The Future of Dedicated Hosting Delivery

For all the hype, over the last few years an increasing number of businesses have started moving not just distribution but more important business processes online in earnest. The main reason this much anticipated migration has dragged its heels is that change takes time, and businesses going online are faced with hurdles of cost, complexity, resourcing, and marketing at every step of the process.

The workhorse in terms of infrastructure of this fundamental change is hosting.

As many businesses now know, hosting has a wide range of options in terms of cost and function, but it’s the growth of Dedicated Hosting that has continued to gather momentum over recent years. The most interesting aspect of this growth is that indicators show that most businesses are at the bottom of the adoption curve and that the most aggressive growth is yet to come.

What customers want

What customers have wanted, but more importantly needed, over the past years has changed considerably. As businesses become leaner and headcounts shrink, so priorities and their drivers have changed. So-called “Have-to-haves” or essential requirements are the issues ones getting any traction, relegating “Nice-to-haves” to the back-burner until they either become irrelevant or are escalated for other reasons.

This phenomenon has seen companies spend less time, resources and money on their online presence than they might have.

Priorities have changed.

Issues that have re-prioritised the importance and investment in online presence and tools now include better brand awareness through greater exposure, increased distribution driving higher sales and new markets, and better processes to increase efficiency and reduce costs.

As customers realise that their commitment to their online tools needs to increase, so too does their requirement for effective development.

Once the development has been defined and is nearing completion, the tool requires a means of delivery, being effective hosting.

Hosting is then divided into two categories: Shared hosting (otherwise known as virtual hosting, as opposed to virtualised hosting) and dedicated hosting.

Dedicated hosting is a requirement once the environment that the developer requires becomes either more complex. or more customised than a vanilla shared hosting environment.

In short, custom development requires the freedom that only a dedicated hosting environment can deliver.

How service providers are meeting customers’ needs

Dedicated hosting has traditionally been delivered by Carriers, Internet Service Providers or Hosting Providers. Of these, it has quickly become apparent that hosting, particularly dedicated hosting, is a specialisation requiring specific skills to deliver the required product offerings.

As dedicated hosting growth gathers momentum, so too does the need for fast, cost effective delivery. Until recently, delivering dedicated hosting has meant a long-winded and complex process for both service provider and customer alike, involving specifying and sourcing the right hardware, burn testing, server OS configuration, application configuration, IDC installation and connectivity configuration and finally a handover to the customer to, only then, start the process of final configuration for production rollout.

The process is long-winded, expensive and complex for all parties concerned.

Issues continue for dedicated hosting servers set up this way as, when the times to upgrade disk, RAM or even the whole server, the process begins again from the start.

Virtualisation: Not as good as, better.

New virtualization technology is now set to deliver dedicated hosting in a way that not only eliminates most of the complexity for both service provider and customer alike, but introduces many additional virtualised hosting benefits that have not previously existed.

For service providers, it allows scalable, profitable and fast delivery of premium dedicated hosting.

For customers, it eliminates hardware, hardware drivers and hardware upgrades. In addition, due to the features included in some server virtualisation technology, it delivers far higher levels of availability and allows clones of production environments to be created for seamless development and rollout.

Virtualisation and virtualisation

As either a service provider or a customer, it’s important to understand that many different flavours of server virtualisation exist, bringing different price points, levels of resource control and base-OS independence.

Apart from resource control and allocation, stability of, and independence from, the underlying OS is essential to realising all the available benefits of server virtualisation technology and quality virtualised hosting.

Of all the current crop of server virtualisation technology, VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3 seems to lead the market against all of the above criteria, combining the highest available resource control with elimination of hardware drivers. Infrastructure 3 also allows intelligent high-availability redistribution of VMs from failed physical servers to the remaining healthy servers in the farm.

Server virtualisation technology is set to expand its market share as it has in the wider server market – it just depends on whether virtualised hosting service providers and customers alike realise the possibilities available for premium virtualised hosting.

Copyright Notice

This article is free for reproduction but must be reproduced in its entirety, including live links & this copyright statement must be included.

Copyright © 2006 Bulletproof Networks Pty Ltd

Telecom Survey Identifies Information Accessibility as Top Opportunity for Improved Efficiency

Telecom Survey Identifies Information Accessibility as Top Opportunity for Improved Efficiency
Results show that inventory tracking and workforce management were also top issues. (PRWeb May 29, 2010) Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/05/prweb4066914.htm

Read more on PRWeb

VOIP Phone Conference ? Advantages Of VOIP Conferencing Solutions

The latest technology to make waves in the world is the VoIP communications, which can be used in a number of different ways. The words behind the VoIP abbreviation are Voice over Internet Protocol. VoIP converts analog audio signals, streamlines them and turns them into digital form, then transmits them to the destination.

