What is collocation?

A colocation facility, or colo, is a data center facility in which a business can rent space for servers and other computing hardware.

Typically, a colo provides the building, cooling, power, bandwidth and physical security, while the customer provides servers and storage. Space in the facility is often leased by the rack, cabinet, cage or room. Many colos have extended their offerings to include managed services that support their customers’ business initiatives.

There are several reasons a business might choose a colo over building its own data center, but one of the main drivers is the Capex (capital expenditure) associated with building, maintaining and updating a large computing facility.