Geographic Diversity: The Strategic Advantage Of Colocating Infrastructure For Disaster Mitigation

Leveraging geographic diversity is a strong defence against localized hazards. Leveraging colocation services provides a cost-effective way to deploy IT equipment in diverse areas. Here is a quick guide to what you need to know.

Understanding geographic diversity in IT

Geographic diversity in IT refers to the strategic placement of critical business IT assets across various distinct geographical locations.

Benefits of geographic diversity

The most obvious benefits of geographic diversity are risk mitigation through enhanced business resilience.

By distributing IT infrastructure across multiple regions and implementing redundant systems, businesses can ensure that a disaster affecting one location does not cripple the entire operation. If a disruption hits one area, businesses can simply switch to one of their backup sites.

There are, however, many corollary benefits to implementing geographic diversity. Here are three of the main ones.

Load balancing and performance optimization: Geographic diversity enables effective load balancing by distributing network traffic across multiple data centers. This not only enhances performance by reducing latency for users accessing services from different regions but also prevents any single location from becoming a bottleneck.

Compliance and data sovereignty: Different regions have varying regulations regarding data storage and processing. Geographic diversity helps businesses comply with local data sovereignty laws by allowing data to be stored and processed within specific jurisdictions.

Scalability and flexibility: By having infrastructure in multiple locations, companies can easily expand their capacity by adding resources where they are needed most. This distributed approach also enables better resource allocation and management, as businesses can dynamically adjust their IT assets to meet varying demand levels in different regions.

Benefits of implementing geographic diversity through colocation

If you’ve taken the decision to implement geographic diversity in IT, then you’ll be looking for the best way to do so. For many businesses, colocation is the obvious choice. Here are five of the main reasons why.

Cost efficiency

Colocation enables businesses to leverage existing, state-of-the-art data center facilities without the substantial capital expenditures required to build and maintain their own. It can also help to reduce operating costs by leveraging the combined buying power of all the customers in the facility. This can unlock volume discounts for which businesses would not qualify individually.

Scalability and flexibility

Colocation is designed to be scalable and, hence, flexible. Using colocation enables businesses to adapt rapidly to changing conditions. This could mean anything from regular business cycles to emerging technology to long-term changes in the market.

Enhanced network performance and reliability

Colocation facilities are typically connected to multiple high-speed network providers, offering robust and diverse connectivity options. Not only does this improve network resilience but it also improves the speed of service delivery for users near the colocation facility.

Advanced security and compliance

Colocation providers offer advanced security measures, including physical security, surveillance, and cybersecurity protocols. These facilities are often certified to comply with various data security standards and relevant data sovereignty requirements.

Guaranteed uptime

If you’re implementing geographic diversity to improve business resilience, you want to be sure that your facility is resilient. In other words, you want to be sure that it will solve problems rather than create them. Reputable colocation facilities can offer guaranteed uptime due to their robust business continuity measures.

Points to consider when implementing geographic diversity

Here are five key points to consider when implementing geographic diversity in IT assets.

Location

Conduct a thorough assessment of potential risks in each geographic location where IT assets will be deployed. Consider natural disasters (e.g., earthquakes, hurricanes), geopolitical instability, and other regional factors that may impact infrastructure. Also, consider where your users are located. Look for opportunities to combine improving resilience with improving service delivery.

Network redundancy and connectivity

Ensure redundant network connections between geographically dispersed locations to maintain connectivity in case of link failures or regional outages. Implement diverse network paths, multiple internet service providers (ISPs), and peering arrangements to enhance resilience and optimize network performance.

Data replication and synchronization

Utilize technologies such as asynchronous replication, real-time data mirroring, and distributed databases to replicate data between sites efficiently. This ensures data integrity and accessibility, enabling continuous operations and seamless failover in the event of a regional outage or disaster.

Disaster recovery planning

Develop comprehensive disaster recovery plans tailored to each geographic location to mitigate the impact of potential disasters or service disruptions.

Define recovery objectives, establish recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs), and implement appropriate backup and recovery strategies.

Test disaster recovery procedures regularly to ensure readiness and effectiveness in restoring IT services and minimizing downtime.

Regulatory compliance and legal considerations

Understand and comply with regulatory requirements and legal considerations relevant to each geographic location where IT assets are deployed. Consider data privacy laws, industry regulations, and international treaties governing cross-border data transfer.