APEX from Cage to Cloud: Colocation Simplified

The last 15 years have witnessed a gradual yet decisive change in IT operations. Applications, infrastructure and data have become ever more widely distributed ­beyond the primary data center to public clouds, the edge, and colocation facilities. Colocation (colo) facilities are emerging as a nexus capable of connecting every element of IT. Companies have been steadily adopting colocation to advance their hybrid multi-cloud strategies and to address a host of challenges such as growth, modern application development, staffing and skill sets, and data gravity, privacy and sovereignty.

Until recently, taking advantage of the benefits of colocation also required taking on another layer of complexity. It required a separate vendor relationship with a separate procurement and deployment process, monthly bill and management console. Now, with Dell APEX, organizations can easily procure, deploy and manage colocation services as part of their larger APEX experience. A key tenet of the APEX portfolio is making it simple to take advantage of the world’s most trusted enterprise hardware, software and services wherever you need them, as a service. This now includes colocation facilities in major hubs around the world. Colocation extends the APEX promise, literally from the ground up, from cage to cloud.

Why colo?

IDC predicts that by 2022, 90% of enterprises plan to use colocation services, up from 47% in 2020. And Gartner forecasts that global spend on colocation will reach $34 billion by 2025, with a CAGR of 5.7%. There are a variety of situations when it makes sense to not only consume infrastructure as a service, but to consume the space, power, cooling, security and connectivity supporting that infrastructure as a service too. Some businesses lack the in-house skills to run a data center facility properly, while others simply prefer to devote their IT resources elsewhere. Other businesses turn to colocation facilities when they are looking to quickly grow their physical footprint, either locally or into new regions or countries. Aside from being highly capital intensive, it can take years to get the necessary licenses to build a new facility, with ROIs of a decade or more. Colos can also help simplify business continuity by providing secondary sites for backup or disaster recovery.

Many colos are strategically located next to hyperscaler data centers, such as AWS or Azure. This proximity allows them to provide low latency, multi-cloud connectivity that can deliver strong application performance while also enabling organizations to retain control over their data—both for regulatory purposes and for avoiding potentially costly data egress fees. Colocation can help companies execute on a hybrid cloud-native platform strategy that empowers them to always put the right workload in the right place for the right price.

Colocation services with APEX

We’ve launched our colocation services in partnership with industry leading colocation facility provider Equinix. With the intuitive APEX Console, you can now—in a matter of minutes—order Dell-managed colocation services for APEX Data Storage Services at Equinix International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data centers in the US, UK, France, Germany and Australia. You simply select your desired colocation facility and Dell takes care of the rest—with a single point of contact, a single invoice from Dell and the same console you use to monitor and manage your other APEX services.

This solution makes it easy to build and interconnect foundational digital infrastructure that leverages the best of APEX Data Storage Services and the extensive multi-cloud ecosystem available through Equinix®. These services help you maximize both operational efficiencies and agility, as you can get up and running in as few as 14 days, without ever sacrificing control over your data.

Here are just a few of the things you won’t need to worry about when you run APEX Data Storage Services in an Equinix colocation facility:

◉ Deployment – ensuring site readiness, establishing remote connectivity (providing telemetry for usage and monitoring), installing resources and provisioning.

◉ Monitoring – system performance, capacity, health status and availability. Configuration changes as needed to meet performance and uptime commitments.

◉ Uptime – break/fix management in the colocation sites.

◉ Security – secure remote connectivity; a Dell-managed firewall.

◉ Optimization – proactive capacity expansion and buffer management, as well as storage and multi-cloud connectivity.

◉ Billing – a single invoice from Dell with single-rate transparency and no overage fees for on-demand usage.

Dell takes on the complexity and risk of securing, monitoring and managing your storage services in the Equinix colocation of your choice while you focus on the strategic outcomes that can help transform your business and deliver real value to your customers.

The decentralization of the IT landscape has created new efficiencies and opportunities while also creating challenges such as inconsistent operations. Securing colocation services through Dell APEX helps streamline and standardize your distributed IT operations, providing more consistent, frictionless cloud experiences on top of the industry leading hardware, software and support you trust to run your business.

Source: dell.com