Hosted IT Services

[wilksj01]

Hello,

The company I work for is looking at refreshing the main infrastructure of out I.T. network which includes 7+ back end servers and around 70 PC's.

One of the options we are considering is a hosted IT service as it seems like a fairly cost effective way of doing things. Does anyone have any experience of hosted IT services and can anyone recommend anyone who they have had good experiences with.

Thanks in advance.

[Moby-Dick]

Just moving your post to a more relevent forum.

Are you looking to Outsource your IT support ? or move to a more Hosted infrastructure ( virtualised or otherwise )

[wilksj01]

We are considering our options at the moment. We already outsource support but we are also looking at completely moving the infrastructure to a hosted solution.

[Moby-Dick]

hosted exchange isn't too tricky , plenty of providers do that - what else would you be looking to host ? ie would you be looking for a virtual desktop solution ?

if you do , would you estimate that your business is print heavy ?

[wilksj01]

The one we have been looking at is a completely hosted desktop delivered by RDP, we pay a monthly amount per user and for that we get all our backend server, out business applications hosted, backups etc but also all of our MS licensing such as office and SBS 2003.

I have struggled to find any comparisons at the moment as I only seem to come across hosted exchange or solutions where you put your own servers in a data center.

[Jiff Lemon]

Before deciding wether to go with hosted solution, I'd look at what you currently do locally; Hosted exchange sounds very sexy, but some of the limitations may not suit your users. Printing is notorious in a hosted enviroment too.

[wilksj01]

We do not print any large files just basic word or e-mail files, ususally no more than a few bytes.

The company we are in discussions with have promoted the scalability of the hosted service in that there monthly user amount stays fixed no matter how many users we have which sounds great as we expect to grow to over 120 users within the next 12 months which would dramatically rude cost?

Thanks for everyone's help so far.

[TheAnimus]

remotely hosted exchange, what happens if your net goes down?

also think of all the increased traffic you will have.

For 70+ users, its not worth it.

for 10, it is.

[Moby-Dick]

Before deciding wether to go with hosted solution, I'd look at what you currently do locally; Hosted exchange sounds very sexy, but some of the limitations may not suit your users. Printing is notorious in a hosted enviroment too.

isn't it just

while I'm on it I'll give Jiff a little free shameless plug - Bluecube are pretty good for hosted environments , but make sure its actually going to be suitable for the way you and your firm work.

[wilksj01]

The two companies we have looked at are SystemHOST and Extrasys. We have visited a 90 user site (a solicitors) who are using the hosted service and they are having no speed issues at all. They put in an 8MB lease line with ADSL backup to our main office and 2 x ADSL lines to our satellite offices to cope with the resilience issues.

I think it is going to need some more investigations going forward and some proof of concept on printing and speed issues.

[Moby-Dick]

leased lines dont grow on trees y'know

what is your current connectivity like ?

[wilksj01]

They provide connectivity as part of the service. Currently we have a 2MB lease line so we make an instant saving on not having to pay for that.

[Moby-Dick]

fair enough. If you are going to use an external supplier then ensure that you have some very good SLA's in place for that connectivity and the service as a whole. Your hardware is effectively out of your control.

[wilksj01]

Thanks for your advice moby. At the moment we are being offered an 8 hour SLA on connectivity. 100% uptime on the servers etc, 4 hour on-site for user issues and 1 hour for telephone/remote.

How does that sound?

[Moby-Dick]

so if someone cuts throuhg your fibre , you've got an 8 hour outtage ?

[wilksj01]

No, I think I mentioned earlier they provide ADSL backup. I think the 8 hour SLA is if there is a problem with the line it will be resolved within 8 hours which we could live with as we would switch to bonded 10mb adsl which I know is a big drop in performance but still better than nothing I guess.