Has anybody tried a brokerage firm to help find colocation space?

Never tried that route. What is your purpose behind co-location? Usually it's so that you have the equipment either near you or that you can get the best connection in a secure location.

If you're going based on local location - I doubt a brokerage firm can help.

If you're looking for places with great connections, check out Hostirian (Steve is here in the forums). They do a lot of colocation work.

I've never even heard of a brokerage firm for colocation before - how did you discover them and what was the reason behind it?

There used to be a Colocation Consortium, formed in 2008, but I haven't seen anything from them in two years.

I've heard of some brokerage firm and was just wondering if they have been helpful. Thanks for the info.

Funny, just yesterday I was contacted by a brokerage firm and they sent me their agreement for review. Site looked good, but their agreement was fairly one-sided, in their favor. LOL. We do have one broker we deal with that sends us leads and we gladly pay their commissions.

Ditto for us to, however, some of the lead aggragators are idiots. Basically send the information to something like 20-30 different hosts. I am strongly recommended not using this specific person/company anymore.

We do some qualifying now to make sure anyone we use limits it to less than 5 DC's.

It really is a lot of tossing around. I talked to one of their representatives and they told me that they will only send me to data centers who can provide for my needs. He also made the comment that in doing that, there aren't so many DC's involved. So instead of having 20-30, I have 5 in which they will be exactly what I'm looking for. I was pretty impressed!

I think the brokerage firms can be helpful but in the end the cost they tack on is just not worth it when you can do a little research yourself to see what Data Centers will meet your collocation needs.

Also, a neat site to use in this manner is http://www.datacentermap.com/
They provide locations, background info on the facilities and contact information. I have found it to be very helpful.

Please do not create space for brokers in hosting industry. We don't need brokers here See how to find colocations.

1. Choose where do you want to get hosted in the Data Center Map - datacentermap.com
2. Ask the dat center service provider questions about how the facility is organized
3. Ask them about connectivity and providers they have in the dc
4. Ask them about support

Same here, they dont promise anything and they still want us to sign an agreement which is always in their favor. I had prepared an agreement for them too, in return i never heard from them.

Anyone that actually has access to their DC and isn't a reseller will provide you an onsite tour and answer your questions for you. If it is just for by the U rental you can request pictures of your servers mounted and lots offer live video now. The brokerages don't really know anything about the facilities, they are just in it to get a fee which is usually pushed back to you somewhere in the pricing.

Avoid the involvement of these kind of firms. They will be bias in terms of the terms and prices they offer, and more often than not they will have preferance and alliances with a few specific hosts.

For things like this, nothing beats local research and forming a few contacts in the industry of your own.

Hope this helps,

Jon

Brokerage firms are always biased and in it for commission and your money, not at all to assist you.

I highly recommend doing your own research, not relying on them.

While it's great to think you can do it all yourself, realistically your realm of influence is limited. There are some brokers out there that can bring offers to the table that you'd never find yourself. Finding those brokers is the key. We have one we trust and quite a few we've said no thanks to.