Hosting

What is hosting?
Hosting usually refers to a service provided by an external company, where that company hosts or "runs" your website, or email, or other computer applications.

In the deep-distant past of about 5 years ago, if you were running computer systems for your business, you would have computers (servers) inhouse. These servers would contain the data and the software applications that you used in your business, these servers might even run your website. As the accessibility to the Internet has increased, with broadband connections getting cheaper and faster - it makes sense to just pay someone else to "host" your website, email and possibly other back-office applications.

Types of hosting.
The most common types of outsourced hosting are website hosting and email hosting. Your hoster runs computer servers with fast, reliable access to the Internet, with computer software applications such as a web server, a web-application server, an email server, and perhaps a database server for website-related data. In general, all the information related to your website, plus all your unread email (and optionally read email too) is stored on these servers by your hoster. You can also outsource the hosting of other common business applications such as groupware (contacts, knowledge base, diary, etc.), CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems, inventory systems and so on.

Advantages of outsourced hosting.
The advantages are numerous:

• Your hosting company takes care of all the backups of your data and application software.
• Your hosting company takes care of keeping the server operating systems and other applications up to date. Keeping software up to date helps keep it secure from hackers, utilising the latest in features, and as bug-free as possible.
• You don't have to worry about hardware maintenance, or high-speed, reliable Internet access - that's your hoster's responsibility.
• You can access your business applications from any computer with a web browser (such as Internet Explorer or Mozilla) and a connection to the Internet. That means you and your staff can work from the office, home, anywhere in the world, using a PC, laptop, or even an Internet-enabled palm computer, and you're always accessing the current data stored on the server.

Considerations for web hosting.
There are a few different types of web hosters that you can go with. As listed, these go from least expensive to most expensive:

• Shared - This is where the web server shares your website, plus a number of others. The operating system on the server, plus the web server software, run multiple websites at a time. You're also sharing disk space, CPU time, memory, and Internet bandwidth with others too. This type of hosting is the easiest to self-manage, and the cheapest, but is limited in terms of flexibility. It's ideal for simple sites, where you may not have a lot of Internet traffic to deal with just yet.
• VPS - Virtual Private Server. A VPS is like having your own server - you have full access to it, can load whatever software you like, can even reboot it when you want. But, you're dealing with a "virtual" server - it behaves just like an individual server, but it's actually sitting on one physical computer server running a number of virtual servers. The physical server runs a special operating system or software application that splits or partitions the system so as to have multiple virtual servers. A VPS is fantastic in that it is relatively inexpensive to run, you have full flexibility over what software you can run on it, and you generally have your own allocated disk, memory, CPU time and bandwidth allocated too.
• Dedicated - This is where you are basically renting your own physical server. This of course gives you the ultimate amount of control and flexibility, but is also the most expensive option. You don't have to share any part of your machine with anyone else, so you're in no danger of someone else crashing your system, or you crashing theirs.

Choosing a hoster.
The above section probably helps you decide on the type of hosting service you need. In summary, here are some considerations you should take into account when choosing a hosting service:

• Power - make sure the server and hosting service is powerful enough. Make sure the server is in the same country, and preferably the same State as you and your main customer base. This may sound like an obvious and silly point - but it is quite common to utilise hosting services in a different country. This can be a cheaper option, but is often not the fastest option.
• Flexibility - ensure your server runs all the necessary software applications and databases that you may need in your business, now and into the future.
• Managed or unmanaged? - If you don't want or can afford a full-time systems-admin guy on staff, then use a managed hosting service. If you don't want the hassle of maintaining your own hardware, server operating systems, software and database applications, and general systems maintenance - then use a good managed hosting service.
• Service - All good business relationships come down to good service. Choose a hoster that can be trusted, and provides excellent customer service.
• Price - Not the all-important consideration, but still high up there on the list! The majority of small to medium-sized businesses needn't pay hundreds of dollars a month to have someone host their website. Make sure you're not being ripped off, but pay a fair price for the service you receive.

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