In the world of technology, colocation, often shortened to colo, is a data centre facility that has space for rent.
Businesses are able to rent servers and other computing hardware while the facilities are provided by another company.
The facility will provide the physical security in addition to providing the space, power, and cooling, all while connecting to various telecommunication and network service providers.
The idea is to allow the IT staff of companies to focus on work that can bring value to the organisation rather than having to constantly be taking care of the infrastructure.
Space in the facilities is often rented by the rack, cabinet, cage, or room, which businesses pay for.
In addition to helping to free up IT staff, a business has the advantage of having a data centre facility’s capabilities without having to build its own data centre.
Colo’s are particularly popular with cloud service providers and they have also been used for disaster recovery purposes by private enterprises.
