A table which ranks the best managed hosting firms on the market last month has been published by NetCraft, awarding points to particular service providers based on the length of any downtime, the percentage of failed requests which are registered and a number of other criteria.
It is worth noting that every hosting company in the top 10 had not a single second of service outage throughout the month, which shows just how important consistency can be to earning the respect of your peers and securing long term business accounts. Failed requests were also all below two hundredths of a percentage point in most instances, which furthers this argument.
Leading the pack during January 2012 was Swishmail, which has enterprise email hosting as one of its core services, as you might imagine from its name. It also offers managed hosting packages to business users across a variety of options.
Cloud computing from second place INetU has recently been granted certification under the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) and so its clients can be confident that customer transactions will be handled with the utmost care and protection.
Third place Multacom may be based on the west coast of California but its data centers provide service to a global selection of enterprise clients. This is thanks to high speed fiber optic links which connect it to the main network infrastructure and eliminate geographical issues from the equation.
Interestingly, the managed hosting firms using Linux are beginning to slip down the charts and for the first time in two years, none of the top four companies is powered by this platform. Instead, FreeBSD and Windows Sever 2008 are represented in the table-topping quartet, which is good news for Microsoft.
The way in which the NetCraft league table is constructed is relatively thorough, although it does not look at every single managed hosting company on the planet. Instead, it considers results gathered from the top 43 firms, measuring performance levels from various locations across the globe at intervals of 15 minutes, in order to gauge accurately the capabilities of each.
Interestingly, the number of failed requests actually plays a greater role in dictating the ranking of the table than the length of the downtime recorded. Should managed hosting companies share failed request ratios, then the average time it takes to get a secure connection is put into play and so forth until a leader is found.
There are obvious fluctuations in the rankings from month to month, but there is little doubt that the figures for many of the leading hosting firms are quite impressive, which potential customers would expect to see.
It also seems as though companies are being able to invest in managed hosting and cloud-based data solutions to a greater degree this year, which should lead to improvements at the server farms which power many of these industry leaders. In turn, the increased competition will allow for affordable pricing to dominate the market, giving enterprise customers a better deal on the services they need to survive.
This week, one cloud computing expert has been speaking out about the benefits of using public services. Firehost chief exec, Christ Drake, said that there is no longer a need for businesses to invest in private clouds during an interview with CRB.
He explained that the technology available on public cloud platforms at the moment is capable enough to keep data from individual users segregated and secure, rendering the idea of paying for a private cloud solution largely redundant. As long as cloud companies can continue to develop the industry, he may be proved correct.
This article was written by Daisy Group plc, who provide business communication and hosting solutions including managed hosting, cloud computing and Co-location to business customers across the UK. Our 3 UK Data Centres in Manchester, London and Southampton provide 24/7 support 365 making Daisy the natural choice for business hosting solutions.
| This article was written by Daisy Group plc, who provide business communication and hosting solutions including managed hosting, cloud computing and Colocation to business customers across the UK. Our 3 UK Data Centres in Manchester, London and Southampton provide 24/7 support 365 making Daisy the natural choice for business hosting solutions. |
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