DIFFERENT HOSTING NEEDS

There is a big difference between the web requirements of a small- to mid-sized web-based business’ hosting needs (even if it is a full-scale e-commerce site) and an established large- or enterprise-sized business moving to the Web with a huge catalog of products and heavy traffic.

Whichever category you fall into, shop around for your web-hosting service provider and thoroughly check references. Learn to differentiate between a pitch and a promise. The first step in this process is to ask yourself what do you want from a web-hosting service. Then determine your website’s needs.

The Small- to Mid-size Website

It is important that strict attention be paid to how your hosting service and your web-based business will work together, including how your chosen hosting service can compliment your web-based business.

Shopping for the right web-hosting service for your web-based business is a difficult task at best. Look for a web-hosting service that offers a basic hosting package that includes:

• Unlimited data transfer.
• At least 15 MB of space (if email, log files and system programs are included in the amount of MB offered).
• The option of FrontPage extensions, since so many websites are designed with FrontPage.

Numerous hosting services offer small business-specific hosting services. To help you in the task, make a list similar to the one depicted in Fig. 25. Use the list to start your comparisons of web-hosts.

Figure 25: A list can help you to determine what you want from a web-hosting service.
The reason there are three columns is that what you want and need now
won’t be what you need a year or two down the road.

Your Website’s Hosting Needs
	Projected Needs at End of the
Needs	Current	1st Year	2nd Year
Reliability	90%	100%	100%
Services you want
- server space average small site needs 5MB)	5MB	20MB	25 MB
- # of email boxes	5	15	20
- email forwarding	no	maybe	maybe
- traffic allowance	??	??	??
- ready-to-use CGI scripts	yes	maybe	maybe
- tracking tools	yes	no	no
- tools to register with search engines	yes	yes	yes
- scheduled backups	yes	yes	yes
Cost you can bear	$3600	$5000	$7500

Switching hosting services after your website is up and running is a headache. You can often avoid this pain by selecting, from the get-go, a hosting service that provides a full range of hosting packages — some of which you need now, and others that you will need in the future.

You will find in almost every hosting package a set number of email mailboxes, a predefined amount of server space for your files, and a traffic allowance (the number of megabytes downloaded when customers request one of your web pages). As with everything else, the more email boxes, file space, etc. you want, the more you pay. Unless your website is very well established and image-driven with, for example, a large product catalog, you can start with the one of the less expensive plans offered by your chosen web-hosting services.

Many web-hosting services also offer web design packages; but be advised that most of these packages leave a lot to be desired. If you do decide to use your hosting services’ web design services, subject their in-house design team to the same scrutiny as you would a web design firm or a consultant. If you design your website yourself using your hosting service’s web design solutions, scrutinize the proffered web design tools carefully before moving forward. Most of the time they are inadequate. Your best bet is to buy and to use your own design software.

For most small- to mid-size web-based businesses, contracting with a full-service web-hosting service makes the best sense. Paying a relatively small monthly fee to a service to host your website on its servers, which are maintained by its technical people, and connected to the Internet via its pipe, allows you to ameliorate hardware costs and avoid hiring expensive technical staff.

Top web-hosting services that a small- to mid-sized e-commerce site might consider include Globat.com, ICDSoft.com, iPowerWeb.com, Jumpline.com, Lunarpages.com, SpeedFox.com, and WebsiteSource.com,

The Large to Enterprise Websites

For some e-commerce businesses, a large, national web-hosting service is the only choice. These e-commerce sites typically have very high traffic, provide server intensive features such as chat rooms and large media content (e.g. graphic files in their product catalog, streaming media, etc.). These websites not only has a need for, but have the budget to pay for, a web-hosting service that offers, at a minimum:

IN-HOUSE HOSTING

We have discussed the possibility of hosting your own small website in Chapter 4. Don’t try this with a large website. It would be a nightmare unless your company already operates servers on a 24x7 basis with a 24x7 technical staff on the premises. The cost of the large bandwidth connection (pipeline) to the Internet is daunting. So, please find a place to put your web servers that has engineers on site 24x7 to monitor them. This will provide a much less costly and less problematic website.

It is difficult for many of you to forego the opportunity for hands-on experience with your servers, but once everything is correctly configured and running, there’s very little to do. What you might need to do can be managed remotely whether you are running UNIX or NT systems.

