Cloud computing has opened the doors for so many individuals, businesses and organisations. A growing number of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) turn to the cloud for solutions to their IT problems. Companies are starting to migrate from managed server hosting to the cloud because it offers more flexibility in terms of resources, server management and cost.

Demand for managed hosting packages is diminishing because of the many requirements it entails. For one, managed servers require bulky hardware and costly software. Plus, they require maintenance, which means a technical support team is needed to manage the servers and fix problems as they arise. In comparison, the cloud packs a lighter punch because it provides resources virtually in any location.

Here are the top 3 solutions provided by cloud computing:

1. Hardware is becoming obsolete because of cloud computing infrastructure solutions.

The cloud offers you more freedom in terms of hardware and even software. No need to purchase and install servers that break down after a while. This means less time, money and effort and more savings for your business.

2. Cloud computing providers offer instant IT solutions including data interaction.

Your datacentre allows you to respond to your customers’ needs faster than any other server around. With multiple virtual machines running on a single physical machine, your staff can attend to the needs of your customers more efficiently.

3. The cloud offers virtualised infrastructure solutions that free up your IT people.

With so many IT resources now available to improve efficiency through virtualisation, your IT staff will have more free time to do creative stuff and innovate rather than just manage servers.

Cloud computing has made fast, instant access to virtualised infrastructure solutions possible. This has led to companies demanding better optimised cloud computing solutions. With the continuing evolution of the cloud, every business has a great potential of growing bigger, better and more efficient.

These days, most business owners are more interested in flexibility and cost savings than any other feature offered by their managed hosting provider. Customers are moving to the cloud because cloud computing makes running business applications and networks so much easier. Efficiency is no longer an issue and security is optimised. The best part is that you only have to pay for the features that you use, which means more flexibility and functionality at a very affordable price.

The Shift from Dedicated Servers to Cloud Computing

While dedicated servers offer more stability and security, these days, the wiser choice would be to make the shift to cloud computing simply because it offers more access and control over managed servers. Plus, cloud hosting allows managed hosting companies to provide the services that you want, when you want it. This gives you more options and full access to the features based on your business demands at a lower cost.

The Benefits of Cloud Computing

The cloud offers more flexibility than other platforms while giving more choices to the end users. Customers only have to pay for products and services that they use as compared with the old hosting plans where extra features and add-ons are bundled with their dedicated servers at a fixed-price. As your business grow, so does your networking needs. The cloud provides more flexibility and offers more dedicated server or colocation solutions without hampering the growth of your business or piling on more cost. Instead, you get maximum resources with more savings.

The Result: A Highly Customisable Cloud Platform

The cloud has always been the more flexible solution among all the other hosting providers. Today, cloud computing has been revolutionised, giving end users a highly customisable platform for their business. You have more features to choose from, with an option to expand your plan based on your business demands. All you have to do is ask your managed hosting company to add on the features that you need when you need it. Resource allocation has never been this easy or cost-efficient. This is why you should choose a highly customisable cloud platform for your business.

Managed hosting is a type of Internet hosting where the client rents or leases a dedicated server exclusively. These servers are located in data centres, have their own operating systems depending on the customer’s needs, a web server and relevant software as needed by the organisation.

Unmanaged hosting is another type of Internet hosting that provides the basics – hardware, operating system, Internet connection and web server. It doesn’t offer the same comprehensive services that managed hosting does. Cloud computing, on the other hand, involves an entire network of computers that can be found in another location.

Here are the top 3 reasons why you should choose managed hosting:

1. Functionality – Managed hosting offers more functionality than unmanaged hosting. Aside from the basics such as the OS, hardware, dedicated servers and software, managed hosting services also provide 24/7 technical support and maintenance.

2. Flexibility – With managed hosting, users have more options to choose from, compared with shared hosting because they give organisations full control over the dedicated server, hardware and other services.

3. Security – Managed hosting are far more secure than unmanaged servers because they are well maintained and organisations have full access to its functions, which means that they can have their own team of experts to take care of the technical stuff instead of just relying on outside help.

So when you’re shopping around for a dedicated server, you should definitely consider these three factors. You’ll find that you will make better decisions if you are guided by these three things. Make an informed and well planned choice when you pick out your dedicated server.

When choosing a managed server, it’s okay to be picky. You must choose the right managed server based on your needs, capacity and budget. You need to consider what the company can offer your organisation in terms of functionality, flexibility, affordability and security.

A managed dedicated server provides hardware and software, as well as the maintenance of a dedicated server as part of the services offered. Most companies provide a wide range of additional products and services to give customers better access and management.

Just like cloud computing, which offers more flexibility in terms of products and services, a managed server also provides more add-ons, which enable users to maximise their dedicated server.

