Words: Steve Brown MD FluidOne
In the ever-evolving landscape of IT infrastructure, businesses are increasingly evaluating the pros and cons of hosted infrastructure and colocation versus cloud solutions. Both approaches have their merits, but the cloud often emerges as the superior choice due to its cost-efficiency, scalability, and flexibility.
Hosted Infrastructure and Colocation:
Hosted infrastructure involves renting physical or virtual servers and storage space in a data centre from a service provider. This model provides control over hardware and configurations without the significant upfront costs.
Colocation, on the other hand, allows businesses to place their own hardware in a third-party data centre, providing security and power redundancies without the need to maintain a facility. However, while these may be fixed and forecastable costs, these solutions can be expensive and inflexible, with charges escalating as businesses grow and their infrastructure needs evolve.
Cloud Solutions:
Cloud offerings such as Microsoft Azure and AWS provide an alternate set of features and benefits. By leveraging cloud infrastructure, businesses can significantly reduce their capital expenditure and operational costs. The cloud offers on-demand resources, allowing companies to scale their usage up or down based on current needs. This flexibility can lead to cost savings and ensures that businesses are not paying for unused capacity. However, this sometimes comes with a negative reputation of unmetered costs and unpredictable spending as the solution flexes.
Our Thoughts:
While there is a place for hosting and colocation, we’re frequently finding appropriate solutions for our customers with the Cloud alternatives. We recently had a customer that was spending £30,000 per month on hosted infrastructure.
By transitioning to a cloud-based solution, they managed to reduce their monthly expenditure to £13,000. This substantial saving (57%) was achieved through the elimination of unnecessary hardware costs and the adoption of a pay-as-you-go model that aligns with their actual usage.
Additionally, the cloud provided enhanced agility, enabling the company to quickly respond to market changes and scale their operations efficiently.
The good news is, we’re here to discuss your business’ specific needs with you. So, while hosted infrastructure or colocation might be your preferred route, we can explore both of those and cloud solutions to be sure you get the most suitable solution that is cost-effective and as scalable and flexible as you need to facilitate your operational efficiencies.
To discuss your business’ infrastructure needs, contact FluidOne today on 0114 292 3800 or email sheffieldenquiries@fluidone.com.
