a reliable source of back up power.
Security is often in the form of physical security staff, multiple levels of entry from sign in, to bio-metric scanning that guarantee that only authorized persons enter the facility and when they leave they are checked for any removal of equipment.
Key challenges for the providers as with all Managed Services Providers is keeping the offering straight and simple enough that it can be sold, delivered and administered without too much trouble. While this is not always the case, it is a desirable goal. The fact that a Infrastructure Hosting Service Provider must have available space for many clients, means that they have to manage costs closely while filling up the center to a position where it is cash flow positive as quickly as possible.
While some providers do not offer much else, some do offer basic monitoring of traffic (ingress, egress) and the performance of equipment. This is a great start for the customer to understand their sites performance. Other services from Infrastructure Management Service Providers, Managed Security Service Providers and Storage Management Services Providers can enhance the sites performance and many providers have channel partnerships in which they offer these sorts of services through other companies.