Managed servers also allow more productivity and offer more security to its users as the organisation can rely on their managed hosting company to keep a team of full-time system administrators who will maintain the dedicated servers.

Searching for the right managed hosting company can be tricky; but if you know what you want and where to look, surely you will find the right company for you. Just be sure to do your research, do a comparative study and consider all of your company’s needs before you sign any contract.

Consider the options first. If security is vital to your company, then make that your top priority. If you need more flexibility or functionality, then put that in your list. Make sure the company can provide for your organisation’s every need at a price that’s reasonable for you. Choosing a managed server is easy, as long as you’ve got your priorities straight and you’re looking in all the right places.

Business owners who want to gain more control and security for their dedicated servers usually have two options – managed or unmanaged hosting. For this, they need to lease a dedicated server for their needs. A dedicated server is a single computer that’s powerful enough to support an entire network.

Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) are now moving to cloud computing and dedicated hosting because their needs have grown enough to require them to migrate their applications to a network or a dedicated server. Dedicated server hosting is highly recommended for companies with websites or a network of websites that get a significant amount of traffic each day.

When choosing a dedicated server for their company, business owners usually have two choices – managed and unmanaged hosting. Unmanaged hosting plans offer hardware, operating system, web server and internet connection. Managed hosting plans, on the other hand, offer virtually everything – all you have to do is work on your web design and content.

Dedicated servers usually include its own operating system (OS), which gives users the option to choose which OS is best for their company’s network. A dedicated server also includes a web server, required software (i.e. SQL server, control panel), internet connection, all of which are kept in the web hosting company’s data centres.

The main difference between managed and unmanaged hosting plans is the services offered. Other than that, they have the same function– to support an entire network for any company and allow them to launch applications and operate their websites.

I recently came across this blog that offers a new perspective to the intense competition that abounds in the cloud computing industry. Andreas M. Antonopoulos from NetworkWorld begins his blog called Security Will Rescue Cloud Computing with an argument that is quite different from how most people view security in the cloud:

“Whenever the topic of security is mentioned in the context of cloud computing, it is usually discussed as the “big barrier” to adoption. The perceived or actual lack of security in the cloud makes it impossible for businesses to make the leap into this new computing paradigm. I propose a different perspective: Security will rescue cloud computing.”

These days, most cloud providers offer virtually all sorts of products and add-ons just to outsell their competition. This can be quite confusing for their customers, especially those who are just starting to venture into the cloud. Most users would recognize a good deal when they see one; but what about those who are as yet unfamiliar with cloud computing and other managed hosting services.
Mr. Antonopoulos asks a valid question in his blog. And he does a great job of answering his own question.

‘So what is the role of security in all this? Security is like a liquor license to a restaurant — an opportunity to up-sell each customer with a high-profit margin product to balance out the dismal or loss-leading margins of the core product. Security is the single most profitable differentiator that a service provider can add to IaaS to have any hope of making money. Security is brand-sensitive, labor-intensive, infinitely customizable and difficult to scale. That makes security the perfect differentiator that can add value to a bland IaaS offering. Service providers can either roll their own or resell third-party services taking a cut or even charging “portal fees” for access to their customers. To extend the liquor license metaphor, the service providers can pick the “house wine and beer” approach or the full sommelier and wine cellar service.’

I especially like his parting shot:

‘It’s either that, or the competitive wastelands of mega-scale at pico-profits. “For an extra $1 you can get double the GB for your GHZ, should I super-size it, sir?”’

In Mr. Grubi blog entry entitled “A Clear SLA Now Can Save a Lot of Headaches Later” Benjamin Grubin makes some very striking points about the importance of having iron-clad service-level agreements for managed server, including cloud computing.

In his blog post, Mr. Grubin states:

“If you’re like a lot of IT pros, you probably are tired of arguing with business units about service issues. The beauty of the private cloud approach is it lets you run IT like an external business. That means you set up a service-level agreement (SLA) with your business units just like any vendor in the public cloud, setting expectations and outlining responsibilities. What this approach does is provide a process for defining the interface between IT and the business units in your company.”

He goes on to say that:

“The SLA should include several key components:
It lists the components necessary for a given service to operate.
It provides a service guarantee based on all of those pieces operating.
It outlines the consequences for failing to meet the service guarantee.
From a business user’s point of view, it’s no different than buying a service outside of the company. If you buy storage on Amazon.com, you can expect to pay a certain amount per megabyte, and you can expect that you will get a certain level of uptime. You also know what will happen if the service goes down and you can’t access it.”

… And now for the fun part.

