Hosted services, often referred to as “cloud” services, have received a great deal of press and promotion recently. Hosted services can be defined as contracting with an outside vendor to host network services such as electronic security, data backup, file storage, email, etc. on servers that are accessed over the Internet, as opposed to accessing a server that is physically on-site at the customer location. Typically customer data is housed on high-capacity servers that are shared among many customers. Hosted services are often marketed as a way to decrease operating expenses and management overhead, while supposedly improving reliability. You are advised however, to avoid the hype and marketing propaganda and to look very carefully at all of the arguments for and against hosted services prior to making the jump!
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