Choosing an application Host: the considerations

Application hosting implies getting your business application hosted on third party terminal server and accessing the software as a local desktop interface. Following are the business gains that may be affected with an application hosting service.

Reduced operating costs: Application Hosting may eliminate or reduce the costs associated with operating an application and hence reduced overall cost of ownership of the application. This involves costs of installing the application, managing them for efficiency and associated backup and security features. Besides there are also local network costs involved that may be eliminated if these are outsourced to an application Host.

Scalability and time to the market: upgrading the existent network or establishing a new one and costs intensive besides the factor of the time factor involved. Associated with this are the scalability issues where in you have to provision for the anticipated future needs and hence invest in idle and unproductive infrastructure. Application hosting solution solves many of these issues. Not only the application is installed and process started in no time you have the benefit of provisioning for only your current requirement which can easily be scaled up depending on your business needs. Thus you pay for what you use and hence save on the critical financial resource needed for your business.

Accessibility issues and collaboration: With the services of an application host the need to access the application from anyplace and anytime is resolved. You are no more tied to your local network and additionally application hosting services provide you with the power of collaboration with others in real time. This means that not only you can use outsourced manpower you can also effectively manage the business process.

Security of the data: with real time threats to your data, is required that you adopt a proactive approach to data security as well as the backup facilities. But data security management as well as highly secured back facilities requires the technical expertise, monitoring tools as well as dedicated datacenters. Application hosting service providers can be a better solution from this perspective. With certified datacenters and technical experts to insure your data, remote backup solutions are considered more secured that the local backup solutions.

Liza Welch From Real Time Data Services