"I explained it to her and she said, ‘Oh, so it’s like DRFortress is public storage for computers?’ Then she was disappointed when I told her that wasn’t quite right," says Rodi.

It’s a hazard of the job for the founders of DRFortress, Hawaii’s premier colocation and Internet peering exchange provider, but one that they’re used to.

Simply put, a colocation center is a type of data house where customers rent out “suites” or “cabinets” to store their network and mission-critical servers and interconnect to a variety of telecommunications and other network service providers at minimum cost.

Even though the organization’s services might take a little explaining, their company is quickly growing above and beyond what any other competitor might have to offer in the local market.

DRFortress just completed a $16 million, eight-month renovation project to augment its flagship datacenter, The Fort, to include the latest in state-of-the-art technology and security features. The purpose-built 21,300-square foot facility is now 10 times bigger than any other facility of its kind in the state, helping address the critical shortage of colocation space for local businesses.

Even though technology continues to be increasingly important when it comes to day-to-day living and doing business, there are still those companies that place their servers under a desk or in an office closet for convenience. But even if you have a separate room in your office space to house your equipment, when the air conditioning goes off for the weekend, you might just find yourself with a fried system on Monday.

Or what if there is a power outage or natural disaster? Do you have a safeguard on your systems? These days, going offline for even just a matter of minutes can cause repercussions for weeks following a power failure. You can lose the ability to operate your business and suffer significant profit loss due to inadequate infrastructures.

White says that for companies who have applications such as Internet, accounting or IT systems that can’t afford to go down, the right infrastructure has to be in place to support it. But not everyone has the financial means to build their own datacenter.

"We provide the infrastructure for our customers to have a safe and secure place to house all of their network equipment," explains White. "Some companies can afford to spend $10 or $20 million on their own datacenter to house their own equipment and servers. But for smaller businesses, they really can’t afford that. So they choose to come into a colocation datacenter facility, which means they are sharing space with multiple companies and paying a monthly fee to get a secure, environmentally controlled location to power their mission critical systems."

Over the last several years, says White, outsourcing commercial colocation has become the standard for most organizations that consider replacing or augmenting their datacenter needs in Honolulu.

Several factors have contributed to the burgeoning demand for colocation services, according to Rodi, including government regulations, rapid increases in the power consumption of computing technology, rising concern over the threat of natural disasters, and greater dependency upon technology to support primary business operations.