Greetings, On 10 December 2014 7:06:37 am NZDT, BWS Johnson <abesottedphoenix@yahoo.com> wrote: [SNIP]
The only difference I can spot might actually weigh as a positive in favour of cloud based service. When you have a physical server and suffer a local catastrophe, such as an earthquake, fire, sinkhole, et cetera, there goes your data.
Actually another cost consideration is the hardware costs vs. hosting costs. Hardware dies over time and needs to be replaced. Budgets get cut, and a monthly hosting cost is less likely to be axed compared to a new server cost ever 4-5 years. So, in some sense, I think hosting externally and not on your own local hardware is better. And comparing costs, you may be able to find hosting that works well for a cost that when amortized over 4-5 years is actually cheaper. That is, $20/month (let's say) * 12 months * 4 years = $960 for 4 years. This is comparable to some cheaper machines which perfectly suffice, but I know I prefer to drool over the $2500+ machines. :) Sadly, you aren't likely to be continually upgrading components. After 4 years, a locally owned piece of hardware will have dropped from a middle class machine to low end machine, while the hosted environment may have progressed, because of hosting provider upgrades. :) And, you aren't having to do your own backups, if you hosting on the cloud. If you have locally hosted machine, you need to figure out how to back up elsewhere. A good backup plan has on-site same drive, on-site different drive, and off-site backups. A hosting provider tends to have these in place. Do you want the hassle of having that yourself? This is related to the point that BWS Johnson made. And what if your local machine dies? Sure you have a backup, but you actually have to spend the day rushing around buying a new server. With hosting, hardware failures like that are not your worry. No budget stresses, because you don't have the cash to go buy it now, and most service level agreements give you less than a hour downtime per year. GPML, Mark Tompsett