From the Ground Up: How Colocation America Lays the Foundation for IT Infrastructure Through Space, Power, and Reliable Connectivity

TL; DR: For 15 years, Colocation America has delivered fully-integrated hosting and infrastructure solutions, solidifying its reputation as an industry leader trusted by clients and partners alike. Now, with more than 22 data centers in the US and plans for continued growth through new strategic partnerships, the company is expanding its reach even further. We caught up with Samantha Walters, Colocation America’s VP of Corporate Strategy, who filled us in on how the company achieves its ultimate goal — ensuring business-critical operations stay online and profitable.

My first rental post-college was a quaint townhouse that I adored in every way, barring one quirk: an evident and dizzying tilt so pronounced that if I put a ball on the table, it would roll right off. It was my personal Leaning Tower of Pisa — and, like the famous Italian bell tower, its slope was due to a poorly designed foundation.

Just as buildings require strong foundations to stand tall, businesses need reliable infrastructure to rise above the competition in an increasingly digital marketplace. Take Colocation America, a leading provider of colocation and dedicated server hosting, for example. For 15 years, the company has earned a reputation for meeting clients’ infrastructure needs through best-in-class datacenters across the US — and helping them build upon that groundwork with customized dedicated server plans and managed hosting.

With such a comprehensive range of solutions, Colocation America has fine-tuned its support model to help clients make informed choices. “We’re really about educating our current and potential clients on what’s going on, even from the basic standpoint of providing industry insight,” said Samantha Walters, Colocation America’s VP of Corporate Strategy. “We’re trying to help clients move forward — if we educate and create a smarter audience, we can do more to help them hit their goals.”

With a range of scalable hosting solutions, top-notch datacenters across the US, and a dedicated team of tech enthusiasts focused on education, it’s easy to see how the company is so successful in helping clients compete in the modern eCommerce market.

Colocation America’s tagline, “It’s All About Connections,” is a reflection of the company’s robust infrastructure, which includes 22 datacenters with major hubs in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Miami. All datacenter locations are classified as Tier 3 and operate with N+1 redundancy to ensure 100% uptime. Colocation America also provides customers access to more than 200 bandwidth providers, ensuring some of the fastest connection speeds possible.

“Our success has a lot to do with creating strategic partnerships with other providers,” Samantha said. “We don’t own the datacenters ourselves — that’s never been our model. We do that to provide better pricing and controls.” These strategic partnerships allow the company to build a network spanning the US — including a soon-to-be-announced alliance with a provider in Texas.

The company’s datacenters are fully equipped with redundant power and cooling, the highest level of security, SSAE 16 compliance, and DDoS protection. And, by piggybacking on Colocation America’s infrastructure, clients reap the many benefits of colocation — from lower energy costs to increased bandwidth — without sacrificing service.

Samantha told us Colocation America has found its sweet spot in the face of significant industry consolidation.

“It’s almost a monopoly where a couple of companies are running everything, which makes us a very strategic partner because we provide smaller space for the customers that don’t need a half a cab to a full cab of space,” Samantha said. “We cater to those who understand what they need to get their IT to a comfortable place in their business but may not need a whole cab to do it in.”

Colocation America’s customizable dedicated server packages help businesses reduce upfront costs and ensure performance in a flexible environment. Samantha told us that the company’s scalable plans serve as a strong differentiator in a sea of hosting providers.

“There’s one thing that I’ve grown to realize about our specific collocation business as opposed to everyone else’s,” Samantha said. “Typically, everyone’s looking for a one- or two-cab deal where you’re signed up for three years to save money.”

But what happens when that major client you have either grows too much or not at all?

“When you work with Colocation America, we scale you up and down,” Samantha said. “We want to enable you to get those advantages that everyone was looking for when they went to the cloud; we can do that, too. We really can.”

The company is often flexible in terms of contractual obligations — a rarity in the hosting industry. “As long as you keep your service with us, we’re going to provide that scalable solution that a lot of people are looking for in other ways without realizing that you can have it with specific colocation suppliers,” Samantha said.

In an industry notorious for rushed customer support, Colocation America is refreshingly patient.

“Everyone wants to go so fast in this space, but sometimes you just need to sit down and have a conversation,” Samantha said. “It’s not about the computers — it’s about the people on the other end.”

Samantha often employs what she refers to as the “hand-holding approach.”

“We say, ‘OK, no problem.’ We’ll take that 20 minutes to explain to you what colocation is, and then help you make the decision to either rent equipment and infrastructure from us or buy your own infrastructure and equipment,” she said.

The approach is made even more effective by the fact that a dedicated account representative is assigned to each client — no matter how much the client is spending.

“Some models are right for some companies, and some are right for others, but it all depends on the conversation between the representative and the customer,” Samantha said. “We really do prefer having a little bit more of an onboarding process — I think it’s just better business.”

Beyond the technology, Colocation America strives to keep clients’ big-picture needs top of mind. “We’re not going to be the cheapest out there — we don’t want to play that game,” Samantha said.

Instead, the company continuously strives to fulfill client needs at a price they can afford.

“We’re looking at what companies are trying to accomplish on a broad scale, and that’s usually deploying faster and staying online, so they don’t have to think about it,” Samantha said. “My favorite thing to hear from a client is, ‘I haven’t had to contact you in a year.’ That means we must be doing something correctly.”

When the company isn’t helping customers achieve their goals, it’s focused on advancing the industry itself through its STEM Innovation Grant, a corporate social responsibility initiative that aims to prepare K-12 students for futures in technology. The grant funds programs that offer students an innovative approach to STEM while incorporating developmentally appropriate curriculum and activities that support the real-life application of knowledge.

“We’re trying to make sure our clients and the industry move in the right direction,” Samantha said. To that end, Colocation America is laying a foundation for the future that will ensure all parties stand tall.