Outsourcing your Company's Servers By Staff Writer When setting up a web site, companies need to choose between hosting their own servers, or outsourcing their web site to a web hosting provider. At first glance, it may seem more professional for companies to host their own servers. This way they have complete 24-hour control and can configure every possible component of their server(s). Unfortunately, with this control, come negative aspects such as needing adequate technical support to administer the server and paying for bandwidth connection costs. Due to such "involving factors" a growing number of companies, from sole proprietorships to major corporations, are deciding to outsource their server hosting. Spending thousands of dollars on hardware, staff, maintenance, connection costs, and expertise can be a time and effort-consuming task. Web hosting providers are able to keep up with technology in servers, hardware, and staff training. Successful e-commerce companies have customers visiting their websites around the clock – if you are maintaining your own site you need to ensure 24/7 uptime or you'll experience lost sales. An added benefit to hosting companies occurs here as they are able to provide around the clock support and uptime assurance. Many hosts even have uptime guarantees so that businesses don't have to pay for hosting if a level below 99.9% uptime is experienced. Another convincing reason to outsource web hosting is that web hosting providers can keep up with constantly changing software, and hardware. System upgrades can be done much faster and efficiently through a web hosting provider due to their expertise in the field. It's vital for a web server to be up to date because of issues in connectivity, storage, and especially security. A web hosting provider is able to more easily protect against hackers, guard sensitive information from server logs, and provide knowledgeable and trained technical support representatives. It's a misconception to think that web hosting providers are only for small businesses, and while many corporations still do host their own servers, this is rapidly changing. Many corporations with extensive IT departments are now discovering that web server administration and hosting is a more complex subject than they had traditionally thought. Custom solutions made between web hosting providers and large corporations are contracts often exceeding $15,000 per month. For example, bn.com (Barnes & Noble) has their site hosted on multibillion-dollar backbone provider - Cable and Wireless. Unlimited Feature Web Hosting Packages - $6.95 Let's just say a small/mid-size business purchases a low cost server system for $5,000. This is not including additional costs such as Internet backbone connection and the most expensive monthly cost: labor. By the end of the year thousands of dollars would need to be spent to keep the system up-to-date due to software upgrades, labor, and monthly bandwidth charges to bring a high-speed connection like a T1 or T3 into your office. In comparison, many hosting companies offer NT, UNIX, or LINUX dedicated servers for under $500/month with a nominal set-up fee. Dedicated servers simply mean that you are the only user on the machine – the computing resources of the server are entirely dedicated to your company. These affordable business investments include connection costs, hardware, technical support, and 24/7 monitoring. There are a number of hosting companies that are exclusively based around providing dedicated hosting solutions, including Rackspace.com and DedicatedServer.com. The main reason companies host their own servers are for the direct access and control they can have. However, dedicated servers or enterprise web hosting plans allow for just about as much control, including maintenance, support, and top notch backbone connections, for a considerably lower cost. For businesses serious about an online presence an investment in a dedicated server is among the best steps a company can take. There are a number of resources here at HostIndex.com that may be useful to individuals looking to outsource server hosting: Dedicated Server Showcase HostIndex.com Web Host Search Tool Dedicated vs. Colocation - an article explaining the difference between two types of server hosting