Third-party services are some form of “managed services” at one of the four levels below:
| Service Provider Provides | Customer Provides | |
|---|---|---|
| Colocation | Data center services including space, bandwidth, and power | Hardware and software |
| Colocation plus hardware platform | Data center services plus servers, routers, network storage, etc | Software |
| Managed services | Onsite support and specialized services that may include SAN storage, data protection options, etc. | May or may not provide hardware, but does provide the software. |
| Managed hosting | In addition to managed services, may offer sofware as a service | May or may not provide some of its own software |
Colocation is a 3rd party that provides space and data center services such as power, and the customer provides its own hardware and software which the customer adminsters.
Managed services is where the the service provider provides on-site support and administration services and sometimes the hardware to run the software on, while the customer provides the software.
Managed hosting provides the highest level of off-premise service provision, in which the service provider may take over all tasks to do the service, as well as providing the software. The distinction between managed services and managed hosting is not precise, and are often used interchangebly.
