By allowing a service provider to 'host' some or all of your IT infrastructure you are removing its physical presence from your site or sites and entrusting its management to a third-party specialist. This has many business advantages, particularly for firms with limited IT resources.

Hosting solutions are taking off because of broadband. Not so long ago the only way to connect to a data centre and a hosted environment was over leased lines which were prohibitively expensive for many companies. Broadband has now opened up hosting opportunities for businesses of all sizes, a trend that will continue as speeds get faster and prices fall further.

Data backup is a prime example, whereby the broadband connection to a data centre is used to save files to off-site servers. A convenient way of reducing the risk of business disruption due to lost files and data, it is also very affordable, priced on a capacity basis from 5GB upwards.

Another popular solution is hosted mail filtering. Now a business critical communications channel for almost every business, the challenge is to optimise email delivery and minimise the risk of exposure to viruses and spam.

With a hosted solution all email is routed through a third-party provider where it is scanned and filtered before it reaches the company’s on-site Exchange Server. The next stage for many firms is to move Exchange off site to the data centre, enabling the entire mail process to be run as a managed service.

The trend in the future will be to see more and more applications hosted in the data centre. For many years the IT industry has talked about software as a service, delivered over high-speed connections from the data centre. The time is now right to explore this new model.

Hosted solutions let companies concentrate on their core business, leaving the IT management to the service provider. Not only does it do away with the requirement for in-house IT staff, it delivers a tangible improvement to the IT environment.

Online data backup, for example, saves time and does away with tapes. Business critical files and information are automatically stored in a secure environment, where best practice availability and redundancy technologies ensure a quick restore in the event of lost data.

Hosted applications using the software as a service model will save time and money. An alternative to buying software outright and paying for multiple licences, a business might choose instead to lease the software from a service provider who will also be responsible for the management of the software, keeping it up to date and secure.