Dedicated Windows SharePoint On-Demand I.T. Staff

Outsource and Save Time and Money

The time required to manage your own I.T. staff and application delivery infrastructure can be costly and divert resources from key objectives. When you outsource with us, the savings on time and money can be astounding.

Many Applications Service Providers (ASPs) and providers of Software as a Service (SaaS) are outsourcing their hosting needs to Frontpages. Become one of the thousands of customers worldwide who trust our world class network for their I.T. shop. Save 40% to 60% on I.T. Costs when outsourcing.

Outsourcing Summary

When it comes to hosting your company's web site, it is easy to know what to do, but knowing how to do it and implementing the plan is more difficult.

• Increase application availability
• Enhance employee productivity
• Reduce the significant costs associated with deploying and managing a Hosting Infrastructure

Reduce Your Cost

The cost of implementing the necessary steps required to host a web site is probably the biggest reason why 62% of companies outsource this activity. A web server is merely the first of many purchases and ongoing expenditures required for hosting a web site. In addition to the expected upfront and ongoing costs, upgrading hardware and software and replacing malfunctioning parts can create unexpected expenditures.

• No upgrades of software or hardware are made in the first three years.
• Personnel recruiting costs are not included in the cost of this endeavor.
• No equipment failures or malfunctions requiring replacement.
• The company hosting its own site has a high-speed Internet connection and
• will not incur additional charges for the connection.

When outsourcing, the hosting company takes care of these issues at no additional cost. When outsourcing, your site can be live in days, rather than in the weeks or months it may take to purchase equipment and hire technical personnel. A web hosting company has a server to meet your needs in stock now, and has the personnel on-staff to set your site up quickly. Figure 1 compares the operating costs in the first two years of an in-house operation versus outsourcing. Of course, these costs are estimates and may differ for any one specific situation. As well, this comparison is based on a Windows 2003 solution.

Hosting Reliability

A web hosting company must have many redundant systems to stay in business. Because of the scale of a typical web hosting company, the cost of these systems to each individual client is minimal. Having these systems in place ensures that your web site will be live for a greater percentage of the time than if you hosted your site on your own servers without multiple redundant systems. At FWHN, there are no single points of failure. Every system, from telecommunications to our power supply, is backed up by a second system. Redundancy is built into every aspect of the data center network. No fewer than two Internet carriers connect each site to the Internet backbone. Service is delivered to our data center via multiple carriers.

Routing and switching hardware is redundant throughout the FWHN network and a variety of protocols, such as BGP4, allow the network to operate flawlessly even in the event of a device failure. In addition to the redundant systems, FWHN has on-hand systems specialists at all times. These experts can resolve hardware and software problems, replace malfunctioning or broken parts and can anticipate problems to avoid downtime altogether. With spare parts and extra servers available at all times, even a hardware malfunction can be fixed quickly. For a company hosting its own web site, replacing malfunctioning parts can take a web site down for as long as it takes to order the required part and to install it. Outsourcing dramatically decreases such downtime.

Web Hosting Expertise

In this economy, hiring competent people is difficult, and hiring competent technical people is nearly impossible. Once hired, turnover among technical staff can be high. A web hosting company can offer technical people the types of challenges they desire due to the varied day-to-day requirements of each job. Because of this, a web hosting company develops expertise among its employees so there will be several people that can work with your company on your specific needs and can help you anticipate problems before they occur.

To properly maintain a web site, people are required for the following tasks:

• Hardware and software installation
• Hardware and software monitoring
• Server administration
• Server security (e.g., firewalls, watching for hackers, etc.)

A web hosting company will have many people to do each of these tasks so once again there is no single point of failure. Redundancies in people, in addition to the redundancies in technology, enhance the reliability of your system.

Web Hosting Premium Support

Although, in a perfect world, problems never occur, it is important that there is a support system in place for those infrequent times that problems do occur. FWHN offers clients 24-hour support, seven days a week. This means that you can call our technical staff at any time to discuss a problem and we guarantee that the problem will be solved (see our service level agreement). Unlike some hosting companies, FWHN has technical support on-site all day, every day so if you have a problem after business hours, you're not speaking to an answering service and paging someone. You speak to a live person who answers the phone on-site. As well, FWHN has 24/7 surveillance on-site. This means that security personnel are guarding the servers at all time. When hosting a web site, one not only must take precautions about on-line intruders, but also must prepare for people who want to physically damage the server hosting your site. Frontpages'™ surveillance systems dramatically decrease the likelihood of this type of problem.

Outsourcing web hosting allows you to concentrate on your core competencies and have someone else focus on what they do best - web hosting. When you outsource, you entrust your web site to a company with greater experience in web hosting. You partner with a company with the resources to have redundancies in both people and technology. This brings you peace of mind.