IT leaders today are caught between two worlds: legacy systems that still deliver value, and a growing need for cloud agility. Hybrid infrastructure offers a way forward, extending your colocation investment with scalable, cloud-connected services that adapt to real-world business pressures.
In this blog, we’ll explore why hybrid cloud colocation is the rockstar of modern IT strategy, how it solves the challenges of fragmented environments, and why it’s the go-to model for organisations that want flexibility without compromise.
What is hybrid cloud?
Hybrid cloud is an IT architecture that combines public clouds with private cloud and on-premises infrastructure. This allows data and applications to move seamlessly between environments, giving businesses the flexibility to run mission-critical workloads in a secure, controlled environment.
What is colocation?
Colocation (or colo) is a service where businesses rent space in a colocation facility to house their physical servers and networking equipment. These colocation data centres provide power, cooling, bandwidth, and physical security. This lets organisations have control over their hardware without the overhead of managing their own premises data centre.
Discover why colocation and cloud work better together
What is hybrid cloud colocation?
Hybrid cloud with colocation combines the best of both worlds. It enables organisations to co-locate legacy or hardware-specific systems while integrating with cloud infrastructure for modern workloads. This approach supports hybrid colocation services that deliver agility, cost-efficiency, and performance, all while maintaining security and compliance.
Hybrid cloud and colocation: The real rockstars
Many mid-market organisations have already made significant investments in colocation. Colo is a secure, high-performance, and cost-effective option for workloads that aren’t native to the cloud.
You don’t need to ditch your existing colocation investment. Instead, having hybrid cloud in colocation extends its value, letting you add cloud agility and network intelligence without rewriting your entire infrastructure playbook.
Rather than choosing between “on-prem vs cloud,” organisations are unifying their estate across colocation, cloud, network, and security. This unified approach is critical in today’s environment, where 97% of mid-market firms are rethinking their cloud strategy.
Why hybrid cloud is the next step after colocation?
Colocation is the first step toward modernising infrastructure and offering a secure, cost-effective way to offload the burden of managing an on-premises data centre. But as digital demands grow and IT systems become more fragmented, colocation alone can’t keep up with the need for agility, scalability, and integration.
The next logical step is integrating hybrid cloud with your colocation investment.
This model builds on the strengths of colocation, which includes control, performance, and compliance and extends them with the agility and scalability of hybrid cloud infrastructure. It allows businesses to keep mission-critical or legacy workloads in a colocation facility while seamlessly integrating with hybrid colocation services like private cloud, public cloud, and edge computing.
Benefits of using hybrid cloud with colocation
Flexibility and Scalability
One of the biggest advantages of hybrid cloud and colocation is their ability to scale on demand. Hybrid cloud with colocation makes it easy to tap into additional resources and scale on demand without adding physical infrastructure or long lead times.
Node4’s Virtual Data Centre (VDC) and Azure Local platforms enable you to use cloud environments when needed while keeping core systems colocated for performance or regulatory reasons.
Cost Efficiency
With hybrid cloud colocation, you only pay for what you use. Workloads that don’t need cloud flexibility can stay in cost-predictable colocation. Applications that benefit from scalability can move to a pay-as-you-go cloud model like VDC.
This approach avoids the high and often unpredictable consumption costs of public cloud, especially for non-modernised or data-heavy applications. It’s a more financially sustainable model for the mid-market, where budgets are under pressure and cloud maturity varies.
“If you don’t execute cloud properly, you’re going to end up with a substantial, fluctuating cost that’s very hard to control. We’ve got customers where on-prem really needs a strong business case to spend money and unpick complexity and that’s where our offering is relevant.”
Andrew Slater, Technology and Innovations Director
Stronger Security and Compliance
Not all workloads are built for the public cloud, particularly those tied to strict regulatory frameworks, customer data controls, or legacy platforms.
Having hybrid cloud with colocation lets you retain control over where and how data is stored and processed. Node4’s UK-sovereign cloud platforms, managed firewall solutions, and cloud-delivered security (like SASE and Microsoft Sentinel) offer compliance without complexity. This offers great value to industries like healthcare, finance, and logistics, where governance is non-negotiable.
“We’ve got 27001 and 27017 cloud security accreditations, plus managed services that wrap around everything.”
Andrew Slater, Technology and Innovations Director
Disaster Recovery and Resilience
Hybrid cloud and colocation lets you plan for the unexpected. Colocated infrastructure can serve as a stable recovery environment, while cloud services offer instant failover and backup capabilities.
Node4 disaster recovery solutions span VDC, Azure, and on-premises systems, enabling a resilient, multi-layered approach that avoids single points of failure. With hybrid colocation services, organisations gain the ability to recover faster and smarter.
Building a Smarter Infrastructure: Node4’s Hybrid Cloud with Colocation in Action
South Yorkshire Housing Association (SYHA) needed to modernise legacy infrastructure while maintaining service continuity across a complex IT estate. Rather than attempting a risky all-in cloud migration, they adopted a hybrid cloud colocation model that balanced flexibility with operational control.
SYHA leveraged Node4’s hybrid infrastructure services to transition key workloads to a scalable cloud environment, while retaining colocation for systems that require stability and compliance. This hybrid approach gave them:
- A future-proof foundation for transformation
- Cost-effective cloud scalability
- Improved performance and resilience
- Minimal disruption to frontline services
The result? A more agile, secure, and responsive IT environment built on the solid foundation of hybrid colocation services.
Take control of cost, compliance, and complexity
Conclusion
For organisations looking to modernise without disrupting critical operations, a hybrid model is the best choice. It lets you keep what works with your colocation footprint while extending its value through cloud scalability, smarter connectivity, and integrated security.
Node4’s approach stands out because it’s not just about piecing services together. It’s about creating a unified platform that helps you run legacy and modern workloads side by side, with full visibility and control. Speak to us and let’s get started.
Your next big hit: hybrid cloud
You’ve already laid the foundations with colocation or dabbled with some cloud migration – now it’s time to take your infrastructure to the next level. This guide explores how combining colocation with hybrid cloud can give you the best of both worlds: the control of on-prem with the agility and scalability of cloud. It’s a backstage look at how mid-market organisations are evolving their strategies to meet rising costs, compliance pressures and the need for smarter, more flexible IT.
What’s inside?
We won’t give away the whole show, but here’s a sneak peek:
- Why 70% of mid-market businesses are moving to the cloud – and why many are now rethinking that move for a hybrid approach
- How to avoid the common pitfalls of public cloud, like spiralling costs and compliance headaches
- Real-world examples of building a future-ready platform without missing a beat
Whether you’re modernising gradually or ready to go full hybrid, this guide will help you find your groove. Download it today and start building your own infrastructure supergroup.