Understand Hosting

What is Hosting?

Hosting is a service that enables businesses to rent or share space on a hosting company’s server(s) in order to carry out its web based activities, including running its website and the functions within it (such as online ordering).

One of the fundamental reasons for using a hosting service is to share the hosting company’s resources and expertise. For example, if a single person rented a six bedroom house, it would be expensive and wasteful. It would be far more cost effective for that person to share the house with a number of other people and spread the cost.

Hosting is similar to outsourcing. However, hosting means that only one particular element of an IT department is being outsourced rather than the whole department.

Hosting as you know is what holds your website up that gets seen on the Internet. Probably the most well known hosting company is BT or Talk Talk but the market has many business and low-cost hosting providers. Vendors like Hostway, UKFast, Rackspace, NetBenefit, Griffin Internet and Fasthosts all compete to provide this much needed web service.

The Future of Hosting

To host your own web activities in house is often an expensive overhead. You would need skilled IT personnel as well as the required hardware and other technology on your premises. Hosting companies provide all of these services and resources as part of their offering, along with other useful services such as firewalls for generally less than it would cost to manage all of this in house.

With companies continually looking at ways to reduce their overheads without compromising on service, the use of a hosting company can provide a very viable option.

Why Hosting?

You can achieve many benefits by using a hosting company, from cost reduction to spreading payments for the service on a monthly or quarterly basis. This can make a considerable difference to your overheads as your organisation won’t need to make one major capital outlay. For example, rather than having to spend £5,000 on a server and software, the hosting company pays for all necessary hardware and software and then splits the services cost over an agreed period.

Furthermore, the hosting company will employ experts that will resolve any issues and problems that occur and support all your requirements 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. For most companies to achieve such a high level of service in house would prove too costly. Hosting companies allow organisations to share not only their resources but also servers, storage, firewalls, load balancing equipment and bandwidth that can greatly increase service levels and efficiencies to their customers.