If you’re a business that relies on producing and relaying a constant stream of content – gaming, entertainment, advertising and media for example – a decrease in video performance can be extremely damaging for your brand, and impact the bottom line.

For media especially, the workflow of digital content requires a balanced ecosystem of filming, editing, post-production, studios and, increasingly, live streaming capabilities.

All of this produces an immense amount of data which needs to be managed and work seamlessly to reduce the risk of downtime or decrease in performance.

Modern media companies are becoming much more mobile so it is inefficient to ‘own’ the infrastructure required to store and manage this data, and it is much more optimal to house data in a location where it can be securely stored and accessed whenever needed.

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On top of this, digital media providers need a sizable and scalable solution to their data requirements – throughout the year many companies will experience increases and decreases in data storage and processing requirements – so being able to easily and efficiently add or detract from their data capacity is essential to business efficiency.

Increasingly, colocation datacentres are becoming the chosen option for data storage due to the number of customisable solutions, which provide the space and power for constant and consistent upload and streaming of content.

Co-location and local data centres

Increasingly, media companies are looking for datacentre solutions which are local to them so they have the ease of accessing the infrastructure whenever they want.

The traditional view of a data centre is a large structure out in the middle of nowhere, but more and more, there is a need for data centres to be at the edge where their customers operate.

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This feeling that the data centre is an extension of the media company, rather than an outsourced solution is becoming more popular, and media companies feel safer with their data management knowing their infrastructure is stored in a location built on resilience, security and optimal environmental conditions.

Along with this, any maintenance needed on the IT infrastructure will require a company’s IT team to travel to the data centre to carry out any work and being forced to travel great distances is not time or cash effective for fast moving businesses.

London, for example, is a hub for multimedia businesses requiring an efficient and effective data centre solution, and having a colocation solution allows the storage of all equipment racks, power, cooling, physical security and reliable connectivity, all within a localised facility which can be easily accessed, and even shared with other media companies.

Colocation data centres are becoming increasingly popular among media companies and form an important part of their day to day operations.

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More organisations have come to understand the problems associated with trying to own and store their own IT infrastructure and in the media industry, this is just not feasible due to the space and scalability required.

The rise of cloud computing and the benefits of being able to instantly upload data from anywhere in the world means data centres have become the de facto homes for data storage and processing in the modern media world.

Sourced by Johnathan Arnold, managing director at Volta Data Centres