Scaling a business infrastructure

Developing a strategy for technology infrastructure is no longer just a concern for large-scale enterprises, but also for the smallest businesses. Working with outsourced data centres like the Etisalat Cloud Services, will provide smaller businesses better scalability resources as they g and expand.

In today’s fast-moving, interconnected economy, a company’s IT solutions can either empower it to compete in an increasingly cded market or hold it back. Developing a strategy for technology infrastructure is no longer just a concern for large-scale enterprises, but also for the smallest businesses. If an organization doesn’t have a plan in place to address its future data and computing needs, it can be caught in a situation that makes it impossible to respond to changing circumstances or take advantage of unexpected opportunities.

For many smaller businesses, building and maintaining a private, on-premises data centre is a capital expense that’s simply beyond their means. The estimated cost of building a data centre can be quite prohibitive. For a typical small business, an outsourced data centre offers a great option for their IT infrastructure requirements. Whether a company decides to co-locate its own hardware in a facility or utilise data centre as a service (DCaaS) plans to maintain flexibility, data centres can provide a cost-effective IT solution that can be scaled quickly and effectively.

A good data centre will allow a business to do more, spend less and improve your speed to market.

More storage

As we move into 5G and adopt newer and faster technology, the amount of data being generated will continue to increase, prompting many businesses to explore its storage options for storing some of this data for later use or analysis. Legal obligations may also require them to hold information for a set period of time before it can be deleted, forcing the company to maintain sufficient storage capacity as a pure expense.

For small businesses, using a co-located data centre to address its storage needs can increase its capacity quickly and easily by adjusting its current plan to accommodate anticipated workflow and effective data backup solutions. Services like Etisalat’s Managed Cloud Solutions offers options pre-packaged storage sizes to suit businesses of all sizes, allowing for better (and faster) scalability.

Better computing resources

In addition to data storage, much of the data companies gather is often unstructured. There is a lot of potential insights to be found in that data, but they need to be analysed. Sophisticated algorithms and machine learning software can draw valuable insights from this data, but they require a lot of computing resources to do it.

By purchasing additional cloud-based computing assets from a co-located data centre as part of their ongoing services, all ging businesses can deploy the same “big data” analytics that used to be limited to the biggest companies in the market. For a small business, adding extra computing resources on demand through a data centre allows them to improve productivity and expand services rapidly, without having to wait to get new infrastructure in place. Even better, if the company’s computing demands cycle based on annual activity, it can structure its colocation data centre plan accordingly to account for these usage patterns.

Better connectivity

Colocation data centres offer a wide range of connectivity options, allowing organizations to custom build their infrastructure needs from the ground up and rearrange them on the fly. Companies can select partners based on their current and future bandwidth needs, or choose to use a blend of providers for better reliability and security. They can also select from a range of public cloud providers or elect to structure their own hybrid or multi-cloud architecture all within the data centre environment.

Stronger security

Scaling operations often mean that businesses need to take better care of their data security. As they expand and offer new services, the data and applications that are critical to their business become increasingly valuable. Protecting those assets is crucial to sustained success, but implementing thorough security measures such as video monitoring, on-site security personnel, and biometric authentication may be prohibitively expensive. By co-locating key assets with a data centre, a small business can gain peace of mind thanks to the facility’s state of the art physical security and logical access protocols.

Working with outsourced data centres like the Etisalat Cloud Services, will provide smaller businesses better scalability resources as they g and expand.