Category Archives: Managed Services

Why Should You Outsource Your Company’s Web Hosting?

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How many of you out there know that there is a TON of stuff to do in a good business? There is all of the organizing. There is the planning. There are the meetings. There is the dealing with annoying customers. There are a billion things that you need to do to keep your business running smoothly, and the last thing that you want to be on your mind is how the company website is doing.

Hiring managed services can be exactly what you need when it comes to hosting your website. Not only do they provide a variety of options, but there are a lot of new server and web hosting companies emerging today with aspirations of making it big, and as such they may just give you a discount. On top of this, they are the ones that take care of the servers. They make sure that they stay running, they make sure that they are insured, and that means that you can worry about the rest of your business.

So then the question becomes, what kind of managed services do you want to use? There are dedicated servers. I’m sure you’ve heard of them. There are also a billion other types of servers out there as well, all with their own benefits and weaknesses. So how do you know what kind of server to use? Well, in order to answer this question, you need to first ask yourself what exactly you need in a website! Does the format of the server matter to you? Is your website a secondary branch of your marketing strategy? Perhaps, then, a shared server could work wonders for you. They are the cheapest kind to get. Then there is the opposite end of the spectrum, the dedicated servers. This type of server is basically completely customizable. You can choose the OS that it runs, meaning the operating system, you can choose the hardware architectures that will be installed, and you have an enormous amount of real estate to work with.

Outsourcing your web hosting is a great way to keep your business focused. Instead of worrying about the state of the website, and hiring an employee to take care of these servers and electronic devices as a (rather expensive) full time job, you can simply opt to give your business to a reputable server company. This way they will do what your employee would have done for a fraction of the cost that you would have paid the employee. Consider that an employee is going to cost a minimum of $2000 a month, MINIMUM. A server company, for dedicated hosting, is going to cost considerably less than this. On top of this, the company will really take care of all of the work. You don’t have to worry about your website!

All in all, outsourcing your server and web hosting needs is like outsourcing your biggest hassles that your really don’t need. You pay a little bit, get a lot in return, and in the end everyone is happier.

The Advantages of Using a Managed Hosting Service

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Hiring employees for a business is really expensive. After the industrial revolution, people began to get more and more rights (as they should get) and the almost slave labour of this tumultuous time ended with legislation outlining the rights of the working individual. As such, every business tries to limit the amount of employees that it hires, and instead tries to get as much production out of a few that they can possibly get.

It’s not wonder either, because running a business is expensive! So why hire more employees than you have to? Why would you hire someone to take care of a server for your website when you can simply ask for a company that specializes in this sort of thing to do it for you, at a fraction of the cost? Indeed, managed hosting are getting more and more affordable, and shared servers are becoming more and more available. So what does this mean for you and your business? It means that you now have new options to save money while maximizing your marketing potential through the internet.

Using managed services for your business allows you a great deal of flexibility in choosing exactly what you need with your website. You could opt for dedicated server hosting. This particular choice gives you great flexibility and the ability to personalize the server the way that you want and need it. Then there are the so called shared servers, that give you a place on the internet for a very cheap price. However, they don’t give you much more, being highly restricted, and often problematic in that up to 250 other websites can be stored and run off of the same server. This means a lot of traffic for you and your poor little web site.

Outsourcing server hosting also is beneficial in another way: you give them money every month and then forget that they even exist. This is great because now you don’t have to worry about trying to run your website personally, trying to fix every little bug that may occur, trying to make everything work in a way that you want it done. This is what you’re paying these fine server-company folks to do for you! And they know that if they don’t make you satisfied, there are a thousand and one other server companies that would just love to have your business. This means less worries for you, less hassles, and perhaps best of all, less costs.

Finally, it saves you the trouble of having to go out and find the right servers, of having to buy your own, of having to buy the OS, of having to buy the specific hardware configurations, of having to do all of that not so fun stuff.

Ultimately, having a managed hosting service for you and your business is a great idea. It can save you money in numerous ways, from preventing unneeded employees to not spending extra money on insurance and other intricacies involved with running a server.

Tips on Choosing the Right Web Hosting Company

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So you finally chose to get your business a website! That’s great. You already hired the programmers and HTML guys, and they already finished everything up for you. Now you need to find what kind of web hosting you want to use, and perhaps more importantly, which company you will go with. This can be a serious challenge for those companies out there just starting out, as there are many, many different hosting companies who are all waiting to eagerly snatch up your money. As such, you need to make sure that they are worth the cost that you’re going to pay!

One of the first things that you need to look for when looking for a web hosting company is how many websites they host on one server at a time. This kind of hosting is called shared hosting, and it is the cheapest way to go. However, if the server company is hosting too many websites on each server, then you will be paying them for a sub-par product, unable to do the things which you need it to do. Having too many websites on a server will mean that it won’t be able to handle the traffic well, and will be very slow. Generally anything more than 250 sites per server, you should steer clear.

Something else that you should look for is what kind of security they are packing. The last thing that you want is your sensitive business information being hacked or found by another business sharing the same server as you! The server company should have a firewall in place, whether virtual or physical. A firewall is a series of safeguards that are designed to limit access to your information and files, which means that it is more protected from the other businesses sharing your server or even company.

Another thing really keep an eye on when choosing a company is how much redundancy they use, or in other words, if they have a server backup, and how much they have. Every company should have a server backup. This is for your own good! If a company does not have one, then they are only interested in themselves and don’t care what happens to your information. A backup server is something that is there in case the server that you are using goes down or something happens to it. Maybe a power surge fries it, or perhaps they simply lose power somehow. However, having a backup will always be able to save your information and keep your website online when it otherwise would not.

Essentially, when you are looking for a company to host your website and the information that is sensitive and important to you, you just need to look for things that indicate that they actually care about what happens to your website and your information. You need to look for indications of good customer service, and that they aren’t over-burdening their servers. If you use common sense and ask a lot of questions, you should get a good feeling for how the company is.