- data-center
Colocation is the data-center model in which the facility operator sells space, power, and cooling by the rack, cage, or suite to multiple tenants who bring their own servers. The colo provider owns the building and the infrastructure; the customers own the computing. It contrasts with an owner-operated campus, where a single company like a hyperscaler builds and runs the whole facility for its own workloads.
The distinction shapes who is accountable in the record. A hyperscale data center has one identifiable operator behind its water and power footprint; a colocation facility diffuses that across a shifting set of tenants who may be undisclosed, which complicates tracing the end user of a given load. Some colos also accredit to secure tiers like IL6 to host government tenants — another reason the tenant behind a colo's capacity can be harder to pin down than its operator.