Data centers are more critical to the operation of our businesses than they have ever been in the past, and the criticality increases every day.

The 2017 September/October issue of Mission Critical is also home to our first colocation supplement.

The colocation industry started in the late 1980s and early 1990s when corporations were looking to outsource the facility side of the earliest data centers.

It’s all about the whiz-bang services, or is it?

So much data, so much of it big, and so many, many things.

The term “colocation” historically has more than one meaning. In current usage, colocation (or colo) commonly refers to a data center facility which rents space for servers and other computing hardware.

Has there been a better time than today for the occupants of mission critical environments?

The top complaints users have with their colocation providers

With increasing requirements for data, performance, reliability, and consistency across the network to support modern 24/7, 365 business, data center managers can effectively grow and expand on demand with less cost, fewer headaches, and reduced risk using a modular data center design approach with pre-configured cabinet solutions.

According to recent research from Gartner, the global colocation market is expected to double by 2020 to $50B. Rittal is seeing colocation providers move towards a hybrid cloud strategy to connect hyperconverged platforms.