What Is Colocation, And Why Would You Want To Colocate Equipment?
While most people are at least familiar with the idea of web hosting, many have no idea about colocation and when it may make sense for an organization to colocate their equipment.
First, to define colocation. Equipment colocation is when a company rents space at web host's data center to install their equipment. This allows the company to use their own customized equipment, but take advantage of a the web hosts data center and it's redundant power, network connections, security, cooling, etc.
colocation can be as little as a single rack-mounted unit or an entire section of the data center generally separated by security fencing. The company still has access to their equipment whenever needed.
There are many reasons why a company may want to colocate their equipment in someone elses' data center. Of course if a company doesn't have a data center and has customized equipment (or just doesn't want to rent the web host's equipment), then colocation is their only real alternative, if they wish to have a secure, high-uptime network connection.
Sometimes companies that have their own data center may actually choose to colocate equipment as well. This may be because they need more room than their current data center(s) can supply. Or they may be renting space in different geographic areas in order to spread out their coverage for performance or security reasons.
If you're interested in colocation, there's probably two important criteria in addition to price. First, you'll want the host's data center to be local so that you can access the colocated equipment easily. It's also important to be sure that the company has a good data center, since in essence you're paying for the resources provided by the web host's data center - security, uptime, etc.
