Is Colocation right for you?

Advantages of Co-location

Bandwidth cost. For the same price as a low cost limited bandwidth business grade DSL line a single server can be placed in a collocation facility that provides higher bandwidth speeds and better redundancy for the network connections.

You (the customer) own the server machinery. If you decide that the machine is too slow or doesn't have enough memory, we can simply upgrade the server. You can do this exactly when you choose based on usage, budget or any other criteria.

You own the server software. You don't have to rely on a hosting provider to install the software or tools I want to use. You can simply do it yourself at any time you choose. If you decide to use ASP or ColdFusion or ASP, you just purchase and install the software.

If you move office locations, you can leave the server up and running the entire time. When you host your own domains you have to either pay for two lines for some time, to move the domains to the new location or deal with outages while the servers are moved to the new location.

Good co-location providers will offer a service where they will manage and maintain your server for you for an extra cost. This is especially useful if you don't have IT team members or your office is located far from the provider.

Disadvantages of Co-location

Good Colocation providers can be hard to find. You want to find one near where your office or home is located, so that you can upgrade and maintain your server when you need to.

Physical access to your server can be difficult; you have to travel to the server's location during your collocation provider's service hours, although some may have out of hours access procedures.

Co-location will be more expensive than basic Web hosting. This is especially true as you have to maintain and manage your servers yourself, so when the server needs to be upgraded, you need to purchase that hardware and install it.

Is Co-location right for me?

Individuals who run small sites for personal use or blogs probably do not need the level of service provided by collocation and are better off with shared Web hosting. If however, the server is needed to be more robust and secure, or you require a specific environment on your server then co-location is the best next option. It is also a very good option for small businesses that want to have a fairly large Web presence but don't want to have to deal with costs and complexities associated with hosting servers at their offices.