Jofm5,
(1) I'm not interested in getting involved in willie waving arguments. Let's just say my knowledge of the IT industry is not as far removed from reality a you may like to think. The fact that I might have spent all of two minutes typing my post this morning (nor do I have any intention of spending any longer now) , and therefore not been as eloquent as I might have been is another matter.
(2)
This is where you purchase the equipment, set it up how you wish and co-locate that equipment within the racks of the communication provider of your choice. Typically the co-location provider will have 24/7 online support for you to request re-boots etc of hardware.
You have hit the nail on the head here.
The pure definition of co-location is that it's your kit and you fix it. Assistance from co-lo facility is limited to "intelligent hands".... i.e. button pushing.
As I said earlier ....
Any monkey can stuff a box or two in a rack in a co-location facility ...... it takes experienced engineers to get the most out of the independence that co-location gives you,
If you can afford the capex involved with hardware and licensing, both initial and lifecycle.... then great.
What really counts more though is the need for staffing in-house to do network (e.g. BGP) and server support at two in the morning when something goes wrong.
Lots of companies see it making more business sense to outsource to a hosting provider so they can stay tucked up in bed.
With a properly negotiated contract and SLA it can be at least as good, and in many cases, better than trying to do it all in-house.
There are lots of very capable hosting providers out there (e.g. Rackspace). Don't tarnish them all with the same brush.
Look at all the big companies that outsource the hosting of their DNS despite all the competence and resources they have in-house (e.g. Amazon use Ultradns for hosting DNS).
The same goes for companies that outsource email anti-spam and anti-virus filtering despite having all the competence and resources in-house.
Co-location can be done just as badly as hosting. It's not the magic answer to dealing with reliability or scalability issues.
What you have said to bushfiva is also questionable. It's all about the infrastructure and how you use it !
(3) Each is entitled to their own opinion. I think we'll have to agree to disagree. This is an aviation forum, not somewhere to argue complex IT topics !