03-27-13 | Blog Post
For Michigan businesses of all types, outsourcing your IT infrastructure to a Detroit colocation provider can mean significant cost-savings, increased mission-critical data and application availability, and easy remote management. Choosing a Michigan data center facility eases the stress of installing and managing servers far from Michigan business locations. However, a quality managed colocation provider will design and professionally install your servers, no matter where you’re located.
For Michigan companies with limited budget or staff, managed colocation can provide server monitoring, support, high availability power and networks, and still allow you to have remote access to manage your own servers from any location and at any time.
Leasing, or outsourcing your IT needs means you can avoid major capital and upfront costs, from building and property expenses to mechanical and electrical equipment to power, the expense that accounts for 70-80 percent of the total costs of running a data center. Find out what other expenses are involved in Key Benefits of Leasing vs. Building a Data Center, an article I wrote over a year ago but still remains relevant to those considering the benefits and costs of either option.
In addition to freeing up internal resources and installation concerns, colocation with an audited data center provider means you can take advantage of their investment in security and compliance standards. If you partner with a data center provider that hasn’t undergone independent audits and can provide an audit report proving compliance, you may have to foot the cost of an additional audit. Read Data Center Standards Cheat Sheet – From HIPAA to SOC 2 for a briefing on each standard and what they mean.
This is particularly relevant to the healthcare industry – software as a service (SaaS) healthcare companies can benefit from colocation, but to avoid a data breach and federally mandated consequences, they must ensure their colocation providers can meet and maintain ongoing HIPAA compliance. Check your colocation provider’s HIPAA report on compliance to ensure their physical, technical and administrative security controls are up to par.
One case study that exemplifies successful HIPAA compliant colocation with a software as a service company is MedHub, a healthcare software company that provides services to major academic teaching hospitals nationwide, including the University of Michigan. Online Tech’s HIPAA compliant data centers are not only audited annually for compliance, but the infrastructure design is strategically comprised of fully redundant power, network and backup to provide uninterruptible power and network connectivity to the SaaS company. In addition to HIPAA compliant colocation at our Ann Arbor data center, MedHub uses our web-based client portal to remotely manage their servers. Read MedHub Leverages HIPAA Compliant Colocation from Online Tech.
Find out more about Online Tech’s Michigan data centers offering Detroit colocation services, located an hour away from Detroit, Michigan, and why we’re an ideal location for high availability and disaster recovery (since we’re supported by two different commercial power grids, we keep running despite any DTE power issues.
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