1) The provider should be as close to your location as possible. Someone from your company should be able to get to the location of the servers in a short period of time. Always keep in mind that in a co-location setup, you will be renting valuable IT equipment for your servers. There will be times wherein you might be needed to go to the physical location of the servers for upgrades. Needless to say, if you are too far away from the location, commuting will be too costly.
2) The provider should be able to accommodate you in the instance that you request for bigger and more secure servers. The provider should be flexible enough to give the additional space and bandwidth you need in a timely manner.
3) The provider should be reliable and delivers what it promises. In the IT industry, reliability is measured by uptime. The best providers out there are the ones whose servers have uptime rates of 99.99 percent. This means that the websites they host in their servers rarely go down. Even if a site goes down, it's immediately restored back up within minutes.
4) The provider should be able to deploy the infrastructure WHEN you need it. This attribute goes hand in hand with flexibility and scalability. When you want an upgrade in space, the provider should be able to do it within the time-frame that you want.
5) Take into consideration the financial stability of the server co-location provider. You would be in a lot of trouble if the company suddenly shuts down or goes out of business. You should only choose a provider that is financially healthy.
Choosing a co-location center is a big decision for your business. A lot of your online operations will be dependent on your IT infrastructure. With that said, you need to take the time to scout for a good and reliable provider. Following the tips discussed above should make the search process quicker and easier.