To understand better how this technology works, you should know a few things about analog communications first, as this was before VoIP. Fiber optics is the way analog phone calls are done, making the data digital and sending the signal thousands of miles away until it reaches the destination that it was meant for.

When that analog signal reaches the destination, it’s converted to analog again.

While these calls are made, the switches will be open, even if nothing else happens and there is only dead air, without a conversation happening; even when one talks and the other listens without saying anything, both circuits are open anyway. That’s why analog communications aren’t very efficient.

Packet switching streamlines VoIP

The technology behind VoIP works differently – instead of switching circuits, the packets of data are sent and received only when they are needed, so they don’t use the channels when they don’t need to. The efficiency is greatly improved this way, and the sent packets are assembled pack at the source, in the same form.

The destination of each packet is coded into it right from the beginning. When the destination computer gets all the packets, it reassembles them in a form that can be used. Because this method uses the least congested route, which is also the cheapest, it’s much more effective than analog communications.

The multiple routes that are used after the information is compressed, insures that the information is sent on the best routes, so the audio is sent in an efficient and cheap way. With this technology, the quantity of calls that can be done are much higher than if a normal analog circuit was used.

In the case of companies, they can save hundreds or thousands of dollars every year when doing long distance phone calls. VoIP also works great if companies do conference calls on a regular basis, combined with the document sharing options that plenty of services offer.

When you use VoIP, you don’t pay for the setup, you don’t pay for each minute you use and you don’t pay overages. This is why VoIP gains so much traction these days.

You pay once every month, and for that monthly payment you can talk as much as you want. It’s the solution of the future and a lot of people are using it already.

ACCO BRANDS, INC. Envi Whiteboard/Bulletin, 23 x 17, Silver

• Sold Individually

Product Description
Constructed entirely from recycled and 100% recyclable materials, this combination board has earned Cradle-to-Cradle Silver certification for its environmentally safe materials and manufacturing characteristics. A smart, durable organizational tool, it combines a magnetic writing space with a natural cork bulletin board for exceptional efficiency. The steel accessory tray features hooks for hanging keys and other small items. Includes Quartet® ReWritables® dry erase marker, two magnets and mounting hardware. Global Product Type: Boards; Board Type: Combination; Board Width: 23 in; Board Height: 17 in.

Buy from Amazon –> ACCO BRANDS, INC. Envi Whiteboard/Bulletin, 23 x 17, Silver

Giving your Business a New Height With Business VoIP

Change is the only thing that remains constant. Business houses specially work on this principle. With rising competition and change in the requirements and desires of consumers, organizations have to constantly evolve if they want to ensure a long and steady run. With most of the companies going global, there has been a significant change in the way they communicate with their clients and consumers. There is a growing call for a cheaper and quality mode of communication.

This call has been answered by business VoIP solution which has come as not just an alternative but a definite upgraded form of public switch telephony network. VoIP call termination facilitates much cheaper call transmission via the Internet instead of the orthodox optical fiber network, thereby allowing local, long distance and international calls to be made at a much reduced rate. This helps the organizations to save tremendously on their telephony bills. More savings translate into increase profit margin.

Additionally, since calls are routed over the online web interface by converting the analog signals i.e. the voice into small digital IP packets i.e. in the form of data ( much like the way your emails are send) it cuts down on the dead air completely. This helps in increasing the efficiency along with cutting down of the cost of the call greatly. With increased efficiency comes increased productivity. A business can only gain by making the switch to business VoIP.

Best business VoIP provider would not only offer minimum call tariff but also maintain the quality of service. Another service that they provide is seamless integration of various branches at no additional cost along with the provision of DID numbers. DID numbers are ideal for companies who are operating from a different country than where their consumers are or from multiple geographic points. With the help of DID numbers your clients will be able to call your branch in another country at local rate.

For instance, you are giving customer support through India to your clients who are essentially from UK. Your business VoIP solution provider will provide you with a number through which your clients from UK will be able to call you at local rate without being aware that they are actually calling your set up in India. This service is quintessential for contact centers which usually operate from overseas where there is reasonable manpower available.

Along with this, there are certain value added features available which can help you in increasing the efficiency of your operations. For instance, the follow-me feature is a popular element among business houses. What is even better is that these features are provided free of cost. So, make sure to collate all the necessary information before opting for any service provider.

Best business VoIP solution provider can act as a catalyst in helping your business to grow by leaps and bounds.

Next Page »