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If you've considered investing in managed hosting for your company's web site or other important applications, then you could very well be moving in the right direction. Although some companies want to keep everything in-house, that can sometimes end up being a costly and sometimes risky proposition that may not be in the business's best interest.

Before you make a rapid decision about managed hosting, you should consider the numerous benefits provided by this third party service.

o No down time - If you try to handle your own web site on your own dedicated server, you will quickly find that your site is going to be down a lot. Servers are difficult to keep running. They need updates regularly. Plus, if you do not have an IT staff available to handle these problems, you may end up waiting a while for a service. With managed hosting, the IT staff are in-house and experienced at working with the equipment housed in the data centre. Additionally, many of the services have a duplicate of your site or application ready to run if one version ends up going down for repairs or maintenance.

o Better equipment - The costs of setting up a dedicated server in your own office can be mind-boggling. Not only will you need to hire professionals to assist with the installation but you'll also need to purchase all of the hardware. Unfortunately, you're going to be on a budget - that's the reality of running a business - so you're not going to be able to afford great equipment. With managed hosting services, the equipment is their business so they go out of their way to invest in the best hardware available because they want it to last. Their business depends on its longevity.

o Better security - We've all heard about the horror stories of hackers getting into important company information or of viruses wiping away hard drives or corrupting necessary files. Because the people in charge of managed hosting services specialize in IT matters, these issues of security are second nature to them. They know exactly what steps to take to safeguard their clients' files and applications. You can have peace of mind knowing your materials are safe on their servers.

o Improved back-up - One of the most hated parts of computers is doing the tape back-ups. They can be extremely time-consuming but are, of course, necessary to make sure nothing important is ever lost if something happens to your hard drives or servers. The good news is that managed hosting services often provide these back-ups for whatever you want to save on their equipment. They handle the back-ups for you so that's one less thing you have to worry about doing.

o Great technical support - Unless you have an IT department, you know that getting technical support can be a challenge. If something goes wrong, you don't have the time to wait around. You need immediate answers. Most managed hosting services offer technical support 24 hours a day.

The bottom line is managed hosting provides plenty of benefits that you should consider for your business.