Hi ,

Whenever we talk about data centers, we talk about the fact that many businesses, even large enterprises, have moved to a cloud version of a data center, allowing someone else to manage their servers, storage, and other network elements. But colocation, born in the cloud DVR era, has started to make a comeback and is in fact, its own type of business. What’s driving this trend, and is it the future of data centers?

Colocation is essentially where instead of installing servers in a certain area or a certain room in your business location, you rent space for your servers and equipment in an established data center owned by a third party. This space can consist of a small area, a room, or even a cage of sorts. Since the data center already has the power and cooling capacity needed to house servers, a business doesn’t need to invest in building and equipping a new space of their own.

Colocation started as a way for two companies, Comcast and Charter Communications worked with yet another company to set up a data center that could provide users of online “cloud DVR” services with the speed they needed to “re-stream” content they had recorded.

Today, colocation companies are really real estate brokers of sorts: they sell or rent space that meets a company’s specific needs. Space is located within a large (sometimes very large) data center where “tenants” share the cost for power, cooling, and maintenance.

But why the surge in popularity now and is the future of data centers?

When data reaches a certain speed and volume needs, a cloud data center can sometimes be more expensive than a physical network. Businesses, as they grow, often discover this, and move at least part of their cloud computing back onto colocated servers where they own and maintain their own servers.

Another reason involves data sovereignty requirements: certain data cannot cross country or other boundaries, limiting the type and location of cloud data operations a company can use. The need for additional physical protection of data also feeds this trend.

Edge computing, the option of deploying IT assets in multiple, smaller, more geographically diverse locations, is changing the conversation around data centers. Digital assets are widely distributed between the cloud and colocation and the objectives of this type of distribution are constantly changing depending on company needs.