Reprints Online

If you are truly looking for ways to increase the exposure and opportunities for your company, then moving your business online would be a wise decision.  However, after getting established, you may come to discover that maintaining a credible web presence is a complex and challenging undertaking, especially once your needs span beyond a sharing hosting plan or dedicated server.

Many businesses faced with these challenges turn to managed hosting as it continuously proves to be a viable solution.

The Basics of Managed Hosting

In general, managed hosting is best suited for businesses that do not have the capital, physical resources or time to invest in a dedicated server.  When signing on for such an arrangement, the basic services typically include:

- High-quality server hardware

- Hardware installation and setup

- Network connectivity

- End-to-end network administration

- 24/7 network monitoring

- 24/7 Technical Support and Customer Service

For the most part, managed hosting describes a dedicated server equipped with extended features and support.  This type of package often provides you with all the features offered by a dedicated hosting provider, including the hardware, your choice of operating system, routing equipment, an internet connection and complete administrative authority.  This control is enabled by advanced control panel technology that allows even the inexperienced user to easily maintain their website on the server.  The biggest difference is that rather than leaving you alone to deal with all the administrative tasks, a managed hosting provider typically handles these processes as well.  An arrangement such as this can free up a lot of your time to focus on other key aspects of the business and making sure it runs efficiently.

Managed Services and Support

The key benefit of managed hosting is that you can often select from a wide variety of features and services according to the needs of your business.  Many service providers will allow you to customize a package with additional options that include:

- Database administration

- Web application management

- Firewall configuration and management

- Load balancing

- High availability services

The most reputable managed hosting companies will back up their services with respectable uptime guarantees and SLAs to ensure the utmost reliability.  When considering that you are outsourcing your mission-critical business operations to someone else and could be paying a lot more than a dedicated server package, you should expect and accept nothing less.

Conclusion

A dedicated server can provide you with complete control over server administration with freedoms and flexibility you just cant get in a shared web hosting arrangement.  With these luxuries comes a great deal of responsibility and complexities many organizations are not equipped to deal with.  If this sounds like your situation, managed hosting is a solution you need to give careful consideration.  In many cases, you can downgrade to a package with fewer managed services as your requirements change.  However, after reaping all the benefits that managed hosting has to offer, you may decide that there is no need to make any adjustments to your plan.