How To Decide If Managed Hosting is Right For Your Business

Every competent business owner these days knows that it's essential to have some kind of presence on the Internet. The question that faces every company when deciding on a web site is how to operate the site without having to invest thousands in computer equipment and technical staff. That's when managed hosting can be of great benefit to small- and medium-sized businesses.
Many business owners and managers might be surprised to find that the first question to ask isn't about finding a web hosting service, but about the web site itself. In other words, what exactly does the company want its web site to do? A business web site could act like a billboard, simply giving information about what the business does and where to find it. Or it could be a full-blown online business, not only offering goods and services but using social networking tools to develop a customer community around its specialty. Deciding what the web site should do and be is the critical first step.

Web developers help businesses decide about the functions of their web sites, and then create the web sites according to those specifications. After the website is designed, however, it still must be regularly monitored for performance, updated with new information and upgraded when necessary. This takes a lot of an employee's time that some businesses would prefer to be spent elsewhere. At that point, managed hosting becomes an attractive alternative.
Just as with deciding a web site's purpose, there's a fundamental rule to selecting web hosting: "Cheap" isn't necessary "best." This is particularly true of managed hosting, which often calls for a higher level of technical skill and equipment than many low-level services can provide. The way to determine how well a web hosting service can fill a business' needs is to evaluate the service by four key qualifications: technical support, reliability, data transfer rate and data storage. These last three qualities are more commonly known as uptime, bandwidth and disk space.
Often hosting vendors will promote their services, especially disk space and bandwidth, as "unlimited." Business people in particularly know that no resource is ever "unlimited, " so it pays to know how to ask about specifics for each qualification. The web site's design can help by providing a business with standards for site, especially in terms of disk space and bandwidth. In addition, businesses should ask about the hosting service's reliability, or "uptime, " which often is expressed as a percentage such as 99.9 percent.

With managed hosting, technical support may not be as crucial an issue, since technical support usually serves businesses that maintain their own sites. However, this is not a quality to be overlooked, because it reflects the web host's dedication to customer service, which also impacts managed hosting.

If a web hosting client meets the basic qualifications, then it's time to take a close look at its managed hosting options. These typically come in two forms: Dedicated Server, in which a business leases a computer for its exclusive use, and Virtual Private Server, in which a business leases a portion of computer that acts like an exclusive piece of equipment. Choosing one of these options again boils down to how large and complicated the web site functions are.
In either case, the managed hosting aspect should be the same. The web hosting service contracts with the business to handle all of the administration of its web site. This arrangement frees the business from the expense of buying equipment and hiring staff at the same time it assures a continual, reliable Internet presence.

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Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Adriana_A_Noton

Five-Steps IT Strategy Formulation

1. Business strategy
Business Strategy is a document that should be the primary foundation rests in the manufacture of I / T strategy as mentioned in the document's vision and mission and performance targets of each function in the organizational structure. Within this document also emphasized the role of information technology in accordance with corporate strategy (remember that for every kind of enterprise, information technology positions may be different), so the philosophy used in the development of I / T strategy should be in accordance with it.

2. Business Trend
Business Trends is everything related to the tendency of business patterns that will occur in the future in relation to a particular industry. For example in the financial industry such as banking, insurance, and securities. There is a tendency that in the future, the three business entities will be used to separate merged into a financial company in which multi-functional products and services provided may vary. Another example is the tourism industry involving transportation companies (land, sea, and air), hotels, tourist sites, amusement parks and so forth. Currently, each company is in line its own business, but with the advancement in information technology and the phenomenon of the formation of strategic partnerships (strategic alliances) among several firms, the trend in the future will form a type of service company which combines the services usually done in companies the tourism industry.

3. Competitor Analysis
Competitor Analysis is an activity that must be remembered that the strategy was basically created because of the competition. The purpose of the development of information technology is to improve the performance of companies that can produce a product or service cheaper, better, and faster than the products or services produced by competitors. Thus clear that the purpose of holding the competition analysis of the business is to see how cheap, how well and how quickly the products and services offered by other companies so that it can be the benchmark targets.

4. I / T Trend
Destination studied the I / T trend is to avoid mistakes in choosing the technology applied and developed in the company. Not all products classified as information technology well. With so many products on offer, more of us fail to survive in the market than successful.
Companies must be able to do the sorting of any technology that is still in experimental stages or introduction (Infancy / emerging), the development (growth), stable (mature), and starting left (facing out).
In addition to the above-mentioned objectives, see the trend in the development of information technology means that learning opportunities (opportunities) that can only enhance the company's performance in the future, both in increased revenue, decreased costs, or the possibility of new business development.

5. (Existing I / T).
The main reason is because in essence the development of information technology in the future is built on the infrastructure owned by the current (baseline), rather than create something completely new (at least if it was decided to not use the existing infrastructure, it still needed a strategy for facing out).

(by: Fernando Sitindaon)