Is your in-house server room an investment — or a bottomless money pit? On paper, everything looks simple: server hardware, licenses, electricity. But what about the costs you don’t see in the monthly report? The salary of the team constantly “putting out fires” (sometimes literally), the downtime caused when an excavator cuts a cable, or the investment in systems that protect you from disaster?

Let’s break down the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of maintaining your own server room — and compare it with the predictability and safety of colocation, a service that allows you to place your IT infrastructure in a professional Data Center instead of maintaining your own facility. A Data Center means high-level security, redundant power, precision cooling, and 24/7 technical oversight — all within a predictable monthly fee instead of large capital expenditures.

Infrastructure and Physical Security Costs

Let’s start with the basics. A server room is not just a rack placed in a spare office. To operate professionally, it needs a stable, secure environment. Add up the costs of:

Power supply:

Do you rely on a single power source? What happens if it fails? Professional Data Centers like ours use two independent power feeds, UPS systems, and powerful generators. How much would it cost your company to recreate this level of redundancy?

Cooling:

Servers need cold air. A typical office air conditioner is an accident waiting to happen. Consider the cost of a redundant, precision cooling system that won’t fail during a heatwave.

Fire protection:

Early smoke detection, fire detection and signaling, and automatic inert-gas suppression systems are standard in Data Centers. What would it cost to install and maintain equivalent systems in your facility?

Physical security:

A simple door lock is not enough. Add the costs of access-control systems, surveillance cameras, and 24/7 monitoring — all of which protect our Data Centers and prevent unauthorized access.

With colocation, these investments disappear. Instead of spending millions, you gain access to world-class infrastructure within a stable monthly subscription.

Labor and Competency Costs

Infrastructure is only half of the equation. Someone still needs to manage it.

Salaries:

How much do you spend on an IT operations team (assume three full-time specialists)? Add hiring costs, too.

Skills development:

Technology evolves fast. Include training, certifications, and the time your team must dedicate to continuous learning.

Absence risks:

What happens when a key engineer takes time off or falls ill? Who monitors the server room then? Absence is a real, often hidden operational risk.

Colocation eliminates this burden. Instead of maintaining your own operations team, you pay for a service. Your provider handles recruitment, training, and ensuring 24/7/365 coverage.

The Cost of (Not) Ensuring Uptime

This is the most important — and the most underestimated — component of TCO.

Downtime cost:

Ask yourself: how much does one hour of downtime cost your company? What about a full day? Multiply losses from halted production, unprocessed orders, or reputational damage by the number of hours your systems were offline.

Failure risk:

Your server room may run smoothly… until the first major failure. How likely is it that a fan or a single power supply unit fails? In our Data Centers, everything is redundant — from power to network links supplied by over 10 independent operators.

Colocation, by contrast, guarantees an SLA of 99.7%. That translates to at most a few hours of potential downtime per year, compared to days or even weeks needed to recover from a major failure in an in-house server room.

It’s the difference between an insurance policy and playing Russian roulette with your business.

Time to Decide

After totaling all costs, the result may surprise you. Maintaining your own server room isn’t just an investment in hardware — it’s a continuous, growing expense in an area outside your core business.

Colocation is not only more cost-effective; it shifts operational risk, stabilizes expenses, and frees your IT team to focus on what matters most. In business, success isn’t about doing everything yourself — it’s about doing the most important things right, and delegating the rest to experts.