Off Topic - Cloud Hosting

[Randal]

All:

I have some clients that are interested in having our fivewin application hosted on a server for them. I was wondering if anyone here offers this kind of service to their customers and if so, what direction they took as far as hardware, server software, etc. I was hoping to get some advice and direction on what might be the best way to go.

Many of our competitors are offering web-based software/solutions and being able to host our application on a server may be a way to offer a similar solution.

Thanks,
Randal Ferguson

[Rick Lipkin]

Randal

Please review this post ..

viewtopic.php?f=19&t=27235

Rick Lipkin

[Otto]

Randal,
you can test Microsoft Azure for free:
http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/
Best regards,
Otto

[Randal]

Rick/Otto:

Thank you for your replies. I'm not sure this is what I'm looking for. What some of our customers have done is hire a IT company to setup a server for them running Windows Server 2008 or 2012. This hardware/server is maintained by the IT company at their location (or somewhere else). Our customer has desktop or laptop computers in their office with internet. They connect to the server through a remote desktop connection.

Some of our customers prefer this setup because they do not have to maintain the server software/hardware or worry about backups. Additionally, they like being able to access the software from anywhere they have an internet connection. Also, one of the big selling points of our web based competitors is automated backups.

I believe some of these IT companies are housing the hardware at their location or renting rack space. I was thinking of doing the latter and perhaps setup a virtualized server where I could run multiple servers and possibly host multiple companies on one server.

No one here is doing anything like this?

Thanks,
Randal

[driessen]

I have several servers who are using my applications on an external server (Windows 2008 or 2012).

The users login using terminal server on that server and they can start working.

Runs very well.

[Rick Lipkin]

Randal

Thanks for the clarification .. we have several 'local' server hosting 'private' company's here in Columbia, SC and if I had my choice, I would feel much better about allowing them to host my data for a leasing fee .. especially if I did not have the IT staff nor the capital to purchase the servers and user licenses.

If I were to have my data hosted .. I would want to use MS Sql Server\SqlOleDb ( ado ) rather than .dbf as my back end of choice, especially in a Client\Server arrangement.

Rick Lipkin

[Randal]

I have several servers who are using my applications on an external server (Windows 2008 or 2012).

The users login using terminal server on that server and they can start working.

Runs very well.

Thank you for your reply. Do you maintain these servers or does the customer or does the customer have another IT company that supports this?

If you maintain the servers do you do this in house or lease servers?

Thanks,
Randal

[Randal]

Randal

Thanks for the clarification .. we have several 'local' server hosting 'private' company's here in Columbia, SC and if I had my choice, I would feel much better about allowing them to host my data for a leasing fee .. especially if I did not have the IT staff nor the capital to purchase the servers and user licenses.

If I were to have my data hosted .. I would want to use MS Sql Server\SqlOleDb ( ado ) rather than .dbf as my back end of choice, especially in a Client\Server arrangement.

Rick Lipkin

Rick:

Thanks again. Yes, that is our customer's position also, i.e. they do not have or want the IT staff or the expense of buying the software/hardware for a server.

However, I'm not talking about just hosting data and this would not be client/server. What I'm talking about setting up and maintaining the server for the customer offsite. Either at our location or lease computers/space from another company (Rackspace or something like that?). The customer would access the server via terminal services or remote desktop connection. There are several companies that offer this kind of service.

Randal

[Otto]

Randal,
this is what we are doing:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=26784&p=148336&hilit=serverbook#p148336

Best regards,
Otto