Lower costs, uptime guarantees, continual monitoring and trained staff are all potential benefits. With the ever-increasing demand on IT staffs to keep mission-critical messaging and collaboration applications running 24/7, the IT departments of many small and midsize businesses (SMBs) are feeling the strain. that is causing IT and C-level personnel alike to question whether to manage their IT resources in-house or to outsource to a hosting provider.

SMBs with IT staffs may have a sense of shield and feel that they are in control of their input when it resides in-house, but many SMBs do not have the financial or personnel resources needed to utilize enterprise-class applications to help grow their business.

In contrast, however, the advantages of working with a hosted services provider can include a lower total cost of ownership, no need to purchase new hardware or software, continual uptime guarantees, daily backups, management and 24/7 monitoring, the latest software, and well-trained support.

The choice to partner with a provider of hosted services is a significant business decision. For some SMBs, the burden on IT is becoming too time-consuming and is stealing the focus of their internal staff. Other businesses do not have the human resources to set up a full-service IT staff and offer their employees enterprise-class applications. Still others, such as those who want to upgrade their e-mail from Microsoft Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007, for example, incur great expense with the needed purchase of new 64-bit hardware and the training of existing Exchange administrators on new installation and administration requirements.

In addition, all of these groups may share a fear of potential downtime. What many of them do not realize is that working with a hosting provider can mean their IT services will be up and running nearly immediately, at minimal cost, with guaranteed uptime, around-the-clock support and usually…

Orginal post by Top Tech News