What is colocation?

Colocation refers to the placement of an organization’s own servers and other essential computing hardware for data storage in rented space within a physical data center owned and/or operated by a third party.

Improve connectivity and security—and lower costs—with data center colocation

Colocation (also known as “colo”) offers access to more robust infrastructure for your business than a typical on-premises solution and will normally provide nearly 100% uptime through the SLA.

Data center colocation tenants share operational costs for areas such as power, cooling, renewable energy coverage, bandwidth, communications and security with other tenants—making it possible to avoid planning for capital expenditures such as an uninterruptible power source (UPS), multiple backup generators, renewable energy sourcing, power grids and HVAC units.

Ongoing maintenance costs associated with maintaining and managing in-house servers and upgrading to more energy efficient models are also taken out of the equation.

All these factors make colo simpler and more cost-effective than building and managing a dedicated data center for a sole user.

Protection and control with colocation services from Equinix

Equinix offers a range of colocation services to help you safeguard mission-critical data with the highest levels of security and operational reliability. For example, our data centers enable an industry-leading uptime of 99.999%+.

Key features:

 

Multilayer network, cooling and power redundancy

Keep business-critical processes running with advanced UPS power protection, techniques like high-density air and liquid cooling, and more.

A “remote hands” service

Service from professional, certified technicians on-site gets things back up quickly when help is needed. Support is available round-the-clock with Smart Hands®

 

Intelligent monitoring

Colocation tenants have constant visibility and control of their physical assets—just as they would in their own data centers. Services like Smart View® give you on-demand access to environmental and operating information relevant to your data center footprint.

Easy scalability

Access to an infrastructure and ecosystem that helps you quickly respond to and align with dynamic capacity requirements, whether they shift up or down.

How does Equinix compare to other colocation and interconnection services?

See the IDC vendor assessment

How secure is colocation?

Colocation in a data center offers security at both a physical and network level that typically also goes beyond what a data owner can cost-effectively achieve “on-prem.”

Colocation tenants are shielded from cyberthreats through a range of network solutions offered by data center operators, often in cooperation with third parties.

  • 24/7/365 supervision from on-site guards, including close circuit video monitoring.
  • Secure, controlled access via segregated areas—our cages and cabinets enable you to configure custom equipment for the highest levels of security.
  • Advanced flood and fire protection protocols to protect colocation tenant hardware from any physical threat.
  • Antivirus and antispam solutions with firewalls, anti-DDoS solutions, VPN connections and more.

Colocation vs. the cloud

IT hardware is hosted within a data center for both colocation and cloud services. However, a colocation tenant retains ownership and ultimate control over its servers and knows where they’re located.

A cloud provider, on the other hand, is responsible for all leased hardware, with the data storage customer unaware of specific data center location details (except the country) in many cases.

What does colocation offer in addition to space, infrastructure, security and support?

A fast-evolving additional benefit of colocation is access to enhanced services and ecosystems. It means you can switch between or swap service contracts quickly and easily, leveraging carrier neutrality, cloud-enabled services, access to multiple cloud services via secure networks, cross connects to partners on the same premises, and interconnect fabrics to other sites or services.

Colocation also helps you stay up to speed with rapidly evolving efficiency and sustainability best practices. Colocation providers can use their scale and expertise to implement state-of-the-art data center technology to reduce emissions and optimize resource use.

Critically, a good colocation provider will also offer you an easy way to meet compliance requirements—an area that gets more complex by the year, as governments sharpen their focus on consumer protection. Explore our data center certifications, standards and compliance.

Recommended Reading

The data center is evolving

By 2025, 85% of infrastructure strategies will integrate on-premises, colocation, cloud and edge delivery options, compared with 20% in 2020.

Get the Gartner report
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