Colo Providers Partner on Disaster Recovery

Disaster recovery concerns are driving partnerships in the colocation business, where customers increasingly are seeking to house their data in at least two separate locations. This push for geographic redundancy works to the advantage of providers with multiple data centers around the country. But regional colocation specialists are arranging "DR swap" relationships in which they provide data center disaster recovery space and services to one another's customers. There were two examples of this trend in the news this week.

MarquisNet, which has facilities in Las Vegas and Riverside, Calif. has announced a joint marketing venture with U.S. Colo, which has data centers in Seattle and Los Angeles. The companies have agreed to market one another's disaster recovery services, making it easier for existing clients to colocate in more than one data center. "Both companies' clients now have colocation centers available spanning the entire West Coast and inland locations to provide offsite data backup," said Paul Reynosa, Director of New Business Development for MarquisNet.

Last week the Westlin Corporation (WSTN) and Zogmo partnered on a dual data center disaster recovery solution for Texas companies. Zogmo operates a premier data center located in downtown Houston, while Westlin maintains an underground "bunker" data center near Montgomery Texas, about 40 miles north of Houston. The two facilities are linked via a private Ethernet connection, and are offering customers a dual data center disaster recovery solution, which includes a dedicated cabinet in each facility with a private 50mbps VLAN between the cabinets and independent Internet uplinks at each site for $2,499/month.