data center outsourcing (DCO)

Data Center Outsourcing (DCO) is the outsourcing of one's own data center and the provision of all services in the form of computing power and storage resources by an external data center operator. The scope of services can include system management, application program monitoring, and storage and database management.

As far as service provisioning is concerned, there are a wide range of variants that include only certain services or the full range of services with all service capabilities. These include continuous updating of programs and security infrastructure or provision of virtualization services. The data center operator provides the customer with a physical rack with its own server as well as the option of using cloud services such as cloud computing or cloud storage. The scope of services and downtimes are specified in the service level agreements( SLA) between the service provider and the customer.

The goals of data center outsourcing are to increase the efficiency of the infrastructure, the use of constantly updated programs, access to more powerful servers and larger storage, better security infrastructure and, last but not least, reduction of data center costs.