Choosing the right data center partner can make or break your IT strategy
In today’s digital economy, where uptime, performance, and flexibility define business success, choosing the right data center partner can make or break your IT strategy. Large national colocation providers such as Equinix, Coresite, Digital Realty, DataBank, and Flexential dominate headlines with massive facilities across dozens of cities. But scale alone doesn’t guarantee value—especially for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) that need more than just square footage and power.
At Metanet, we believe colocation should mean partnership, not just access. Unlike the impersonal, one-size-fits-all approach of national providers, Metanet delivers hands-on guidance, managed services, and deeply engineered network performance—all built around helping your business succeed without needing a massive in-house IT team.
This article explores why data center differences matter and just how our approach solves the biggest gaps left behind by large colocation giants.
The Big Players: What They Offer (and What They Don’t)
Companies like Equinix and Digital Realty have built their reputations on scale, reliability, and global reach. Their facilities are immense, redundant, and professionally maintained. They’re ideal for Fortune 500 companies with in-house IT departments, multi-cloud strategies, and teams of engineers who can manage complex deployments themselves.
However, that same model becomes a disadvantage for smaller or medium-sized companies. The typical experience with a large colocation provider is transactional:
- You sign a contract.
- You’re given a key card and rack space.
- Beyond that, you’re on your own.
Support generally ends at the data center door. These companies rarely provide consulting, design assistance, or ongoing management, unless you pay extra for limited “remote hands” services. Even then, their support teams typically lack insight into your infrastructure or business goals. Most certainly remote hands almost never includes consulting, or design assistance, or any recommendations.
For large corporations with dozens of engineers, that’s fine. But for SMBs and even middle sized enterprises that need strategic guidance, this lack of partnership leads to hidden costs, inefficiencies, and risks that most businesses only discover after deployment.
Metanet: A True Partner in Colocation
Metanet was founded on a different principle: colocation should be collaborative.
With over 25 years of experience in managed IT services, we’ve built our data center operations to integrate seamlessly with the needs of businesses that value personalized support, engineering insight, and flexible operations.
Instead of just renting you a cabinet, we become your trusted infrastructure partner, helping design, build, monitor, and optimize your systems for performance, reliability, and cost efficiency.
Key Difference #1: Consulting and Guidance Included
Metanet data center services offers the philosophy that we don’t stop at providing space and power. Our engineering team works closely with every customer to:
- Plan data center power and ensure circuit loads are balanced.
- Design physical layouts that optimize airflow, density, and energy efficiency.
- Educate customers on safe power practices, breaker management, and redundancy.
- Assist with network design for best performance and failover configurations.
These consulting services—often valued in the tens of thousands of dollars—are provided at no additional cost because we view them as fundamental to long-term partnership, not premium upsells.
By contrast, large providers rarely engage at this level. Their model is self-service: it’s assumed that your business already employs senior IT architects, electrical engineers, and network specialists. For many SMBs, that assumption doesn’t match reality.
Hands-On Managed Services: Your On-Site IT Team
While large colocation companies sell space, Metanet delivers solutions.
Our customers benefit from a level of service that goes far beyond the “remote hands” concept.
Free Data Center Rack and Stack, Cabling, and Labeling
We help with full migration support—including racking, stacking, labeling, and cable management. This not only saves time and setup costs but also gives our team intimate familiarity with your environment, making future remote support faster and more accurate.
When we perform a remote reboot, swap, or troubleshoot hardware, we already know where every cable and device lives—a huge advantage compared to blind remote technicians at national providers.
Remote KVM, Serial Access, and Onsite Equipment
Metanet provides KVM-over-IP, 4G and Wi-Fi laptops, and serial console access tools to help customers connect to their systems remotely. This minimizes the need for physical visits and allows faster response when issues arise.
We even keep common hardware and accessories onsite—such as shelves, rails, cable organizers, and power strips—available to customers at no cost, so they can build or expand quickly without delay.
Free Remote Hands (Up to 30 Minutes per Ticket)
Most large data centers charge hourly for remote hands—even for simple tasks like pushing a power button.
At Metanet, we include up to 30 minutes per remote hands request free of charge. That small gesture adds up to thousands in annual savings for SMB clients who need occasional physical intervention.
This approach turns Metanet into a true extension of your IT team, not just a facility operator.
Network Superiority: Engineered for Performance and Redundancy
Where most national data centers treat connectivity as an add-on, the METANET NETWORK is the backbone of our colocation advantage. We run our own SDN, application layer software based multi-path fiber network and carefully curate connectivity through premium Tier 1 and Tier 2 providers.
Our engineering team designs each route with strategic diversity—ensuring fiber paths enter and exit the facility through separate conduits, and reach different geographic points (for example, one to New Jersey, one to Queens). This minimizes the risk of simultaneous failures from fiber cuts, manhole fires, or construction damage.
Why Our Network Matters
- Premium Peering and Transit: We partner only with financially stable, high-performance carriers with proven uptime.