I was a little surprised when I read this story because not only does it debunk old myths about cloud services and how customers and providers should “behave.” I had no idea even something that seems so “light” and “worry-free” still needs to be regulated. Leaving things up to chance never bodes well for any business. Now I see it’s the same with cloud, whether you’re using private or public cloud.
This is practical advice that business owners ought to take to heart because it will save them a whole lot of trouble in the future. This protects not just the IT department but your entire company. In the long run, “setting expectations and outlining responsibilities” will give you more peace of mind than if you had never bothered to enter into that SLA in the first place. Consider your cloud provider as one of your business associates or clients – at the end of the day it’s just business. So better identify those key components to avoid dealing with risks in the future.

Managed hosting service, also dedicated hosting service, is a type of Internet hosting where organisations exclusively lease an entire server for their own use. This offers them much in terms of flexibility, quality, pricing and choices as they have full control over the servers.

Your Server’s Operating System

Business owners who choose to lease an entire dedicated server can choose which Operating System to use for their company. They can also take their pick among a vast array of hardware and software which their customers need. They can use commercial OS such as Microsoft Windows Server – provided through Microsoft SPLA – or variations of Linux and Unix (open source operating systems). They may also use other free open source community OS, such as CentOS, Debian, Fedora Core and other Linux distributions or BSD systems FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD.

Dedicated Server Management

This remains a gray area until now. Some managed hosting companies define fully managed servers as having a web based control panel to take care of their customers’ needs. Others believe that having dedicated system engineers on call, ready to respond to and take care of all server and network-related problems is what fully managed servers are all about. In a way, both are true. However, server management includes a broad range of services.

These services include:

• Operating system updates
• Application updates, monitoring & management
• Server monitoring & Technical support
• SNMP hardware monitoring
• Antivirus updates, Firewall services & Security audits
• DNS hosting service & DDoS protection and mitigation
• Backups and restoration, Disaster recovery & Intrusion detection
• Load balancing, Database administration & Performance tuning
• Software installation and configuration
• User management & Programming consultation

Superior Security & Reasonably Priced Plans

Dedicated servers provide the most secure virtual environments. They ensure that their server networks are safe from the intrusion of hackers, invaders, spammers and other harmful elements such as Trojans, crashers, worms and viruses. This makes managed hosting ahead of the competition when it comes to safety and security.

Customers also have a wide array of plans and packages to choose from, all of which are affordable and includes add-ons that will keep users coming back for more. Today, reduced monthly packages are made available to users with options to avail of freebies and useful software designed to make the customers’ life easier and hassle free.

When it comes to finding the best provider for managed server, a type of Internet hosting, there are at least five important details that individuals, companies and organisations should keep in mind – operating system support, bandwidth and connectivity, management, security and software. You might also include the limitations in the equation.

Finding the best service provider for your dedicated server needs require some research and a whole lot of negotiation. You should never settle for second best, especially when it comes to your managed hosting servers because if you do, your customers and your business will suffer. No one wants that.

The top five questions you should ask your managed server provider are:

1.What Operating System is best suited for my company? Can you provide it to me at a reasonable cost without sacrificing quality or efficiency and overall performance?
2.What can you offer me in terms of bandwidth and connectivity? How fast and reliable are your servers? Can you offer me a managed server that outruns and outlasts my competition? Do you have proof that you are truly capable of fulfilling your promises?
3.What level of management can you provide for your dedicated servers and how effectively can you maintain them? Do you offer guarantees involving safety, security, restoration, recovery and administration?
4.Do you provide utmost security to protect your customers’ data from hackers, invaders, spammers, virus attacks like Trojans and other threats that usually occur online?
5.What types of software can you offer me and how flexible are the terms? Do you offer a control panel to make things more efficient?

So now that you know how to ask the right questions, be confident that you’ll find the best deals around and work with the right managed hosting provider. Sometimes the best way to get what you want is to ask. So ask away, and be guided accordingly.

Managed hosting is very popular these days because it provides safe and secure servers to users which remain exclusive to them. This means that they don’t share the dedicated servers with any other individuals, businesses or organisations. That is why most companies and business owners prefer this option as compared with other Internet hosting services.

Managed hosting is much more flexible than shared hosting because organisations maintain full control over the servers that they lease, including the operating system, hardware, software and other requirements. What makes this arrangement even more appealing is the fact that most hosting companies provide server administration as part of their offering, making it much easier for companies to continue with their operations without worrying about glitches in their dedicated servers.

This type of hosting also offers customers much in terms of choices because organisations can opt in for add-ons and other freebies that the hosting provider gives as part of their package deals. They give companies more opportunities for growth, savings and ample ROI as they avail of plans and packages that are affordable and competitive. As the managed hosting service market grows, competition grows and quality improves by leaps and bounds.

The law of supply and demand also applies to Internet hosting. The better the product gets, the higher the demand is for hosting services, the more dedicated hosting service companies emerge. This in turn gives users more flexibility, superior quality and reasonable pricing that make managed hosting the most sensible choice for customers, particularly those who are looking for top notch service coupled with the best priced plans around.