Long gone are the days when on-premises data centers were the center of the action. In a recent survey, respondents revealed what they’re using in their hybrid infrastructure mix: on-premises (29%), multicloud (44%), colocation (49%), hybrid cloud (62%), public cloud (68%) and private cloud (70%)¹. 

As the infrastructure mix changes, so do considerations related to workload placement. Every decision has implications for risk, security, compliance, cost, performance, redundancy, diversity and resilience. And now edge computing is part of the discussion. All these variables complicate decisions, especially since decision makers have to put a stake in ground that’s constantly shifting. 

How to Think About Workload Placement

Let’s look at a few hybrid IT considerations that factor into workload location:

• Diversification. Reliance on a single provider or single computing architecture increases risk. And, diversification can make it easier to attract different kinds of customers, expand into new markets and meet your objectives for security, scalability and disaster recovery.

• Total cost of operation (TCO). In the rush to the cloud, many enterprises went all in. But they’ve experienced unexpected cost increases, performance fluctuations, compliance issues or other concerns. As a result, enterprises are moving some workloads off public clouds to another cloud provider, into colocation (including bare metal servers) or back on-premises. Also, CapEx versus OpEx spending is a big part of TCO discussions. Part of the appeal of colocation is its flexible OpEx, pay-for-what-you-use pricing. 

• Application performance. How much latency is acceptable for your use case? Performance speed is affected by connectivity, servers, size of data, the task and distance. But blazing speed isn’t necessary for every application. Think about email compared to streaming video or IoT data transfers on which autonomous vehicle operation depends. Milliseconds matter in some cases, but not all. 

• Control. Perhaps you’ve heard the expression, “colo is the new on-prem.” Dedicated or private clouds can be part of your company-owned data center or part of your colocation solution. Colocation offers the same control over data and platforms that you get with an on-premises data center – and it provides diverse, highly secure connectivity and technical support. But keep in mind for workload placement decisions that cloud environments can decrease control. Cloud providers own the infrastructure and management responsibilities are shared. As-a-service solutions such as IaaS and PaaS are the farthest behind the curtain.

Are there other technical, financial and operational considerations? Of course. The point is that you’ll want to be systematic about rating or prioritizing decision factors by type of hybrid infrastructure (on-premises, colocation and so on). 

‍Patterns of Workload Distribution

Despite the myriad variables that factor into workload location, patterns have emerged. Here are a few highlights from the State of the Data Center report:

• Colocation is the platform of choice for performance-oriented core applications such as enterprise resource planning, content delivery/media processing, business intelligence (BI)/data warehouse and data analytics applications and IoT applications.
• Cloud remains the preferred platform to run development/test and identity and access management workloads. Cloud is also dominant for storage/backup and archival workloads, especially for tiering storage for data that isn’t required day-to-day.
• On-premises environments will be favored for AI/ML workloads, customer relationship management (CRM) and mobile apps. 
• Systems with personally identifiable information (PII) requirements are less likely to stay on-premises this year compared to 2020.
• Storage/backup, BI/data warehousing and other line-of-business (LoB) applications are moving away from the cloud. 
• LoB, databases, ERP apps and data analytics, which all are key to digital transformation, are increasingly colocated.
• Workloads with sensitive data are likely candidates for colocation, not cloud.

Colocation Hybrid IT Advantages

Cloud adjacency puts hardware and dedicated workloads close to the public cloud and provides access to cloud onramps (for CoreSite customers). The result? Reduced latency. A few colocation providers offer direct connection to the major cloud service providers – an operating advantage that reduces data replication costs by as much as 70% and eliminates data egress costs when restoring data from certain local cloud availability zones.* Additionally, direct connections keep data off the internet and associated security vulnerabilities.

CoreSite is a colocation provider that supports an ecosystem consisting of enterprises, IT service providers, managed services providers, network operators, cloud service providers, content delivery networks and other businesses. Interconnection (through private, physical connections) enables enterprises in the ecosystem to exchange data. Because they all are side-by-side in the same data center, it’s easy to do business together and create frictionless customer experiences.

Also, when colocation is part of the hybrid infrastructure, enterprises are better able to optimize their IT staff’s productivity and computing resources. With fewer workloads to manage on-premises, for example, IT staffs can focus on ways to differentiate a business through innovative customer services, business process improvements, partnerships or other initiatives. 

Nearly half of enterprises already use colocation in their hybrid IT mix. It’s the smart choice for many workloads, and the added bonus of an ecosystem and interconnection can accelerate digital transformation.

For more information, take a look at the State of the Data Center infographic and download the entire report.