Data daycare

The holy grail of any enterprise is to minimize cost and maximize profit. And as we enter an era that subsists on technology, going digital may be the best cost-effective solution - this is where colocation comes in. Especially, with the proliferation of the tertiary sector in Bangladesh, the demand for colocation is on the rise. To shed light on this burgeoning colocation industry, Dhaka Tribune sits down with MD Shoroer Morshad Porag, the COO of Dhaka Colo. 

What is colocation?

From maintaining an online presence to the upkeep of internal data management, every business requires servers. Servers are like the base of operations of a digitalized company. Information and data are stored on servers, which make it accessible to employees as well as customers. Every server has a fixed storage and bandwidth capability - the transmission capacity of a computer network. Small companies may face difficulties in actively maintaining server racks, as specialists have to be employed to manage this sector and a significant amount of office space has to be dedicated to housing the servers. However, by availing the help of collocation servers businesses can cut down on costs and mental hassle. Colocation providers can offer customers the option to house their servers in cabinets (a locking unit that holds a server) with cooling units, or in suites (areas enclosed by solid walls, entered via a locking door).

Dhaka Colo

The COO of Dhaka Colo stresses the need for heightened awareness in the industry about colocation services. Companies are often hesitant to hand over their server work to colocation services as they find it difficult to trust the legitimacy of these organizations. Shoroer addresses these fears by showcasing how the boons of relying on a colocation service clearly outweighs the banes. 

Cutting Costs

Dhaka Colo keeps their servers in a climate controlled environment, with high bandwidth speeds, and in-house staff to tend to the servers at anytime. However, the cost to purchase and maintain IT infrastructure on this level can be overwhelming for firms. Dhaka Colo was created to cater to businesses’ IT needs. Thus, by bringing Dhaka Colo into play, firms will not only cut down on costs, but also increase efficiency and productivity.

Moreover, for most online business the demand varies from month to month. So instead of having to hire employees in the IT sector when demand rises, or lay off employees when demand falls, customers can alter their computing needs, scaling the service up or down, with just a call to Dhaka Colo. 

Data Lockdown

Power outage, moving offices, and natural disasters are just some of the many complications that can arise for a firm and its data storage system. However, Dhaka Colo has an array of security measures, multiple backup generators, and backup storage in different locations, to ensure that their service is never disrupted. Dhaka Colo has a data centre located in Chittagong to serve this purpose. 

Shoroer also talks about how server downtime - periods when a website is temporarily unavailable due to glitches in the server -  can be a major concern for thriving online businesses such as banks, e-commerce websites and cloud-based companies. To counter this, Dhaka Colo is proud to be one of the very few data centres in Bangladesh with Tier 3 standard. The key attributes of a Tier 3 colocation service are the redundant and always active power supply, along with minimal planned and unplanned downtime. It is concurrently maintainable, meaning that any segment of the data centre could be taken under maintenance, without affecting the rest of the servers. It guarantees 99.982% availability with fractionally less than two hours of downtime per year. 

Dhaka Colo offers the best support, security and practice in the colocation market. It is not only one of the largest internet gateway providers in the country, but also the leading cache  service provider in Bangladesh, for internet moguls like Facebook and YouTube. Web cache is a store of data of the most frequently or recently visited webpages. This is preserved in order to boost the speed of retrieval of information that is searched regularly, by pulling information from local systems instead of the internet. Apart from this, they also provide IGW (International Gateway) services, which is for companies handling international calls.

Dhaka Colo provides an array of services for its customers. They provide a plug and play service where the enterprises can bring their existing servers and hand it over to Dhaka Colo for standard management. The engineer of the enterprise in question may set up the server and Dhaka Colo will take over the connectivity, security, power, cooling and regular maintenance of the servers from that point onwards. Another service they offer is managed hosting. Customers can essentially rent out servers from Dhaka Colo, instead of having to purchase it. They may request a certain amount of cloud space and computing power such as processor and RAM, and Dhaka Colo will set up a virtual server for them according to the requirements. This server can then be accessed from anywhere in the world. Dhaka Colo can set this up for their customers in under 1-2 days, whereas, a firm would need months to set up its data centre as it depends on hiring engineers, facilitating power, enabling connectivity and so much more.

The current international market trend indicates huge potential for colocation services, especially in developing countries like Bangladesh. In countries like Singapore, barely any companies maintain their own data centres as colocation simply proves to be the wiser option. Businesses in Dhaka can reap the rewards by working collaboratively with the auxiliary industry of colocation. By harnessing the faculties of colocation, organisations such as Dhaka Colo are assisting the much needed digital dispersion in Bangladesh.