Managed cloud computing services company Rackspace Inc. today said it will offer colocation services for customers that wish to deploy their own hardware inside the company’s data centers.

The data center colocation model offers enterprises an alternative to regular cloud computing. With colocation, data center operators simply rent out space within their facility and provide cooling, power, bandwidth and physical security, with the customer providing the actual servers and storage systems.

Rackspace said its colocation services can serve as a kind of bridge to managed hosting and the cloud for organizations that have already invested heaps of cash in their own on-premises hardware. It said the model gives organizations similar benefits to cloud computing, without incurring the costs of decommissioning their existing infrastructure.

“Colocation is an easy first step for customers seeking to transform their application, data, security, and infrastructure operations through the cloud,” said Michael Levy, director of colocation product at Rackspace. He explained that of the main advantages is that existing software applications don’t need to be rebuilt for cloud infrastructure. Instead, companies can just “lift and shift” their on-premises apps straight into Rackspace’s data centers.

In addition, those companies that do want to move to the cloud in the longer term can also take advantage of Rackspace’s consulting expertise to develop a “digital transformation” strategy.

Rackspace reckons there’s a big desire among organizations to take this kind of approach, citing data from 451 Research Inc. that says the colocation market will grow by 12 percent annually through 2020.

“Over the past few years, we’ve seen growing demand from our customers in deploying their own gear within our data centers and avoiding the costs of being in the data center business themselves,” Levy said. “As we see more customers in the market looking to get started on their digital transformation journey, we knew the time was right to provide a launching pad for these initiatives, and colocation is a natural first step for businesses that have already made hardware investments.”

Rackspace says its colocation service offers a bunch of advantages over similar services, including simplified pricing and various cross connections customers can use to scale their apps to public clouds, private clouds, managed hosting environments and third-party data centers.

The company is offering its colocation services in five countries, with data center locations in Chicago, Dallas, Kansas City, Northern New Jersey, Northern Virginia, San Jose, Hong Kong, London, Moscow and Sydney.

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