Judges Choice Awards 2024, Acquisition International | 11 perspective, serviced offices are more vulnerable to cyber-attacks because they use less secure connections to keep the costs low. Finally, serviced offices have limited space for businesses looking to grow. By having a limitation on room-size, this can restrict business attempts to scale their IT infrastructure, because their office operators need to prioritise space for furniture etc. Colocation data centre When it comes to digital infrastructure, serviced offices often bring challenges for high-growth businesses. It is difficult for them to operate their own, expensive property facility or carry their everexpanding infrastructure with them. On the other hand, businesses can experience a lack of control over their own technologies, so are forced to reduce their control over systems, and key processes. Then there is the case of growth not being a ‘one time deal’ for businesses. It goes beyond legacy on-site strategies, expansions and adapting their infrastructure with every opening of a new facility. With a colocation centre, businesses can move their IT infrastructure, while focusing on their growth and agility. Firstly, businesses can exploit a flexible office space to move, optimising their capital expenditure (CAPEX) investment and operational expenditure (OPEX), by acquiring the minimum they need. In context, this is often a complete migration to OPEX as businesses seek to release themselves of expensive liabilities. The increased agility can fuel businesses to expand their operations. They also receive reassurance of greater security, and as they evolve, their colocation partner can also advocate a wider range of suppliers in connectivity, and ecosystems. Business operations can become more resilient as the colocations provides managed connectivity, power and cooling issues which can assist their sustainability concerns. The issue however for businesses, is finding the right colocation partner who are local to them, available for support across the UK and can deliver transparency at a reasonable price. However, once a business finds a suitable colocation supplier, than they can benefit by splitting their IT infrastructure into a dedicated colocation space and benefit with the best of both worlds. They can gain an optimal operation focus with more control over costs and greater flexibility to grow. Adopting an interconnected approach To optimise any IT infrastructure migration, businesses need to clarify their approach within the decision-making process. They can do that in five simple steps: 1. Establish what the data is going to be used for and thus, the primary attributes in successfully managing it. Is speed of access the top concern? Or security? Or real-time analysis? Consider scalability, business continuity and disaster recovery. 2. Define the technologies that will most effectively serve these key purposes. Technically, this means assessing space, power, cooling, and connectivity requirements and accounting for data volume, bandwidth, and downtime. 3. Find and connect with suppliers in those spaces that are prepared to become real partners. In a digital, data-driven age, the software and infrastructure a business is built on, matters. Tour facilities and develop service level agreements (SLAs). 4. Develop a detailed migration plan that anticipates delays and establishes clear definitions of success. Install and configure hardware to achieve this, spanning routers, switches, firewalls, load balancers and virtualization platforms and hypervisors if applicable. 5. Keep on eye on the future: embracing data and taking steps towards managing and optimising it, typically accelerates growth for a business. As such, businesses must ensure that any strategy to put the data in the right place now, does not mean it is in the wrong place tomorrow.
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