TWENTY:11 ENHANCE YOUR IT STRATEGY46

New technologies, new web applications – the internet is continually evolving and new ways of delivering your internet presence to the end user are emerging all the time. Whether it’s a simple site to give your business a face on the web and assist new prospects in contacting you or the primary channel to market for your business, with so many providers out there how can you evaluate the best host for your needs? Neil Quigley, a consultant from Sleek Networks Ltd, looks at the key characteristics of a hosting plan and advises on how to select the most appropriate provider for your individual needs.

SpeedData centre networks are fast, that’s the bottom line; however, all sites and providers are not created equal. Many ‘budget’ providers have to contend the bandwidth on the services they deliver and aim to use 70 per cent or more of their connectivity before thinking about upgrading. Premium providers haveconnectivity from multiple sourcesand manage their routes effectivelywhilst also keeping their utilisation ofbandwidth well below 50 per cent ofthe maximum available. This gives asnappier response to the sites you wantto host as well as reserving headroomfor your business during busy periods.

When selecting a provider of internet connectivity always ensure that they have multiple IP transit connections layered over diverse physical connections from different network providers. Many providers offer multiple transit

providers but these are delivered over the same physical wire, which means that if the network providers network disappears so will your internet connectivity, regardless of how many transit providers the wire carries.

SynergyMatching the needs of your business to the capabilities and intents of a hosting provider is vital. Questions you need to ask yourself are, for example: Is it a simple or business strategic site you want to run? Would you benefit from growing a business relationship with your hosting provider or do you simply need to host a simple website and manage infrequent changes yourself?

A simple site might be one that advertises your (SOHO/SME) business, provides a general internet presence and aids customers and prospects in contacting your company. It probably wouldn’t be

updated frequently and it isn’t vital to the credibility and survivability of your company. Typically the site would be built in HTML, with some additional scripting to add functionality.

A strategic website would be the face of a SME or larger organisation, vital to the success and credibility of the company, such as an online sales or customer portal. Availability here is key and this should be engineered into the design of the platform from the very start, using high availability (HA) architecture wherever possible.

Corporate portal sites often require further steps than those mentioned above. Service level agreement (SLA) driven companies requiring an extremely high level of availability such as ‘four nines’ (99.99 per cent availability) or higher will look to mitigate as many of the single points of failure within a

CHOOSING A WEb HOSTING PROvIDER fOR YOUR bUSINESS

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platform as possible. Technologies such as ‘global server load balancing’ (GSLB) can even protect the site from a failure in the data centre environment by adding a copy of the hosting architecture at one or more sites and intelligently routing traffic to only healthy sites and servers that are available to serve content. While only a few UK hosting providers can deliver solutions at this level, this type of bespoke service delivery can be tailored to fit the client’s requirements precisely and maximise their exposure on the internet. But with so many different hosting providers out there, what are the differences between them?

Hosting service providers (HSP)A hosting service provider (HSP) is focused on implementing hosting solutions – they may provide a flexible range of hosting solutions or just a defined few, but they should all have expert staff that have the experience and skill required to allow them to design, implement and maintain complex hosting solutions.

HSPs are advertising themselves as the specialists in the industry, so they should be flexible, knowledgeable and experienced. They often have consultancy wings within their business, which can provide ‘professional services’ assistance to perform development or systems tasks that are beyond the capabilities of your internal administrators, adding value on a pay-as-you-go basis rather than the much higher costs that would be associated with fully managed solutions.

In compiling your HSP shortlist be cautious of small operations that are based on only one or two key staff. Ideally look for established providers with 5-50 staff and control of their own resources (this means ownership of their own data centre or suites within existing high specification hosting sites).

Internet services providers (ISP)An internet service provider delivers a broad range of internet services that may include some hosting products. Typically larger companies, they are well placed to deliver good value, entry level hosting portfolios. This is possible because much of the enabling architecture is already in situ and used for their core focus of delivering raw internet (DSL, leased lines and ethernet) and voice services. There are ISPs that have a significant hosting portfolio that includes enterprise class services, but the vast majority offer

limited shared hosting facilities aimed at the consumer and SME markets.

So, when considering an ISP for a hostingsolution, always ensure that thoseservices are considered ‘core business’in their organisation; otherwise it’sunlikely that you will receive the levelsof service you deserve unless yourcompany has significant amounts ofother non-hosting business with them.

Content delivery network providers (CDN)Often called ‘cloud hosting’ content delivery network (CDN) providers offer a utility model for internet hosting especially suitable for ‘bursty’ and short-term requirements such as marketing campaigns and national/international events. These requirements demand huge peaks in bandwidth, often across multiple geographic nodes, and global server capacity may be required for short periods of time.

CDN providers often operate a similarmodel to shared hosting solutions inISPs, but typically on a much larger scale,having dozens or hundreds of servers atmultiple global locations sitting behindload balancer arrays and fast internetconnectivity to deliver the bursts ofspeed that their customers require.

While cloud-based solutions can be very effective both commercially and technically at absorbing the impact of traffic rushes, the price per megabyte transferred or for resources consumed can work out significantly more expensive than traditional hosting solutions where normal levels of traffic are ongoing and continuous.

Product vs. solutions – what’s the cost?A balance exists between the standard products and solutions that hosting providers can deliver. While smaller businesses or those that have simple hosting requirements may be well suited to a ‘boxed’ product, the larger your company the more likely you are to require a bespoke service. The latter is typically underpinned by an SLA and might include bespoke elements both in the contractual terms that you agree with the provider and the level of management that they deliver as part of the solution.

There is a huge variation in costs for commercial hosting solutions from shared hosting resources costing just a few pence each day to complex

Strategy

multi-site tiered platforms costing many thousands of pounds a month.

The terms of the contract you want to commit to can be an important factor in negotiating an attractive deal, as discounts are often available on longer term contracts. Once you’ve built a relationship with a provider and you are happy with their performance over the existing contract it is worth investigating if a term discount can be discussed at renewal time.

evaluationThe larger your organisation the more important it is to ask your technical teams about their upcoming requirements. Once you’ve identified (or taken guidance from the provider to identify) these you can work closely with your preferred provider to ensure that your hosting platform is sized correctly, not only for your immediate requirements, but that it scales seamlessly to meet future demands as a result of business growth.

It’s important you have an honest and frank conversation with the shortlisted providers to get a feel for how they do business and (where possible) speak to their customers to find out if what you’ve been told ties into their real world experiences.

There are truly some world-class hosting providers in the UK and many of them will have a genuine interest in your requirements and be keen to deliver their solutions that enable you to focus on your core business. In almost every situation a controlled data centre environment is a better place to base your hosting infrastructure than an in-house computer room or workplace LAN. In addition, the slightly higher cost of outsourcing your hosting is more often than not offset by the savings on in-house operational costs and the additional value that the hosting provider can bring to the solution.

About Sleek Networks LtdSleek Networks is a hosting services provider that specialises in delivering high availability hosting solutions for the most demanding businesses. Its customers require high performance mission-critical platforms that typically comprise of multi-tier, resilient (and often GSLB) architectures delivering exceptional levels of performance and service availability.

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