If you’ve perused the different topics we write about on the TeleGeography blog, there’s a chance you’ve stumbled upon our colocation content.
But what defines colocation?
In short: a colocation center is a data center that provides shared space for network storage and interconnection.
Unlike a web hosting site, a colocation facility provides storage for the customers’ own equipment. The facility typically provisions power, cooling, security, and intra-site connectivity, among other offerings.
Follow-up question: how does this differ—or relate to—cloud computing?
Cloud computing is essentially dynamic hosting, where users share computing resources that are allocated on-demand from the cloud provider’s servers.
Colocation, on the other hand, is the physical space in which you may operate your company-owned software and hardware. (The joke we like to make is that the cloud doesn’t really exist; it’s just someone else’s server.)