What Is Co-location And What Is The Current Outlook?

Co-location is the operation of multiple customers' servers from one secure data centre.

There are two basic models of co-location centre. Carrier specific facilities have a single link to the fibre network and are operated by a single network carrier to accommodate their own equipment, or to provide co-locations services to their corporate clients.

The second basic model for co-location is the carrier neutral co-location centre. These are speculative developments by independent third parties that offer business customers serviced rack space for rent and access to multiple fibre networks alongside the correct power requirements, a factor that is now becoming increasingly important for customers.

When the dot com bubble burst in 2000, there was a global surplus of data centre space. Now with the increase in data due to broadband adoption and high bandwidth services such as video streaming and Voice over IP, data centre space is now becoming scarce.