Hosted solutions

How to benefit from hosted solutions

There is a great deal of confusion over cloud computing, grid computing, hosted services, hosted servers, web-based applications and other buzzwords. We explain the key points below and how we exploit the benefits these technologies hold over more traditional computing approaches. Be warned - there are also large traps for the unwary. Conosco can help you navigate this area.

At a glance

• Avoid capital expenditure and maintenance
• Available on demand
• Highly scalable
• Latest technology, kept up-to-date
• Data stored securely off-site

Benefits of hosted solutions

Many businesses are choosing to rent hosted IT services, instead of running local servers in their offices. This offers lower capital expenditure, greater functionality, more predictable costs and more flexibility. They are particularly suitable for fast-growing companies.

Clearing the confusion

Cloud computing

The 'cloud' is the internet and by extension the computers and services that are not part of your network. 'Cloud computing' covers services delivered over the internet, from servers that you don't own, and for which you usually pay a rental fee rather than buying the infrastructure. Examples include Google Mail and Apps, Skype, Facebook, NetSuite, PayPal and Amazon Web Services. Cloud computing is therefore too a wide term to be really useful.

Hosted Desktop

The most complete approach is a hosted desktop: from any computer you can login over the internet and access a central desktop that is the same wherever you are - it has your applications, email and documents. You can easily share files and collaborate on them with colleagues. Best of all, there's no capital expenditure, just a monthly fee. See Hosted desktop for more information.

Hosted servers

Rather than running your servers in your own office, it's possible to move some or all of them to a professional data centre. This brings benefits such as better security, fire protection, power protection and internet connectivity. This move can be invisible to users and you still have total control over your servers.

Virtual servers

You can run multiple virtual servers on one physical server for increased flexibility and lower costs. See Virtualisation for more information. 

Hosted services and web-based applications

You can rent user accounts for many different applications and services from specialist service providers. Many are provided through a web site interface (such as Google Mail or NetSuite CRM/ERP) whilst others offer desktop programs (Microsoft Exchange / Outlook). Google Apps and other web-hosted Microsoft Office-compatible suites are becoming viable as alternatives to Microsoft Office, although our testing has revealed some serious pitfalls which we can help you avoid. In all cases, you don't need to invest in expensive server hardware and the maintenance is taken care of by teams of expert engineers.