What if your IT team could focus their expertise on building your business instead of maintaining your servers? What if you had a backup team of experts focused strictly on hosting, available to you on demand 24-7-365, freeing you to pursue your mission critical projects instead of upgrading hardware, dealing with downtime or figuring out how to handle a sudden increase in traffic to your website?

Working with a hosting provider can make these scenarios possible. The right partner can relieve you and your IT team from the time-consuming chores and challenges of web hosting. Every hour of every day, a hosting provider’s focus is solely on hosting, so yours doesn’t have to be.

Hosting offers many benefits to companies of all sizes, from one-person shops to global conglomerates. It’s a cost-effective solution for those with mission-critical websites and applications that need 100% network up-time, support responsiveness, technical expertise and a secure, high-end infrastructure. Here are some considerations as you explore how outsourcing your hosting can benefit your company.

Cost Efficiency

Hosting boosts the efficiency of your budget by removing the need for big capital outlays on hardware and data centers, as well as the payroll required for regular maintenance and upgrades. It’s a matter of converting capital expenditures into operating expenditures: the money you now put into purchasing, maintaining and upgrading hardware and software could instead be allocated to new strategic projects for your IT department. In a hosted environment, you pay as you grow instead of over-purchasing capacity upfront. This saves you dollars in server hardware, software, upgrades and man-hours needed to run it all.

Growth

When your company grows, your infrastructure must also grow. Since hosting providers have extensive hardware and software resources, they can help you scale smoothly and easily. A good hosting provider is always ready for your growth, whether it’s steady, incremental expansion or a rapid deployment of a hosting environment. The elastic nature of cloud computing also helps ensure seamless growth.

At The Smart Panda we have partnered with the leaders in hosting solutions to bridge the communication gap between your needs and solutions that these leaders in hosting offer allowing us to handle your company’s growth needs today and in the future.  We understand our clients needs, we see the big picture, and we create solutions that will address your infrastructure needs today and years from now.

The Latest Technology, Automatically

Since hosting providers focus on their specific area of expertise, they can stay on top of the latest advances in their industry. This lets you take advantage of the latest technologies without the expense of adding equipment or staff. You benefit from the latest in hardware and software technology, managed by experienced engineers. At The Smart Panda we work closely with our partners to ensure that we’re on the cutting edge of emerging technology for all our hosted solutions.

In addition, our hosting providers continually download and install software upgrades and security patches, so your system is always up-to-date.  Our hosting provider can also help achieve the compliance and regulatory requirements you need for your industry.

What Can You Expect from The Smart Panda Hosting?

Expertise and experience. Everything about our hosting solution revolves around your organization’s hosting needs.  Our systems and processes are built exclusively for delivering reliable, secure and efficient hosting. The Smart Panda team works with our partners who have hundreds of Certified Network Technicians, all trained to the highest industry standards, and have support staff that are highly trained for supporting complex hosting environments.

Support

Entrusting your hosting duties to another entity is a big step. We aim to make the transition as easy as possible with superior service throughout the process. The Smart Panda believes that being a great hosting provider requires more than just the best technologies, but the best of support and service. To ensure a high level of comfort, The Smart Panda has created a process called Panda Support. This means there’s a dedicated Support Team that’s specifically built around you and your needs. It’s the Team’s responsibility to know and understand your configuration, your goals and you.

All of this translates into no more call centers; no more dealing with a different person every time you need something; no more getting shuffled from one random expert to another. Any time of the day or night, you will get a live person on the phone—a capable, knowledgeable, creative, resourceful individual committed to helping you.

Security

Hosting companies integrate extensive security measures to protect your data from threats both physical and online. At The Smart Panda, we are partnered with leaders in the security industry to give you the strongest level of protection available. Our Hosting sites have a powerful, fully integrated portfolio of services, managed devices and best practices, all designed to ensure the highest levels of security for customer data.

Customization

Every business has a unique need and budget. At The Smart Panda we will help you develop the highly-customized hosting environment specifically for your company’s needs. The Smart Panda delivers a portfolio of solutions like Managed Hosting, Cloud Hosting and Email Hosting, each with a diverse mix of products. Because needs change – sometimes rapidly – our model is built to adjust to customer needs quickly and efficiently.

How to Get Started with Hosting

Check out your options. Here are a few questions to ask a potential hosting provider.

• Is the company financially sound and profitable?
• Do they deliver, not just guarantee, the uptime you need?
• How much are they investing in new products and services?
• How meaningful and clear are their guarantees to your business?
• What experts will they make available to you?
• Do they offer a range of hosting services to meet all your needs?
• Do they provide unlimited support 24-7-365 or fee-based support?
• Do they support the compliance standards that are critical to you?
• Are they growing and upgrading their infrastructure?

Test the Waters

If you’re thinking about giving managed hosting a try, consider testing the waters by outsourcing smaller, low-end workloads. Start by offloading the components that have a low criticality. As you gain confidence in your hosting provider, gradually transfer more responsibility to them.

Move Upstream

With a trusted hosting partner, you’re positioned for a long-term shift in the role of IT in your company. Your team can fully integrate into other groups in your company, focusing time and resources on the strategy pieces that require your expertise. Your team will be free to use their IT expertise to move forward instead of constantly being sidetracked by server issues and maintenance.