Introduction to Colocation Hosting

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Looking to improve business operations? In today’s digital world, countless IT solutions promise to help your business attain a tech edge over your competitors.

If you are seeking dependable, low-cost hosting for your business, then colocation solutions might be just what you need to pull ahead. Read on to learn everything you need to know about colocation hosting.


Colocation Hosting Basics

Colocation, also known simply as colo, refers to data centers that businesses can rent for server space and other IT hardware. Colocation providers usually offer floor space, power, cooling, bandwidth, and physical security. Clients provide the server hardware and sometimes the storage as well.

Many colo providers offer managed IT services, tech support, and other expanded services to their business customers.

So, in simple terms colocation is a joint hosting solution where a company works with a colo provider to reduce costs and mitigate risks. Let’s see the benefits of colocation in more detail below.


The Benefits of Colocation

There are many reasons why you might chose colocation instead of investing in your own in-house data center. The most obvious reason is the cost of building, and maintaining an extensive computer infrastructure. With colocation, your colo provider takes care of these technical issues while you invest only in the hardware.

Colocation offers dependable IT functionality with high uptime and exceptional security. Colo servers are stable and reliable, which increases quality service for companies that rely directly on their IT infrastructure for their end product.

Whether you are building your infrastructure from the ground up, or upgrading your existing IT systems, colo will give you added flexibility while reducing costs.

Moreover, many businesses opt to move their existing infrastructure to the data center of their colo provider to meet regulatory compliance. Check out more details about compliance and colocation here.

The main benefits of colocation hosting include:

  • Mitigating risk from hardware failure
  • Mitigating physical disaster
  • Mitigating power failure
  • Reliable high speed internet
  • Reducing network management and IT infrastructure costs
  • Leveraging the colo provider’s expertise for IT implementation
  • Freeing up key assets, which you can instead use to grow your business

Colocation vs. Cloud Computing

As you may have noticed, colocation does pretty much what most modern cloud computing solutions offer. So, why choose colo over some cloud solution?

If you can afford the initial cost of buying the hardware, then colocation is less expensive than any cloud solution in the long run.

Your typical cloud hosting service costs around $20,000 USD. The same functionality through colocation would set you back around $5000 initially, and then a monthly retainer of $100-200 USD. 

So, after the first year, you will only have to pay $2400 at most, which is 8 times less than what you would pay for an equivalent cloud solution.


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