Dedication Goes a Long Way

More and more eBusiness owners are employing hosts, and hosting's principal advantages (flexibility and affordability) have truly opened up the arena to small and medium-sized enterprises.

Unfortunately, many businesses - particularly those in the high-tech sector - are nervous about entrusting their Internet presence to an outside company. Rightly or wrongly, many companies believe that outsourcing their Web needs means that they'll have to share IT resources with all the host's other clients, and that they'll end up with a slower, less scaleable site than their competition. To some extent, they're right to be worried. Sharing a server with other businesses means that your site won't download as quickly, and in the world of e-Commerce, that's the kiss of death.

Fortunately, there is a solution: dedicated server hosting. Paying for a dedicated server means, in essence, that a single server will be used exclusively for your business. You don't have buy the hardware, and you don't need to pay to maintain a bevy of IT specialists - but you still get the benefit of increased bandwidth and storage space that come with having your own server. And because the server is yours alone, you're free to change things around a little bit. If you want to introduce programming that will make your site a bit more dynamic, you can, whereas on a shared server, you would be forced to accommodate the needs of the server's other users.

So what's the catch? None, really ... but more than ever, you'll want to be sure that you have absolute confidence in your hosting company. Is your data protected? Are you insured against theft, vandalism or fire in the building where your server is located? Remember: your server is your livelihood, and you want it to be managed by people you can trust.