What is a Co-location Center?

Tweet

 

Co-Lo what? 

A co-location center is a particular data center that houses multiple customers’ network, server and storage gear.  As opposed to renting servers, co-location allows companies to use their own servers but store them somewhere else.

Co-location is viewed as a great solution for small businesses which want the features of a large IT corporation without the upfront costs. While bigger businesses typically have the Internet infrastructure to host their own Web servers and enough staff and IT professionals to manage the servers, small businesses might not.

A co-location center allows business to place their server in their “racks” and provide bandwidth, IP and power to that server.  When a company co-locates, they are able to enjoy the benefits of high speed at a lower cost.

So the question now is how would a co-location benefit YOU?  If you run a site for personal use or blogs you probably don’t need the level of service provided by co-location and are better off with Web hosting. However, if you need a more robust server than what is provided by standard Web hosting or want a large Web presence, but don't want to have to deal with network connections, then co-location might be a good option for you.