8 Excellent Reasons To Consider Managed Hosting For Your Windows Servers

by on 13/03/12 at 9:54 am

Today, over 99.9% of all web sites and Internet applications are either hosted or managed out of a colocation or hosting facility. And it makes good financial sense. Unless your web site has to follow extremely specific requirements or receives millions of hits per day, it makes sense to let a web host do the heavy lifting for you.

But what about critical business servers like Windows, SharePoint and Linux? Have you ever considered taking these servers out of the office and having them managed in a hosted environment?

Managed server hosting frees up resources and allows your company to focus on its core strategic competencies and revenue-generating activities. By moving servers into a hosted environment, you no longer have to worry about network devices, infrastructure, datacenter upgrades, or maintenance. All of this is handled by the managed service provider.

Here are just a few of the many great reasons why you might want to consider moving your servers over to managed hosting.

  • Device Monitoring: The managed service provider can continuously monitor the performance of your server, including pings, CPU performance, disk usage, RAM usage, users, and hardware-related issues.
  • Application Monitoring: If you’re running Web Services, HTTP or email servers, you can have the managed hosting provider set up 24-hour monitoring around parameters of your choice in order to anticipate and prevent problems, and ensure optimal server performance.
  • Patch Management: The managed hosting provider takes care of all the critical and optional patches for you, ensuring your servers are always secure and up-to-date.
  • Software Licensing: By purchasing through the managed hosting provider, you eliminate the need to track and manage software licences since they take care of this responsibility for you.
  • No More Manual Handling: You’ll never again have to go through the hassle of changing backup tapes, swapping cables, or rebooting servers. All tasks requiring physical touching of the hardware will be handled by the on-site team at the hosting facility.
  • 24-Hour Live Technical Support: Managed hosting providers usually have a support team available 24/7/365 in order to swiftly handle unexpected issues and minimize the possibility of unplanned downtime. Since the costs of these support services are shared by many tenants, you usually end up saving a lot on support.
  • Resiliency: The data center that will host your servers is  usually much more robust than anything a company could cost-effectively set up in-house. Most hosting data centers feature redundant network and hydro connections, emergency generators, and computer-friendly gas fire suppression systems.
  • Physical Security: Too many small businesses have their highly-sensitive critical servers lying openly in the office. Anyone could just break in and steal these machines, compromising their business and the trust of their clients. Due to the sensitive nature of their business, hosting facilities invest heavily in the physical security of their infrastructure. They spend a fortune on live security guards, video cameras, alarms, locked cages and more… all to keep your data safe.

Given the abundant availability of bandwidth, and the increasing trend towards mobile computing and teleworking, it may make a lot of sense to move your Windows servers to a hosted environment. It’s a great way to save money, free up IT time, and improve the flexibility of your organization.

This article was made possible by mindSHIFT Technologies, Inc., a leader in outsourced IT and managed hosting services. If your company would like to leverage the benefits of a hosted Windows server environment, contact mindSHIFT today.

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  3. Top 20 Dedicated Web Server and Managed Web Hosting Providers
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  5. What’s The Difference Between Dedicated Servers and Colocation?

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