colocation

Colocation refers to the service of housing privately owned servers and other computing hardware in a third‑party data center. A company, the tenant, provides its own servers and networking equipment; the colocation provider supplies the space, power, cooling, bandwidth, and security needed to operate the equipment. Colocation differs from cloud or managed hosting in which the provider owns and manages the hardware. In colocation, the tenant maintains ownership and control over the hardware and its software.

Facilities typically offer racks or cabinets, structured cabling, and connectivity through multiple carriers via cross‑connects. Power is provided through redundant feeds (often N+1 or 2N) with uninterruptible power supplies and emergency generators. Cooling is designed to support high‑density equipment. Physical security includes controlled access, surveillance cameras, and alarms. Fire suppression and environmental monitoring are common. Many facilities offer remote hands services and management add‑ons.

Customers use colocation to improve reliability, meet data sovereignty requirements, and reduce latency by placing equipment nearer to users or within a specific jurisdiction. It also supports disaster recovery strategies by enabling secondary sites. Costs are primarily based on rack space or cabinet space, power consumption, and any bandwidth or interconnection charges. Contracts are typically long‑term, with setup fees for racking, cabling, and initial provisioning.

Colocation serves enterprises, telecoms, and hosting providers seeking compliant environments (PCI‑DSS, HIPAA, ISO 27001) or as a step toward cloud adoption, as well as dedicated infrastructure for mission‑critical workloads.