Configuring and managing network services in a cloud environment to connect to the myriad of partners, business locations, applications and devices in today’s digital environment can be quite complex. The responsibility to set up, test and manage these services rests with the customer and can be challenging without deep cloud networking expertise. The more endpoints involved, the more complex the process.

Networking costs in a cloud environment can be unpredictable. Usage-based pricing, multiple chargeable components—for example port hours, number of endpoints, distance, and others—and multi-cloud scenarios all contribute to higher-than-expected costs.

Overcoming cloud challenges with multi-tenant data centers

Although the cloud offers great benefits to IT, it does not solve the connectivity challenges to distributed assets. Let’s look how a carrier-neutral, Tier 3-rated multi-tenant data center with rich connectivity can become an integral part of your digital infrastructure.

A multi-tenant data center offers the opportunity to move compute and storage infrastructure into a colocation facility that is highly connected to the networks you need to support today’s distributed IT while leveraging the cloud for suitable applications. Infrastructure within the data center can connect with cloud apps using a hybrid cloud or multi-cloud model, while also connecting to other partners, providers and platforms necessary to support your business. A strong data center partner can enable the agility needed in today’s fast-moving IT environments and can help future-proof your digital architecture. As you evaluate potential options, here are some key considerations for your search:

Reliability

Maintaining 100 percent uptime is the goal. Check for a multi-tenant data center provider with at least a Tier 3 rating (per Uptime Institute’s standards), redundant power distribution and resilient networks with physically diverse routes and latency guarantees. A good data center provider is happy to inform potential clients of their SLAs and reliability record. Often, the reliability of a modern Tier 3 data center will far exceed an older, company-owned facility. When attempting to gain information from a cloud provider, it may be difficult to get the topology or architecture of their network.

Security & Privacy

Placing company infrastructure in a secure data center rather than a cloud environment enables more control, visibility, and accountability. The customer manages the digital security infrastructure as well as the appropriate policies and procedures. The data center provider should be able to describe the multiple layers of physical security in place to protect your company’s equipment.

Application Performance

Multi-tenant data centers can improve application performance in several ways. Performance may be improved through the customer’s deployment of specialized hardware. Tuning certain platform parameters may help application performance by providing control of the hardware, versus not when utilizing a cloud provider’s platform. Finally, application performance can be enhanced by deploying compute resources in data center locations physically close to end customers. Cloud data centers—and even their content delivery locations—tend to be located only in major metropolitan areas.

Compliance

A secure, multi-tenant data center with appropriate certifications housing company-owned infrastructure can often enable businesses to more readily meet their compliance requirements than business-owned data centers or cloud alternatives. For the enterprise doing business in Europe, and the associated General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR) concerns, having sensitive data in a secured colocation space is very attractive. That is especially true with the threat of heavy fines for non-compliance.