The term colocation refers to the practice of housing privately owned VPS hosting servers in a third-party data center. In place of the in-house scenario where the servers reside in a room or an area of the business infrastructure, colocation provides space for rent in a colocation data center.
Colocation And Public Cloud
The way data is stored and managed is the main difference between public cloud and colocation. It is like having physical assets and virtual ones. Both colocation and public cloud offer cost savings as the facilities are shared. Nonetheless, the similarities end there. In the case of public cloud services, the service provider manages your server, network, and storage elements. The staff of the shared hosting providers will be responsible for setting up the elements. However, in the case of colocation, the businesses are responsible for setting up the server, network, and storage elements, and there will be additional costs involved in this.
Many businesses go for cloud-based services due to the flexibility offered by the services and the capability of scaling up or scaling down the data capacity easily, based on varying needs. Understanding the ways by which the provider manages the infrastructure, controls access, and addresses changes without being physically present is yet another positive side of public cloud services. However, the conveniences of cloud services come with their downsides. The problem arises when the data expands. Data expansion means additional storage and related costs. This is why many believe that building a physical data center with colocation can be less costly.
Colocation can be more flexible as businesses will have to rent only the space needed for the assets, which is altogether different from renting the resources like storage that will be limited based on the subscription plan.