Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity : Why Colocation is Your Safety Net

In 2023, the average cost of a data breach climbed to US$4.88 million. Whether caused by cyberattacks, system failures, or natural disasters, these incidents can halt critical operations, damage reputations, and upend carefully planned budgets. For C-suite leaders and IT decision-makers, the question isn’t if a disruption will occur, it’s how quickly their business can recover.

Traditional disaster recovery (DR) strategies often struggle to keep pace with today’s cyber threats, infrastructure failures, and natural disasters. Legacy on-premises solutions can be prohibitively expensive to maintain, difficult to update, and underprepared for issues like ransomware attacks or large-scale infrastructure failures. For instance, a global manufacturer that relied on an outdated DR infrastructure suffered 72 hours of downtime following a ransomware attack, costing it millions in lost productivity and reputational damage.

Many legacy DR solutions fail due to:

• High costs: Maintaining duplicate infrastructure in private data centres drains budgets and limit flexibility. Businesses end up paying for redundant resources that may rarely be used and lack the scalability to pivot when a crisis arises.
• Complexity: Manual failover processes delay recovery. The time spent reconfiguring networks or switching over to backup servers can extend downtime, often at a critical juncture when speed is paramount.
• Limited scalability: On-premises solutions struggle to support cloud-based and distributed workloads. As application architectures evolve, legacy DR setups can’t always keep pace with modern requirements for agility and redundancy.

Colocation: a resilient partner in business continuity

In contrast to traditional DR, colocation provides a redundant, geographically distributed, and often cloud-integrated solution. Its fundamental advantage lies in tapping into purpose-built data centre environments that are designed for high availability from the ground up. This makes colocation a more resilient and cost-effective alternative to help organisations ensure high availability, security, and seamless recovery. Here are more reasons why:

Redundant and secure infrastructure by design

• Colocation facilities, some with up to 99.999% uptime SLAs, are backed by redundant power feeds, N+1 cooling, and multi-carrier connectivity.
• Tiered security protocols, including biometric access, 24/7 monitoring, and on-site security.

Geographic resilience

• With access to data centres spread across multiple regions, enterprises can fail over to a geographically distant location if an  area is affected by a local disaster or cyber incident.
• Aligned to regulatory compliance to support industries like BFSI, healthcare, and manufacturing.

Automated failover and cloud integration

• On-premises and cloud workloads can integrate seamlessly due to direct cloud interconnects with leading cloud providers.
• Automated recovery workflows reduce Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) from days to minutes by automating the failover process.

Making DR manageable

Unlike many legacy setups, colocation-based DR reduces complexity and cost through built-in automation and economies of scale. Redundant infrastructure is shared across a broad customer base, making it more affordable for individual businesses to tap into high-end data centre capabilities. Meanwhile, IT teams can leverage preconfigured workflows that eliminate manual steps—speeding time to recovery when it’s needed most.

Many enterprises find that leveraging colocation for DR simultaneously modernises their infrastructure. A colocation facility may allow them to easily burst into public cloud resources during a crisis or incorporate edge computing capabilities for improved regional coverage, all while centralising their control and monitoring efforts.

Preparing for what comes next

By combining global reach with sophisticated, automated DR workflows, colocation empowers enterprises to create a robust continuity plan that can scale with evolving risks. Leaders no longer need to maintain duplicate data centres with manual processes, yet still maintain granular control over how failover is orchestrated and where their data lives.

Some steps to consider as you factor colocation in your DR plan:

• Assessing gaps: Start by evaluating existing DR strategies and identifying single points of failure or outdated processes.
• Defining RTO and RPO: Clarify acceptable recovery time and recovery point objectives. This step ensures any colocation arrangement aligns with the most critical business metrics.
• Exploring integration options: If hybrid cloud or multi-cloud is part of your roadmap, look for colocation partners offering direct interconnects to leading providers.
• Future-proofing with automation: Seek out solutions that offer built-in orchestration tools, real-time monitoring, and workflow automation. A streamlined handoff in an emergency can make all the difference in avoiding extended downtime.

Securing tomorrow, today

While no disaster recovery strategy can entirely eliminate risk, colocation provides a powerful framework for mitigating disruptions and minimising losses. By leveraging professionally managed, geographically diverse facilities, businesses gain access to high availability, robust security, and quick failover processes—key ingredients for staying resilient in a world where downtime and cyber threats loom large.

Future-proof your disaster recovery strategy

Schedule a DR assessment – Understand the gaps in your existing DR plan.

The capabilities and specifications mentioned in this article do not apply to all owned, managed, and resell data centres under Telstra International’s colocation services. For detailed facility specifications and availability, please contact Telstra International.