Hosting as a Solution to Reduce Risk and Cost
Traditionally, a business management solution, such as RFMS would reside on a local computer, usually a server, at the business premises. In the past there has been no viable option but to incur the cost and risk of a local server; the capital and maintenance costs of the computer hardware, and the risks associated with managing back-up and updating procedures. Let’s face it, for most of us our expertise lies in flooring and not in technology.
As we have become comfortable with the concept of having our data on the Cloud, we have seen clients become more comfortable with the idea of having RFMS hosted; virtually accessing RFMS in the Cloud. In addition to us being comfortable with the concept of having data in the Cloud, we are seeing another factor drive interest in hosting solutions; cost. The cost of hosting has progressively fallen; to the point where the annual cost of hosting is less than the cost of investing in and maintaining a server. Where we have previously seen hosting used by smaller RFMS users, we are now seeing some of our larger users move to having RFMS hosted.
Hosting largely removes the need to be thinking about computer hardware at all; so long as users have access to the internet, they have access to their data from any device, anywhere.
It has always been the case that business information has been subject to loss. Now that the majority of our business data is digital, we seem more conscious of the need to protect it, and to do so we implement (or should have implemented) back-up procedures to ensure that we don’t lose it. A professional and reputable hosting service will have in place a number of backup processes ensuring that our business data is as safe as it can possibly be. Certainly safer than most businesses can make their data.
Another consideration is malware and viruses. More often than ever, we are being asked to help clients whose data has been corrupted by malware or has been subject to ransomware. Invariably some data is lost in these situations. Again, data hosted by a professional and reputable hosting service is subject to levels of security that few of us good deploy in our business.
Hosting services are subject to interruption, but this should occur only rarely, and such interruptions will be fewer than most locally hosted servers are subject to.
If hosting is something that you would like to explore, contact us, and we will be happy to introduce you to VpsCity. We work closely with VpsCity who provide a safe, secure, reliable, and economical hosting solution for RFMS.