Is a Hosted Environment right for you?

 

  In today's software market developers are moving part of their applications online, from user manuals, to payroll forms and 1099's; but is moving the whole application from your local servers and workstations to online right for you? Online applications come in many forms, but the two most popular are hosted solutions and SAS (Software as a service).  Hosted solutions are where you purchase the software and have it hosted on a server off site to be accessed remotely, where SAS you actually don't purchase the software but pay a monthly service charge to "use" the developer's software to be accessed directly from the internet. Some items to take note of when deciding to move online are price, data accessibility, support, and internet availability.  Hosting solutions are usually based on a consistent monthly service charge, which allows you to easily budget for these expenses; but you have to weigh the costs of hosting over the cost of hardware/network upgrades and support.  What most people don't take into consideration is as software requirements grow, the workstations and servers needed for core business tasks will need to be upgraded anyway.  If you decide to have other applications hosted for you such as Microsoft Office, you have to adjust your return on investment to reflect for these additional fees. Import and export of your data is another consideration.  If you are just hosting your accounting or fundraising software online, how easy is it to get you data to or from your local workstation?  How easy is it to transfer data from one user to another? Also if you are running your application as a SAS and decide to cancel the service, how will you get your data out of the application in a useable format?  These are issues you need to address with your provider. In a SAS environment the application updates are usually handled by the provider, but in a hosted environment, who will be responsible for updating the software on a timely manner?  You need to be careful not to get into a dispute between the hosting provider, internet provider and software developer when there is an issue pertaining to your application.  Internet accessibility is another consideration. If your current internet connection is slow chances are you will need to upgrade to a faster connection. Even though most hosted applications operate on a "slim" client footprint, the amount of users using the application could still impact your internet throughput reducing you to a crawl.  There is also down time to consider, if you lose your internet with your application "In-House" you organization can still function, but with a hosted application, you come to a complete standstill. Hosting or SAS may be the right solution for you, but be sure to do the math and ask the right questions of your potential provider before jumping online.

E-mail, word processing documents, fundraising/contact database, and financial records?
 
Of course, the answer is obvious, however if you have a plan in place when was the last time you updated it, when was the last time you actually tested it?  We have been called into a number of situations where a plan was in place, back-ups were being done regularly and everything seemed great.  However, when the unexpected happened and the data needed to be restored it was not great, in one case the data although appearing to be backed up, the system had not actually backed up any data for two years.
 
A Backup plan should be written and tell you the following: