Involta has launched a new colocation pricing model charging by power instead of rack space.

The company this week launched SecurePower Colocation, which offers what it describes as a ‘unique’ pricing model of charging per kW instead of cabinet space.

Involta said this allows customers to pay for what they use while maintaining the flexibility to scale quickly.

"Colocation has been our flagship product since 2007, and this new model allows us to meet enterprises where they are now," said Brett Lindsey, CEO of Involta. "As more organizations transition to an outsourced model, Involta SecurePower Colocation provides the cost savings, flexibility, and security needed to support critical IT workloads. With Gabe's instrumental strategic direction, we're looking forward to unveiling more future-focused solutions to help our clients succeed."

The service comes in two flavors; SecurePower All-In and Flexible Commit.

In All-In, the customer is given a set kW allotment, and the total fixed monthly cost will include all the power used by customer equipment, space for the racks, cooling, UPS, and other infrastructure services.

If workload power usage is uneven or irregular each month, the Flexible Commit service offers a fixed contract term for capacity at a lower rate and each month customers will be charged for actual power usage – with the ability to burst as needed (up to a pre-agreed limit) – with a fixed monthly fee per kW.

Colo operators have traditionally charged on a combination of either rackspace with power included in the fee, or rackspace and power as separate items.

However, a combination of increasingly high-density hardware and higher energy prices, along with immersion cooling tanks and quantum computers that don't conform to standard rack layouts, mean that standard pricing models may not suit some deployments or colocation business models.