Collocation refers to the process of providing the technical environment for a customer's web server to be operating smoothly and at a reasonable cost. The service suggests that the server hardware is provided and managed by the customer.
What is collocation?
Any company or organization today has to find ways to efficiently store and manage its incoming and outgoing flow of information so as to better organize its routine operations. Most of the businesses and non-profit entities now store their data in a virtual environment by buying disk space on a shared web server where they share the server resources with other users on the same machine. Those of them who have large archives and need more resources to store and run their information online prefer to buy their own dedicated server where they can be totally independent in managing their web presence.
If taking advantage of the shared hosting option, the entity can use the equipment ensured by the hosting provider and just pay them a monthly subscription fee for the provided server resources. In the second case, the entity is buying the necessary hardware equipment and is taking care of the server management and security on its own. Since ensuring the major server supporting resources such as bandwidth and power is really a hard task, requiring serious investments in additional components and solid technical skills, many companies prefer to colocate their mission-critical equipment in a specialized data center where the server conditions are provided against a certain subscription fee.
What is a collocation data center?
In this sense, collocation refers to the service that offers companies the opportunity to locate their servers in an appropriately equipped place (data center) and use its shared infrastructure in managing them. By putting their servers in a collocation data center, users get a few major benefits. On one hand, they save considerable costs for server management infrastructure (high-speed Internet connection, mount rack, cables, power supply, back-up, etc.), since all of them are ensured by the collocation data center. The greater bandwidth levels ensured by the data center will be reflected in the website access speeds as well. On the other hand, entities can spare valuable time and focus on their more important daily tasks while the data center staff is taking care of the server's good working order round-the-clock.
Who uses collocation?
The most common customers of collocation data centers include e-commerce companies seeking for guaranteed server resources and a safe environment for the online transactions processed on their sites. Other collocation server users are telecommunication companies, using the facilities to exchange traffic with partnering companies and potential companies over a high-speed connection. The collocation method is also used by enterprises for data protection from disasters as well as for offsite data backup purposes.