Is It Cheaper to Host In House?

By Laurie Head

AIS Network VP

Isn’t it cheaper to host in house (on premises)?

Yes, there are times when do-it-yourself, in-house hosting makes absolute sense, and at AISN, we always will help you determine if it does.

Our No. 1 priority is to be a valued service partner with our clients. However, when it comes to something as mission-critical as your IT infrastructure, putting your applications and data in the hands of hosting experts, who can manage assets reliably and affordably over 24x7x365 with an industry-leading 100% Compliance Guarantee and a top-notch and guaranteed Service Level Agreement (SLA), can be, you will soon see, one of the smartest business decisions you make.

Unlike in-house hosting, outsourced hosting gives you the same level of transparent, protected access and service at a lower cost and much higher redundancy level (fault tolerance). Mostly, this is due to economies of scale in a managed data center, where we centralize and steward your servers and only focus on those dedicated resources. Here’s a snapshot of the many clear advantages of outsourced hosting over in-house hosting.

 

The AIS Network Hosting Advantage vs. In-House Hosting

Category Industry Average AIS Network Hosting In-House Considerations
Hardware Life cycle management: One to four servers with an 18-month life span
    • Continuous hardware upgrades

 

    • The latest equipment maintaining your servers—with state-of-the-art features for the highest performance

 

    • On site hot spares, service personnel and replacement equipment

 

    • Does it cost to have spare parts lying around?

 

    • Do you have a parts inventory and strong vendor support with 24x7x365 monitoring of your servers?

 

    • Can you continuously return or replace equipment as it becomes obsolete?

 

Traffic Midrange of 100,000 hits per day
    • 9-way direct Internet Carrier grade backbone connectivity (Equal to 64 T1s)

 

    • Practically unlimited bandwidth on a redundant fabric

 

    • Flexible, scalable and burstable connectivity to 100 Mbps per connection

 

    • Does your site have the right architecture design to manage traffic?

 

    • Does your site employ Border Gateway Protocol to maximize efficient routing?

 

    • Do you have the certified staff to continuously monitor and update your network infrastructure and optimize it for your business needs?

 

Bandwidth & Network Two T1
(approx. 3.0MBps of dedicated synchronous communication)
    • Our 9-way direct Internet backbone connectivity provides approximately 64 x T1s speeds

 

    • State-of-the-art fiber networks deliver the highest speed and scalability with the option to increase to other providers if necessary.

 

    • Multiple providers and equipment in redundant configurations provides the highest reliability

 

    • Is your connectivity provider reliable?
      How much does it cost to purchase connectivity from multiple providers?

 

    • How long does it take to add more bandwidth?

 

    • Do you have fail-over routers in the event of component failure?

 

Facilities Unspecified
    • N+1 UPS (uninterruptable power supply)

 

    • Standby generators with auto-fail over switching

 

    • Redundant security systems

 

    • State-of-the-art fire detection and suppression systems

 

    • Have you invested in multiple generators, UPS, and cooling systems?

 

    • Do you have multiple fuel tanks with contracts for refueling in the event of a long-term electrical outage?

 

    • Do you have a fire suppression system that will not damage server hardware?

 

Support Three full-time staff (on-site less than 50% of the day)
    • 24x7x365 real-time monitoring in our network operations center

 

    • Supported by trained, industry-certified, experienced staff

 

    • Offers a menu of IT infrastructure options to support client needs: from operations and strategy consulting options to backup and disaster recovery services

 

    • Can you support your solution with current staffing levels? How will staff turnover affect your platform stability?

 

    • Is your IT training budget adequate to keep staff current?

 

    • Do you have a disaster recovery plan?

 

 

Additional Considerations When You Host In House

Beyond the areas of cost and reliability, organizations should consider the following when evaluating the difference between outsourced hosting and in-house hosting:

    • Internet Traffic Contention. Even if you have dual Internet connections, unless you’ve optimized and have sufficient redundant connections, your internal network traffic will impact your ability to access key mission-critical applications and data reliably. Further, does your current architecture include a fail-over strategy in the event that one connection is unavailable? AISN’s facility, for example, has a nine-way, fail-over connection to multiple providers that all connect to the Internet backbone.

 

    • Network Performance, Peering and Capacity. Latency and traffic hops will degrade the experience of customers who are trying to connect to your servers. Further, costs for bandwidth and other restrictions will impact your customer’s experience if you are not using a Tier 1 network provider with extensive peering relationships. Any explosive growth in your business may be eroded or stopped if you are using a carrier that can’t handle the bursting bandwidth.

 

    • New Technology Innovations. Innovations happen continuously in technology. Are you aware of the latest trends? Perhaps you are, because you’re here, but for most businesses, unless you devote hundreds of thousands of dollars to research and development, hire leading engineering talent or are part of vendor beta programs, your system is destined to fall behind the technology curve. Our continuous technology life cycle management and staff with deep industry involvement allow us to make sure that you have the latest and greatest technology on your project.

 

    • Redundancies. For companies that are very intolerant of downtime and require the highest level of application availability, a top-tier hosting provider like AISN will be able to provide extensive, redundant fault-tolerant hosting offerings in the areas of hardware, connectivity, power, fire detection, fire suppression and support.

 

    • Security. Concerned about security? You should be. Disasters happen suddenly and unexpectedly—whether they are natural or man-made. Reliable off-site protection in a data center that is built to withstand terrorist attacks and natural disasters will safeguard your mission-critical data.

 

    • Compliance. Facing regulatory pressures? Our facilities and service architecture are currently SSAE 16 Type II-certified. Further, we are currently operating as a Tier 4 data center as certified by the Uptime Institute, an industry-recognized standards organization for data center design and security protocols. If you need a specific industry certification, we can work with you to meet your needs. We offer a 100% Compliance Guarantee that ensures that you pass your audits with flying colors.

Let us know if we can help you work through any other questions that you might have or leave a comment below.