Managed services

One of those ideas that's really good but never seems to work out is the concept of managed services or hosted applications. In theory, they should put us out of business. So why aren't we worried?

Webcentral certainly has some good marketing people getting one of their case studies into today's Australian IT.

Having someone else host your system is good idea on a number of levels. It means your data is more likely to be backed up, you don't have to employ pesky IT people to make sure backups run and data is saved and it doesn't require spending tens of thousands of dollars on servers and stuff.

So why hasn't it taken off?

There's a lot of reasons. One is that all your data is now in someone else's hands, if you don't pay the bill or they go bust you've lost your data.

The second is that you are now wholly reliant on Internet access. No more getting away with a domestic 256/64 plan. The moment the Internet connection goes down, your business does too.

With your entire office using the Internet connection, it means it's going to be slow. So you're going to have to get a fast connection.

All of a sudden, you're looking at over a $1,000 a month for a business grade 1500 ADSL connection or more.

Now of course this means your connection and network are more important than ever. So you are going to need someone reliable to keep your network running. That's why you'll have to call us and why we're not worried.