The Host With the Most?Written by Jason Shpik
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The gulf is not difficult to estimate, As a rule of thumb, according to Paulak, a business-class hosting service with management will cost between [pound]100 and [pound]400 per user per month, depending on location and level of sophistication, with average being around [pound]200. A typical Web server can handle 50 users and 12 such servers can be accommodated in a rack occupying nine square feet in a room. This equates to about [pound]10,000 per server per month, or [pound]120,000 per rack per month. Dividing by nine square feet, this comes to about [pound]13,500 per square foot per month, which is a good 100-fold increase on what can be earned with co-location. The result is that dedicated services are that much more expensive for customers, but when you put into equation cost of managing facility and acquiring necessary in-house IT skills, it may look more attractive. For a mid-sized company with 100 users, cost of a dedicated Web hosting service would be [pound]240,000 per year on this basis. So despite these costs, there is a strong swing in demand from co-location towards dedicated services, according to Sethna. But because of huge cost differential, a number of larger enterprises that already have most of human resources needed to run a Web site will at least start off with co-location to test waters. To cater for this, many business sector ISPs, such as UUnet, will continue to offer co-location services for foreseeable future, almost as loss leaders to lure customers into their Aladdin's cave of more lucrative services. As Bryan notes, "Web site hosting is one of first things that a company is quite willing to outsource." Dedicated services Basic co-location is technically far easier to provide and is more of a vanilla service, with fewer differences between contenders. But when it comes to dedicated services, some providers are more capable than others, both in their ability to offer high levels of availability needed for e-commerce and in range of options offered. BT Ignite, for example, can now go beyond full outsourcing of IT to embrace customer relationship management (CRM), "In this way we can provide not just technology but surrounding services to get a company to market quickly," says Sethna. This could appeal not just to end customers but also to aspiring application service providers (ASPs) which might have a sound proposition but not be geared up to handle CRM issues on behalf of its own customers. "So we are packaging this as a wholesale ASP offering," says Sethna. Some of value-added services that a large player can bring embrace both IT and surrounding business issues. One is Web caching, which is particularly important for international multinationals, where a global enterprise might want localised content located close to relevant customers for performance reasons. This in tarn requires hosting company to have at least a satellite data centre in each country in which they operate. But before getting carried away with value-added options, users should evaluate ability of hosting companies to deliver maximum availability, says Worldport's vice-president of sales and marketing Frazer Hamilton. This cannot be achieved through resilient hardware and communications alone, but requires attention to operating systems and applications as well. "For this reason we do not use a standard operating system," says Hamilton. "We harden operating system to make it more secure, and also applications." The essence here is to close unnecessary routes into system that a hacker could exploit, using similar principles to those applied to military-grade software development. Now with large Web site hosting, there is a growing need for such hardened software in commercial sector. Another pressing need in Web hosting is better support for peering arrangements between providers. Progress is being made in basic connectivity to create faster transmission with better quality of service along end-to-end paths through Internet, traversing domains of multiple service providers. But what is lacking is ability to retain information about content during such multi-ISP transmission. "We think new content peering arrangements are needed to drive industry forward," says Sethna. "We want to be able to swap content across network and retain intelligence and functionality so that, for example, information on consumer is passed back to source. Then an advertiser might be able to have granular information of who is looking at their content." This may raise privacy issues, but that is another story. Without doubt though next chapter in hosting saga will address content distribution question.Submitted by HostingChecker.com - for help on all your hosting needs. http://www.hostingchecker.com Article may be republished if this portion is not removed.
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| | The Pros & Cons Of Hosting The Site YourselfWritten by Jason Shpik
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Case study: Warner Brothers International Theatre (WBIT) WBIT. like some other national cinema chains. recently established a Web site supporting online ticket sales. With rivals moving online, WBIT decided it needed to act quickly, setting itself a tight four-month deadline. The business plan for a Web presence coupled with online ticket sales was only completed in February 2000. However, company wanted to go live in time for launch in July of year's biggest movie. Star Wars, Episode One -- The Phantom Menace. According to James Scott, WBIT project director, this tight deadline narrowed field of contenders significantly and meant that only a seasoned hosting provider could be considered. BT was chosen largely on strength of its existing relationship with WBIT for telecoms services. The deadline was met, and site quickly proved popular, with seven million hits in a month shortly after going live. This is an example of dedicated hosting, in which provider looks after all IT issues relating to provision and operation of Web site. But it is not full-blown outsourcing, because WBIT looks after actual ticketing systems within each local cinema. The site is managed on BT's own server farm in Milton Keynes and this interacts with WBIT's network connecting local cinemas. When a customer checks times of films and orders a ticket, enquiry runs through BT server farm to WBIT's central system in its London headquarters and is then routed to requested local cinema. The ticket order is then processed in local cinema's system and a message confirming -- or if fully booked denying -- purchase is sent back via same route. Submitted by HostingChecker.com - for help on all your hosting needs. http://www.hostingchecker.com Article may be republished if this portion is not removed.
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