Hosted services

Alan Stevens looks at the alternatives to running your own servers

It doesn’t matter how modest your IT requirements, managing your own PCs, servers and applications can still be a full-time task.

So why not get someone else to do some or all of the hard work for you? All that’s needed is a connection to the internet and, in most cases, a browser.

You can then access a wide range of applications, remotely hosted and fully managed by online service providers, without needing in-house support personnel or expensive hardware.

On the downside there’s not quite as much choice as some analysts once predicted. Indeed, a few years back, the market for hosted applications was expected to sky rocket, with some pundits even predicting the demise of local solutions altogether. That didn’t happen and a lot of the original big name providers have long since pulled out of the market.

However, a number of specialised solutions persist, designed and marketed specifically for the smaller business. New products from Google and Microsoft are also on their way, and we’ll look at those alongside others in this feature.

Traditional web hosting
Web server and email hosting are, without doubt, the most readily available of online services, typically included free when you sign up for a broadband internet connection. In addition, there are plenty of providers ready and able to host more demanding websites and email requirements independently, for anyone prepared to pay.

Sign up for one of these services and you can have your own ‘virtual’ server, running either Linux or Windows, complete with associated web server software (Apache or IIS), a supporting database server, Ecommerce and other back-end applications. Prices will be worked out based on a mix of disk space usage, software licensing costs and the amount of web traffic the site will attract. As such they can start from just a few pounds per month for a shared Linux server, rising to hundreds to get a dedicated server of your own running Windows or a big name Linux distro.

An example of one of the providers of this kind of small business service is 1& 1 whose basic Linux-based business hosting packages start from £6.75 (ex Vat) per month. From £60 (ex Vat) per month you can get your own Windows server to do with more or less as you like; similar packages are available from Zen Internet, Demon Internet, UK2, Rackspace and numerous others.

Typically, simple web-based management interfaces are provided to enable customers to configure software themselves, without the need for in-depth technical expertise. However, it’s not compulsory and, especially on the more expensive products, access to the server via a remote desktop and other utilities is also available, along with dedicated support and guaranteed availability to agreed service levels.

Hosted messaging
Prices for hosted email services can vary considerably. The cheapest solutions (some free) are nearly all Linux-based, offering basic Pop3 and Imap access to messages received by the hosted server. These can be used with any client software that supports those protocols, in addition to which most will include a webmail interface for remote and mobile access via browsers and, possibly, the option of sending mail out to Blackberry handhelds and other mobile devices.

Hosted implementations of Microsoft Exchange are also becoming common, such as those available from 1&1 starting at £5.99 (ex Vat) per user per month. You get a licensed copy of Microsoft Outlook for each user and a set amount of mailbox space (1GB with the 1&1 service) on an Exchange server configured to host your domain.

Support for Outlook Web Access (OWA) is usually provided, together with anti-virus and anti-spam protection, and email facilities to forward messages to mobile computers and smartphones. Groupware functionality is also provided as part of the hosted Exchange service, with users able to share address books, calendars and other folders just as they can if connected to a local server.

Other providers offering hosted Exchange include Fasthosts, whose services start from £9.99 (ex Vat) per user per month, and Simply Mail Solutions where mailboxes start at £4.99 (ex Vat) per month.

Microsoft also offers hosted email based on Exchange, as part of it’s Office Live solution, which also includes a hosted web server, Sharepoint workspaces and a range of business applications – the exact content dependson the subscription.

Messaging and groupware services based on open source alternatives are another option. For example, as well as Exchange, Simply Mail Solutions can provide email and collaboration services using a hosted implementation of the Zimbra open source solution.

Tommie
Other companies offer groupware and information-sharing functionality as a service independent of email. Examples of this include Tommie and BT Workspace.

Short for Total Office Management Made Incredibly Easy, Tommie provides web-based tools to share and manage the kind of information on which small businesses thrive.

Each user, for example, has a calendar that can be shared with others to organise their time, arrange meetings, book holidays and so on. They can also manage contacts, fill in timesheets, and do their expenses online while managers can, similarly, keep an eye on things, approve holiday requests, collate timesheets and, generally, run the office from a browser.

The interface is very straightforward, with tools provided to change its appearance and customise what you see, by adding text and logos. You can also import existing information such as contact lists, although not directly from Outlook at present.

Data is held on a secure storage array and continuously replicated to a backup system, with 128-bit SSL encryption used to secure all communication between the host servers and its clients.

A flat rate of 10p is charged for each user per day, and customers are invoiced monthly in arrears. Users can be added or removed as required, with no limits on how many you can have. Performance is largely dictated by internet bandwidth, with broadband giving the best results, although the service is optimised to give usable results even on dial-up and via wireless hotspots, with support for handheld computers another key feature.

BT Workspace
BT’s Workspace service uses Microsoft Sharepoint services to provide tools for groups of users to share information and work on projects collaboratively.

