Whole-market supplier coverage
Colocation and data center capacity, sourced like the commodity it is not
Colocation looks like a commodity on paper: space, power, cooling, a locked cage. In practice, facilities differ enormously in power pricing, interconnection ecosystems, remote-hands quality, and how they treat a 10 kW customer versus a hyperscale anchor tenant. And the market itself has tightened: AI demand has absorbed capacity in major metros, changing who negotiates and who takes list price.
Software Results sources data center and colocation capacity as a vendor-neutral advisor. Our portfolio spans national operators, regional facilities, and edge providers, so the recommendation follows your latency, power, and budget requirements rather than any operator's vacancy sheet.
How to evaluate data center & colocation providers
01
Power, before space
You run out of power long before you run out of rack units. Size the deal in kW, verify density per rack, and understand what growth beyond the commitment costs. Space is the wrapper; power is the product.
02
Redundancy that survives an audit
N+1, 2N, concurrent maintainability: ask what the facility actually is, request the uptime history, and check whether the SLA pays credits automatically or after a claims process.
03
Carrier neutrality and interconnection
A facility with many on-net carriers keeps your bandwidth market competitive forever; a single-carrier building marries you to that carrier's pricing. Cross-connect fees, monthly and forever, deserve line-item scrutiny.
04
Remote hands you would trust at 2 a.m.
Unless your engineers live next door, remote hands is your operations team. Evaluate scope, response times, and hourly rates, and read a sample ticket if they will show one.
05
The escalator clause
Annual price escalators of a few percent compound painfully over a term. Negotiate the escalator, the renewal terms, and expansion rights at signing, when the operator wants the logo.
The questions to ask every vendor
- 1.What is the all-in monthly cost per kW at my committed draw, including cooling and facility fees?
- 2.What density per rack can you support today, and what would 30 kW racks require?
- 3.Which carriers are on-net, and what does a cross-connect cost, one-time and monthly?
- 4.What is the facility's redundancy design, and what has actual uptime been over five years?
- 5.What are remote-hands rates, hours, and response commitments?
- 6.What is the annual escalator, and what are my renewal and expansion rights?
- 7.What happens if I need to reduce or exit early: assignment, sublease, or termination terms?
- 8.For DR: what distance, power grid, and network diversity exists between your sites?
How pricing works in this category
Colocation prices per kW per month (with per-rack or per-cage framing at smaller sizes), plus setup fees, cross-connects, remote hands, and sometimes metered power true-ups. Metro, facility tier, density, and term drive the rate, and current market tightness has shifted leverage toward operators in the hottest markets.
That makes sourcing discipline more valuable, not less: secondary metros and regional operators frequently offer materially better economics for workloads that do not need a specific interconnection ecosystem, and multi-site or longer-term commitments still move pricing.
What moves the price
- Committed power (kW) and density per rack
- Metro and facility tier, and how tight that market currently runs
- Term length and annual escalator
- Cross-connect counts and interconnection needs
- Remote hands usage and support expectations
Common buying mistakes
Buying racks instead of kilowatts
A cheap per-rack price at low density becomes expensive the moment your gear wants more power. Size and compare deals in kW, always.
Treating cross-connects as rounding error
Cross-connect fees recur monthly and multiply as you grow. In interconnection-heavy designs they can rival the space bill. Count them before signing.
Ignoring the exit story
Migrating out of a data center is a project measured in months. If the term, assignment rights, and renewal terms do not contemplate change, you have leased a trap.
Skipping the facility visit
Marketing photos are load-bearing in this industry. Walk the floor, look at the loading dock, meet the security desk, and ask to see the generator test logs.
How Software Results helps
We translate your requirements (kW, density, metros, latency, compliance, growth) into a structured sourcing event across the data center operators in our portfolio, including regional facilities that never show up in national searches. You get comparable all-in pricing, our read on each facility, and negotiating leverage the single-facility buyer never has.
We negotiate escalators, expansion rights, cross-connect pricing, and remote-hands terms, and we coordinate the connectivity into the building, because we source that market too.
We represent suppliers across the whole data center & colocation market, part of the 600+ supplier portfolio we advise across. You sign directly with the supplier you choose; the supplier pays us, and your price is the same or better than buying alone.
Data Center & Colocation FAQ
What does colocation cost per kW?
Rates vary by metro, facility tier, density, and term, and the same requirement can price very differently across town, so any single number would mislead. The dependable approach is competitive quotes normalized to all-in cost per kW, including cross-connects and fees, which we run for you at no cost.
Colocation or cloud: how do we decide?
Steady workloads on hardware you are happy to own often run cheapest in colocation; elastic workloads and managed-service needs favor cloud. Most organizations end up hybrid, and the honest comparison models your specific workloads both ways, which is a normal part of our sourcing process.
Can you find capacity for high-density or GPU workloads?
Yes. High-density capacity is the tightest corner of the market, but operators in our portfolio support modern densities with liquid or advanced air cooling in a growing list of metros. The earlier the requirement reaches us, the better the options and pricing.
Our data center lease renewal jumped. Do we have leverage?
More than you think, if you create it. A documented competitive alternative, even in a nearby metro, changes the renewal conversation. We build that alternative quietly, benchmark your current rate, and either your operator sharpens the pencil or you have a better home already scoped.
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