- Diverse Routing: No single point of failure—redundant paths across multiple providers and physical routes.
- Congestion-Free Performance: We avoid oversubscription and carefully monitor network capacity to ensure consistent throughput.
- Fast Problem Resolution: Because we own and manage our network infrastructure, troubleshooting is direct and immediate—no third-party delays.
In contrast, large colocation providers often resell generic bandwidth blends from whatever carriers are available within their buildings. These “basic connectivity” offerings are rarely optimized for redundancy, and congestion can be common. For SMB customers, this can mean unpredictable performance and poor latency, especially during traffic peaks.
Power Management and Efficiency: Educating Customers for Success
Power is one of the most overlooked aspects of colocation—and one of the most common sources of downtime.
Many businesses don’t know how to calculate or balance their load across circuits, leading to tripped breakers, outages, or wasted capacity.
Metanet’s engineers personally work with customers to plan and monitor power usage. We educate teams on:
- Circuit capacity and redundancy
- PDU and power strip management
- Measuring and optimizing load factors
- Using BIOS-level power caps to prevent server spikes
- Building dense but safe rack environments
We even guide customers through energy-saving configurations that reduce operational costs without sacrificing performance.
Large providers? They’ll give you the power you order but offer no insight into how to use it wisely.
This hands-on education can prevent outages, equipment damage, and even fire risks, saving businesses both money and stress.
Flexible Contracts and Transparent Pricing
Metanet understands that SMBs need flexibility, not rigid enterprise contracts.
We offer customizable colocation agreements designed to match your operational model:
- All-inclusive pricing: Combine space, power, and bandwidth in one simple rate.
- Usage-based power: Pay separately for power as your load scales up.
- Custom power structures: Choose flat-rate per kilowatt pricing or blended models.
- Connectivity options: Copper, single-mode, multi-mode fiber, Cat5e, Cat6: whatever your hardware requires.
Large data centers often force customers into predefined contract tiers, complex pricing structures, and long-term commitments. At Metanet, we adapt to your growth, not the other way around.
Financial Stability and Long-Term Reliability
Many customers underestimate the importance of a provider’s financial health and operational stability.
Metanet partners only with financially stable, Tier 1 network providers and maintains a strong capital foundation. Our goal isn’t to build the most generic data centers to cash in on the latest investment trend “hyper-scale, ai, edge”, it’s to operate the most reliable ones, backed by sustainable growth and service excellence.
Our deliberate, high-touch model means fewer outages, faster fixes, and deep continuity of expertise—the same team that helps you deploy your environment will be there years later to maintain and optimize it.
Customer Success Stories (Examples)
A Growing SaaS Provider
A regional SaaS firm migrated to Metanet after struggling with frequent network congestion and poor support from a large national provider.
Metanet’s engineers helped redesign their power and network layout, improving latency by 40% and eliminating recurring circuit trips.
The company no longer needs an on-site engineer for basic maintenance—saving over $60,000 per year.
A Financial Services Company
A boutique investment analytics firm lacked IT staff to manage their infrastructure after a key engineer left.
Metanet’s remote hands and infrastructure knowledge allowed seamless continuity—our team already knew the setup, labeling, and rack layout.
Operations continued without interruption, and the new IT lead received full documentation and diagrams, all maintained by Metanet.
Why Large Providers Fall Short for SMBs
| Category | Large Colocation Providers | Metanet |
|---|---|---|
| Support & Guidance | None beyond remote hands | Full consulting, design, and migration help |
| Network Design | Basic blended connectivity | Proprietary fiber network with diverse routing |
| Managed Services | Customer must self-manage | Integrated managed services & remote support |
| Power Planning | Self-managed | Expert planning and education included |
| Contract Flexibility | Rigid enterprise contracts | Fully customizable pricing & term options |
| Customer Relationship | Transactional | Long-term partnership and consulting |
| Ideal For | Large corporations with internal IT | SMBs needing expert guidance and partnership |
Metanet: A Full-Service Approach to Colocation
Metanet isn’t just a data center and network provider, it’s a complete infrastructure ecosystem designed for partnership. Our philosophy combines technical excellence with human support, making enterprise-grade infrastructure accessible to organizations of every size.
We believe every business deserves:
- Expert guidance from day one
- Transparent pricing and flexibility
- Proactive monitoring and rapid response
- Personalized service from engineers who know your environment
This commitment turns colocation from a commodity into a strategic advantage.
Choosing the Right Data Center Partner
When choosing a data center colocation provider, it’s easy to get impressed by brand size, data center count, or global reach. But the true value lies in partnership, performance, and trust.
Metanet bridges the gap between traditional colocation and managed infrastructure—offering personalized engineering, intelligent network design, and hands-on operational support that national providers simply don’t offer.
For small and mid-sized businesses, this difference can mean the world:
- Fewer outages.
- Better performance.
- Lower operational costs.
- And most importantly—a partner who truly cares about your success.
If your business is ready for a colocation provider that treats your infrastructure like its own, it’s time to contact us and experience the difference.