• OC3 or better connection to the Internet.
• Mirror sites.
• 24-hour staffing.
• Redundancy (including your connection to the Internet backbone).
• Robust security.

Expect to pay a substantial sum for 24-hour full service technical support since people cost more than computers. Yet, for most large websites, all high-traffic websites, and all enterprise sites, this type of service is mandatory. However, before you sign on the dotted line, be sure to checkout how much service you actually receive from the service’s technical support. Determine:

• How many hours a day is technical support staff on the premises (it should be 24x7).
• How fast they respond to a request.
• Is there a response time guarantee?
• How much help will the technical staff actually provide under various contract terms?

An enterprise-class hosting service should provide a project leader and an enterprise management team to run your website’s entire server infrastructure, including the firewall, on a 24x7 basis. This team should manage, support, and upgrade web applications, whether standard or proprietary, and add networking options, including a Virtual Private Network (VPN), Internet, frame relay, and dial services.

While the individual e-commerce client’s enterprise-class hosting services will differ depending on the scope of the e-business, there are some features all have in common (in addition to what has previously been discussed), including:

• Dedicated, point-to-point, unshared T-1/E-1 or T-3/E-1 access to the Internet.
• Complete DNS services.
• End-to-end implementation management.
• Online network utilization statistics.
• Choice of customer premise equipment (CPE) solutions.
• A fully managed service.
• Redundancy, e.g. a T-3 or better connection to diverse Internet backbones, UPS and generator power backup, a redundant network operations center.
• High availability cluster multiprocessing consisting of a primary machine and a live standby. Data contained on the primary server is seamlessly mirrored on the standby machine. If the primary should fail, the standby server will immediately assume the role of the primary machine.
• Dedicated e-commerce that offers customized systems for purchases, services, and delivering order status and web application hosting.
• Web applications such as email, human resources, finance, and other operations to secure off-site servers with high-speed access and a single point of contact.
• Virtual Private Networking (VPN) and Virtual Private Dial-up Networking, enabling your company to connect its LANs, hosting sites, business partners, branch offices, telecommuters, and mobile employees in an integrated, secure, and simple manner.
• Managed software services enabling the enterprise IT organization to provide asset management, software distribution and management, network management, network performance tuning, and desktop management.
• Streaming media delivery through scalable, on-demand capability that distributes images to single and multiple locations to support videoconferencing, PC-to-PC conferencing, and video distribution services.

But that’s just the beginning. The right enterprise-class hosting service will have trained system administrators, along with other qualified personnel, on site 24x7, monitoring your web servers along with the other web servers they host. The hosting service’s technical personnel monitoring your site provide instant attention and follow pre-arranged instructions for any situation that arises. These instructions can be as varied as a call to a named technical person in your business, to handling the problem himself or herself, or anything in between.

It is well known in the industry that security is an entity that has a life of its own; therefore, leaving the matter to the security experts at a good hosting service is a wise choice. A top-notch hosting service is positioned to provide first class security through multi-staged access control and trained security personnel monitoring the equipment and the system, 24x7. Such hosting services also will provide a configured router and will offer front-line firewall solutions which you are advised to take advantage of since, they are neither easy nor cheap to set up.

Don’t forget the mundane. An enterprise level hosting service should provide automatic backups of your data, and storage for the backups at an off-site storage location. Visit the physical plant. Is there sufficient air conditioning to keep the equipment cool? Is it clean and free of dust? Is it secure?

An enterprise-class service contract costs a pretty penny, but for some e-commerce sites, it is worth it. After all, what will it cost if your site goes down? The odds are that your website will suffer outages due to hardware failure, software glitches, outside attacks, and more. If you are self-hosting your site, this can be a huge problem. Do you know how you’ll handle such situations? What will the cost be to your business when your site is down? Can you afford it?

The high-end web-hosting business is very competitive. These hosting companies offer sophisticated, large-scale, end-to-end solutions tailored not only to the enterprise customer’s immediate needs, but engineered to respond to future demand, with an emphasis on customer support and service. If your e-commerce business is in need of this type of hosting service, check out companies such as Above.net, AppliedTheory, Digex, WebIntellects, Rackspace, and Verio.com to name a few.