Author Archives: Charlie Homes

Cloud VS Dedicated: Best Options for a business

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Work in The Cloud?
If your company generally operates exclusively online then you essentially have two choices when it comes to alternatives to in-house servers. For an established company that has stable growth, their best option is definitely dedicated hosting. If you are a start up though, then you should go with cloud hosting. Depending on what you are looking for these two options can differ greatly and one must be smart when choosing which hosting option to go with.

The Cloud Option
If you are relying heavily on the web for most of your business but are still in the start up phase of your company when downtime has the ability to kill you then you should consider cloud. One major advantage of cloud is that it can easily deal with growth and keep your company active at all times.
The best description of cloud hosting is that it is a rental service. You are renting space on a virtual server much in the same way you rent an apartment or a condo. You are able to adjust your required level of space as the size of your business goes. You are not tied down to a specific level of service. Cloud hosting can be adjusted as required in order to accommodate the traffic levels you are receiving. Also you have the ability to choose which operating system you prefer. If you prefer using a windows or a linux system you have that option. This gives cloud users the same flexibility as those using a dedicated host but with flexible billing along with API server configuration.
All this does not mean that you can just flick on a switch and let your site coast. Your IT team will still have to manage the cloud package to make sure that it is optimized for your site. As traffic fluctuates the configurations will as well. This will be familiar to most IT professionals since it is most likely what they are doing now.

Dedicated hosting
Dedicated hosting is when a company leases one or more servers in order to control the work completely. There are 3 advantages to a dedicated package.
For one, your data center is a stable and secure location. This will lower your hardware costs. You won’t have to spend money on housing space or power for the servers since they are off site.
Two, you have complete control over the contents of the server. The server holds only the information you want it to. You therefore have complete control of the bandwidth on that server. Your load times should not be affected by traffic level unless you allow it.
Third, you can adjust and customize your servers’ performance to fit your level of technology.
Why you might chose dedicated hosting:
- A key component of your business is hosting based
- You are an established, large scale business
- You would prefer not dedicate valuable resources to on-site servers
- E commerce or the internet are essential to your business strategy

If you are a company that is ecommerce focused or are running an advertising network then dedicated hosting is probably the preferred option. Online advertisers place banners across thousands of websites. If their ads go down the sites will not get paid and that leads to loss of clients.
If you are using a customized content management system then dedicate hosting is most likely your best option. This will be beneficial for companies that have online inventories. If you are processing thousands of queries or even orders every minute, down time could be the difference between prospering and closing shop.

Article by Charles Homes who is a consultant at Hosting.com, for more info check out their Dedicated Servers

Doing Business in the Cloud

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Server and Hosting Management Made Easy

Cloud computing can mean many things. In the world of business, it can represent a unique opportunity to reduce the costs associated with infrastructure and can help to accomplish achieve ever greater levels of important efficiencies. These efficiencies can include not only cost reduction, but also improved access to resources and essential data. The determination as to whether cloud computing services are a good match for your particular business will of course depend the size of your enterprise, its general needs and your overall sales goals. So prior to investing in a cloud-based service, it’s vital to understand what is involved and assess how the service stacks up against your specific business model.

Hosting in the Cloud

When the concept of cloud computing is applied to web hosting, the result can be a technology that lets users scale resources on the fly, and make changes according to usage and the particular needs of the enterprise in real time. Thus, as your traffic fluctuates, the hosting package can be adjusted to ensure maximum efficiency and minimum waste. This flexibility allows businesses to reduce overhead by only investing in the hosting power they actually need, without incurring downtime or overage charges by driving servers beyond capacity.

Accordingly, a cloud-based hosting package is tailor-made for a technology-based company which (1) uses mission-critical web-based technology, and (2) is wary of over-investing in expensive hosting solutions in case of a burst of bandwidth need, but (3) expects the possibility of seasonal or business cycle spikes resulting in increased usage of server space or power. Such businesses are generally web-based, so downtime is unacceptable and unaffordable. Cloud hosting allows such businesses to utilize a virtual server on a lease agreement, and this server can then be scaled as needed whenever business needs grow or fluctuate.

Many providers of cloud services also provide businesses with a choice of hosting platforms (Linux or Windows), and offers the kind of self-managed flexibility which is generally found in dedicated hosting packages or other enterprise-level services. When investigating business cloud hosting services, it is important to have such user-managed options as flexible billing and user-accessible server configuration controls through either an API or a web-based control panel interface, so that your IT personnel can access and manage the options of your cloud-based hosting.

Storage in the Cloud

When the cloud computing concept is applied to data back-up, cloud storage is the result. Cloud storage solutions can offer businesses a high level of data storage performance, which is scalable to a very high degree. This type of cloud storage can be utilized in three essential ways: (1) to back-up essential enterprise data, (2) to give employees easy data access from anywhere that is connected to the internet, without the use of slow VPN technology, and (3) to easily and conveniently host all types of media.

If your business stores a great deal of data on your own servers as back-up, migrating that data to cloud storage may be beneficial. This strategy gives your employees easy access to essential files from outside of your company network, as well as reducing costs of local network administration, and the cost of maintaining your own servers. And if your business powers its web presence with rich media, cloud storage is likely to greatly ameliorate the bandwidth costs required to serve that media to the end user.

As you might guess, cloud storage generally is not the technology of choice for sensitive data. As a rule, anything secure and confidential is best kept out of the cloud. But for all publicly-available files and media, cloud storage offers about as much security as a standard hosting solution.

Business in the Cloud

If your company is highly technology based, and relies on a strong web presence, cloud computing could be a great choice for you, especially if you experience unpredictable bandwidth usage. As long as you plan for the security challenges that are implicit in cloud computing, it can help your business safely reduce overhead while meeting mission critical goals. Judge wisely which needs are best met with in-house servers, and which can be outsourced to the cloud, and your enterprise can benefit from the cost reduction and increased efficiencies of cloud computing.

Article by Charles Homes who is a consultant at Hosting.com, for more info check out their Dedicated Servers