Application Hosting. According to several business dictionaries, the definition of application hosting is “…the rental or outsourcing of business applications from an applications service provider, rather than installing the software internally…”

Many enterprise businesses have traditionally hosted and maintained their own proprietary software applications on their own servers. Today however, many of those same businesses are looking into the benefits of outsourcing some or all of their enterprise-application software to third-party services providers. Companies are finding out that in addition to freeing up time and monetary resources, they realize additional benefits such as department-level or company-wide training, secure data backup, and application upgrade services. Known industry-wide as the SaaS (Software as a Service) model, these off-site hosted applications integrate easily with a company’s existing data and IT systems. Additionally, because customer demands and sales may fluctuate frequently during a specified accounting period, implementing SaaS applications provides the flexibility large corporations need to quickly respond to economic conditions and industry demands.

Some of the open source software applications offered by service providers include:

●      CRM (Customer Relationship Management)

●      PM (Project Management)

●      VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) for Call Center Management

●      DMS (Document Management Solutions)

●      CMS (Content Management Solutions)

●      E-commerce solutions and integrated shopping cart applications

●      Mail Server Solutions

When deciding whether to transfer some or all of their applications to a third-party service, many enterprises have to deal with several questions first. The number one concern seems to be security, since SaaS applications are stored online “in the cloud” and therefore outside of exclusive company control. Other questions that should be asked of a service provider before deciding on deployment include:

1. Can my company have my choice of programming language and application platform?
2. Will my company have to change basic IT infrastructure such as the operating system and current deployment environments?
3. What are the contract requirements of the provider?
4. Is there an upfront investment? If so, how much?
5. How quick is the response time for spikes and lulls in customer demand and application loading?
6. What is the experience of the third-party provider with issues such as global deployment, redundancy and resiliency?
7. What provisions are in place to keep my data secure?

Another important consideration for enterprise concerns with IT environments is managing the various compliance and regulatory data management and reporting requirements. This is another area where hosting your applications with an experienced third-party service provider can assist companies and help to mitigate the risks involved with meeting government reporting deadlines and data recovery processes.

It is the responsibility of a company’s CIO (Chief Information Officer) to ensure a company’s regulatory compliance and infrastructure security, but this is another large area that can be successfully outsourced to the carefully screened and chosen service provider. A disaster recovery plan is also required for most businesses and must include redundant backup systems. Off-site application hosting solutions will help to ensure that your applications and your business can continue to operate even when your main IT environment fails due to man-made or natural disasters.