Colocation is a type of data center hosting that entails leasing rack space, cabinets or cages in a compliant, secure data center — providing a fault-tolerant environment for critical systems and data.

While many large corporations have the robust internet infrastructure to host their own web servers, not to mention a dedicated team of IT professionals to manage and design the site, individual users and small businesses generally do not. Data center colo options provide off-site data storage, usually in a data center, that tend to offer both a lower cost for bandwidth and higher protection from power outages and natural disasters.