Greetings,
On 10 December 2014 7:06:37 am NZDT, BWS Johnson
<abesottedphoe...@yahoo.com> wrote:
[SNIP]
The only difference I can spot might actually weigh as a positive in
favour of cloud based service. When you have a physical server and
suffer a local catastrophe, such as an earthquake, fire, sinkhole, et
cetera, there goes your data.
Actually another cost consideration is the hardware costs vs. hosting costs.
Hardware dies over time and needs to be replaced. Budgets get cut, and a
monthly hosting cost is less likely to be axed compared to a new server cost
ever 4-5 years. So, in some sense, I think hosting externally and not on
your own local hardware is better.
And comparing costs, you may be able to find hosting that works well for a
cost that when amortized over 4-5 years is actually cheaper. That is,
$20/month (let's say) * 12 months * 4 years = $960 for 4 years. This is
comparable to some cheaper machines which perfectly suffice, but I know I
prefer to drool over the $2500+ machines. :)
Sadly, you aren't likely to be continually upgrading components. After 4
years, a locally owned piece of hardware will have dropped from a middle
class machine to low end machine, while the hosted environment may have
progressed, because of hosting provider upgrades. :)
And, you aren't having to do your own backups, if you hosting on the cloud.
If you have locally hosted machine, you need to figure out how to back up
elsewhere. A good backup plan has on-site same drive, on-site different
drive, and off-site backups. A hosting provider tends to have these in
place. Do you want the hassle of having that yourself? This is related to
the point that BWS Johnson made.
And what if your local machine dies? Sure you have a backup, but you
actually have to spend the day rushing around buying a new server. With
hosting, hardware failures like that are not your worry. No budget stresses,
because you don't have the cash to go buy it now, and most service level
agreements give you less than a hour downtime per year.
GPML,
Mark Tompsett
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