If you have an internal IT department or have technological knowledge of your own, you may be tempted to manage your server yourself rather than have it hosted or managed by another company. While there are times when this can be beneficial, most companies will suffer from a significant amount of opportunity cost when managing their own servers. This is especially true for smaller businesses, where time is at a premium.
The Opportunity Cost of Managing your Own Server
When managing your own server, you will need to allocate your own time or the time of your IT department towards the overall maintenance of the system. This is time that your IT department could be spending encouraging employee productivity and training employees to better utilize the company’s systems. Server maintenance, management, security, troubleshooting and upgrading can all take significant amounts of time. This time does need to come from somewhere.
Many IT professionals are highly-paid individuals and their hourly pay rates will often far exceed the amount that you would usually spend on a managed service. Your IT professional will need to manage multiple tasks and may be forced to spend more time on server administration and maintenance than they would have to if their focus was not split between different responsibilities. Managing your server’s security alone will take a significant amount of time from your IT professional’s day.
The Hidden Costs of System Downtime
Even if you have a talented internal IT department, they still won’t be as responsive as a company that specializes purely in server management and maintenance. Companies that maintain their own servers may find that they have significant periods of downtime which will affect both productivity and public perception of the company. If your customers find that your website is down for significant amounts of time, they may not be back later.
When the internal infrastructure of a company goes down, such as a help desk ticketing system, it also affects public perception. Consumers that have a negative customer service experience are far less likely to deal with a company and may even discuss their negative experience with other prospective customers.
The Benefits of Using a Dedicated Server
With a dedicated server, you will retain complete control over your server while still having the benefits of a managed host. Dedicated servers reduce the downtime of a company and allow a company to leverage a talented and specialized team for the maintenance, security and troubleshooting of their server infrastructure.
Dedicated servers can be used for everything from web hosting to email and ticketing software. This frees your IT department and yourself up to focus on increasing your company’s productivity in other ways. Dedicated servers hosted by another company also often have access to resources that you simply won’t, such as exceptionally stable high speed internet connectivity.
Dedicated servers are a cost-effective solution to most company’s hosting needs. Even if you already have an internal IT department, server maintenance can be prohibitively time-consuming and pull your IT professionals away from more important tasks. A dedicated server is usually fairly inexpensive to setup and maintain, and will often be far more stable and secure than any other option.