Each user has their own workspace, accessible through a browser, with an online calendar, task and contact manager, as well as space to securely store documents and other files. A separate shared company workspace then acts as an intranet, providing a bulletin board and discussion forum, plus a company-wide shared calendar and access to common customer and other contact lists.

Independent workspaces can also be created to manage specific projects, each with their own calendars, discussions and shared files. These workspaces can be shared with other users and extended to create an extranet by inviting customers and business partners to collaborate as either observers or contributing participants.

SSL encryption is used to secure client connections to the service, and it’s possible to import contacts lists from Outlook and other applications for use in BT Workspace.

BT Workspace Lite is available free of charge for two users, allowing two project workspaces to be created, which can be shared with an unlimited number of other users.

You’re limited to just 10MB of storage with the Lite version, otherwise you can opt for a paid-for service, which costs £7.50 per user per month (minimum of two users).

Each user then gets 100MB of storage space that can be pooled by everyone, with an unlimited number of project workspaces also available when you opt to pay for the service.

Licences are required for access to the company workspace, but extranet users invited to collaborate in project workspaces do not have to be paid for.

Microsoft Office Live
Office Live doesn’t give you online access to Word, Excel or other programs in the Office suite. Instead, it’s designed to provide small businesses with a complete online presence, starting with a hosted domain together with virtual web and email servers.

The free Office Live Basics subscription includes registration and hosting of a .co.uk or .com domain (existing domains can be transferred in), plus 25 Exchange email accounts and 500MB of web space. Web design tools are also included while, for £11.95 (ex Vat) per user per month you can upgrade to Office Live Essentials, doubling the number of email accounts (each with 2GB of mailbox space) and increasing the web space to 1GB.

Support for mobile email using Windows-powered handheld devices is also included, along with shared workspaces, the ability to use third-party web development tools, and a hosted implementation of Microsoft’s Business Contact Manager application.

Take out an Office Live Premium subscription (£22.95 ex Vat per user per month) and web space rises to 2GB with additional workspace support and business-management applications also provided.

Designed to be accessed using a browser (only Internet Explorer at present), close integration with Outlook and other Office tools is, naturally enough, an option, although these have to be licensed separately.

In beta at the time of writing, Office Live is due to be released with full UK hosting by the middle of 2007. Beta users trialling the service for free will be able to upgrade or opt out when the full service starts.

And the rest
Hosted storage is another common offering, with lots of products from which to choose, including hosted accounting and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions, such as the recently released SageCRM.com, which starts at around £35 (ex Vat) per user per month. Ecommerce, VPN and security services are all available too.

You can even get fully hosted desktop products; there aren’t that many yet, but it’s worth looking at Online Desktop from ADS Portal. Subscribe to this and for around £84 (ex Vat) per user per month, you can throw away your local PC and applications in favour of Office and anything else you might want to access, running on remotely managed servers equipped with Citrix thin client software.

A word of warning
Before you rush to the web and sign up for any of these services, it’s worth stressing the importance of doing a little research before handing over responsibility for any part of your business IT to a third party.

The vendors mentioned in this feature are reputable, and most are backed by large companies with established trading records.

However, that’s not always the case and it’s all too easy for a small startup, with limited facilities and staff, to appear bigger than it really is.

It’s not always a problem, but small providers may struggle to deliver on service-level promises and can disappear as quickly as they arrived.

Don’t rely solely on a website. Phone up the company and talk to them about the services they provide, how much it will cost, where they’re based, how they will protect your data, and so on. This will give you a good idea of the kind of people you’re dealing with. Ask also for references, if possible, from customers in the same line of business and of same size as your company.

If you think they’re pulling the wool over your eyes, check the provider at Companies House and any other investigations, just as you would before committing to any potential business partner.

Connectivity is all
Sign up for any kind of online service and your connection to the internet becomes all important. Available bandwidth will dictate how quickly you can work and if, for any reason, the connection is lost, you won’t be able to send or receive email, open shared documents, connect to your CRM system or do whatever it is you’ve paid that money for. It becomes essential, therefore, to make sure you buy the right kind of connectivity and arrange for backup in case things go wrong.

Most hosted small business services will be designed to consume only small amounts of bandwidth, so they can be operated across standard broadband ADSL (Asymmetric DSL) and cable connections. However, they can be bandwidth greedy and, of course, the more users you have, the larger your internet pipe needs to be. With ADSL, upstream bandwidth (the rate at which you can send data out to the hosted application) will be only a fraction of the headline downstream rate, so you might want to consider an SDSL (Symmetric DSL) service or, if that’s not available, a leased line connection.

In terms of backup, SDSL and leased line users should look at having an independent SDSL/ADSL connection available to take over in the event of a failure, while ADSL users should consider a second service from another provider on one or more separate lines. You might also want to consider using the backup connection alongside the main link for load balancing and to save having to manually reconfigure the setup should a failure occur.