Infrastructure decision guide
Colocation
Managed Hosting
Cloud
Cost structure
Rack space, power, bandwidth and remote hands. You own the kit.
Predictable monthly service covering hardware, hosting and management.
Usage-based or fixed private cloud. Watch data transfer and support costs.
Control level
Highest. Your servers, your config, your lifecycle.
Strong control, with engineers handling the heavy lifting.
Flexible, but less physical control. Great for software-defined estates.
Scalability
Scales by adding rack space, power or hardware.
Scales through planned upgrades and managed capacity changes.
Fastest for changing workloads and temporary spikes.
Best for
Teams with existing hardware and firm compliance or latency needs.
Production workloads that need expert support without hiring more people.
Variable demand, new platforms, testing, and services that need quick change.
Support included
Facility, network and remote hands. Your team manages the server stack.
Hardware, monitoring, patching, backups and engineering support can be wrapped in.
Depends on provider. DCP managed cloud includes UK engineer support.
Typical use case
Move owned servers from an office or ageing comms room into a proper DC.
Run critical apps on dedicated infrastructure with a specialist team behind it.
Launch new services quickly or modernise without buying physical hardware.
Colocation
Colocation means your physical servers live in a professional data centre instead of your office or server room. You keep ownership and control of the hardware, while DCP provides the power, cooling, connectivity and secure facility around it.
Best for:
• Businesses with existing hardware investment
• Teams needing physical control and clear data residency
• Workloads sensitive to latency, power or office-risk issues
Scenario
A manufacturer has reliable on-prem servers but the comms room is out of space and cooling is becoming a risk. Colocation moves the kit into a Tier 3 facility without forcing a full platform rebuild.
View colocation
Managed Hosting
Managed hosting gives you dedicated infrastructure with a team looking after the day-to-day platform work. It suits organisations that need performance and resilience, but don’t want every patch, backup and hardware concern landing on their own desk.
Best for:
• Business-critical apps that need predictable performance
• Lean IT teams that need senior engineering backup
• Firms wanting a fixed managed service rather than DIY cloud complexity
Scenario
An ecommerce team needs high performance hosting for peak sales periods, but doesn’t have capacity to manage server patching, monitoring and backups. Managed hosting keeps the workload stable and supported.
View dedicated servers
Cloud
Cloud gives you virtual resources that can be provisioned, scaled and changed faster than buying physical kit. The trade-off is that cost control, support and data location need proper attention — especially with public cloud.
Best for:
• Projects that need fast deployment and flexible capacity
• Development, testing and modern app platforms
• Teams wanting managed resilience without owning hardware
Scenario
A software team is launching a new customer portal and needs environments spun up quickly, with room to scale after go-live. Managed cloud gives the speed without dumping the operational burden on developers.
View managed cloud
How DCP can help
ISO 27001 certified
CrowdStrike accredited
Platinum Acronis partner
UK-owned, Salford-based
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