Is Cloud Server Hosting Killing Co-location Services ?

[DanielCzech]

Since, from the last few years, it has been noticed that most of the people using colocation are now moving towards the Cloud Hosting Services. What are the reasons behind such changes in the Industry?

I would be really interested in hearing peoples insights or arguments on such extreme changes. Is cloud killing co-location?

[Macdale]

As the cloud computing is rising, the public and private cloud hosting solutions will successfully kill the traditional managed colocation facility. By the year 2020, almost all organizations or businesses, will successfully deploy the private clouds that will serve almost 85% of all the applications and data through Internet connectivity.

[MattBarthorp]

Its true that Cloud hosting has brought a buzz in the Industry and many users have now started to prefer this solution due to the scalability it offers. But, Colocation too is still an ideal solution for large corporations. They prefer to colocate their IT infrastructure to a reliable datacenter, set-up a cloud architecture using these servers and go about with their business activities.

[Ryan]

I don't think Cloud Hosting and Co-location and their usage can be compared to each other. Traditionally, the comparison has always been between Dedicated Server Hosting and Server Co-location and which one off the two most businesses prefer. Cloud Hosting is preferred by businesses/users whose priority is uptime and scalability while Co-location still has its own set of users.

[petey]

If a provider is offering you the same Service Level Agreement compare to the colocation facitlity, why the traditional services will not trim down. On the other hand, I know that there are still some applications or softwares that need colocation facilities, but using a Infrastructure-as-a-Service, isn't it indicates that you are opting a form of colocation services?

[Catherine]

I don't think Co-location and Cloud hosting should be compared as both of them are quite different from each other. Co-location is basically a service in which the hardware belongs to the customer, whereas, Cloud hosting is a service in which the hosting plans are setup on a Cluster of servers using a Hardware Virtualization application.

Co-location is losing importance in the hosting industry due to the fact that the customer has to invest a good amount of money to buy the hardware required for Co-location and it's quite difficult to find a datacenter which offers quality Co-location service.

[MattBarthorp]

IMO comparing Cloud with Colocation is like comparing the taste of Oranges with apples. Both the hosting solutions have individual features and characteristics, so is the difference in the pricing, requirements etc. Though, there might be some restrictions to running a software/applications on a Cloud since its a shared environment, whereas if your colocated hardware suits the software/application requirements you can definitely go ahead with installing it onto the server.