Most of us are familiar with the popular shared hosting environment. It’s where you share a server with multiple other clients with a resulting modest cost. Shared hosting is a cost-effective solution for millions, and has served us well for years.

Shared Vs Dedicated Servers?
As a business owner, however, shared hosting may not be your optimal or even preferred solution. Enter dedicated hosting solutions. A dedicated server provides dramatically increased security, flexibility, customization, and reliability. It goes without saying, or should, that any business involved in serious e-commerce should seriously consider dedicated hosting. In a shared hosting environment multiple webmasters leave you vulnerable to increased risk, whereas a dedicated server is yours and yours alone.

Virtual private servers are another superior option we’ll discuss in future issues, and certainly have benefits over the shared hosting environment – but for purposes of this discussion, we’re talking about a physical hosted server.

Total Control Minus The Hardware Costs:
Importantly, a dedicated solution provides you with total control without the expense of maintaining hardware and an unwieldy internal IT staff. Your webmaster and/or your hosting provider can customize the server to your exact business requirements. This might include back-end enterprise solutions, specialized e-commerce applications, increased security and many other custom or preferred applications your business requires. Automated software license renewals, custom backups and hosting IT support are very real and measurable benefits.

All very nice, you might say, but what about the cost? Almost universally, studies show it is far more cost effective to “lease” a dedicated server or servers than to maintain the effort internally. Just as your business offers particular and unique expertise to your customers – reputable hosting companies employ the technical and physical assets required to provide the best technical and physical support for you, their customer.

We’re glad to answer any questions you might have, as well as define the important differences between various hosting options. Please feel free to contact us anytime!

April 2011 Newsletter — Basic Web Strategies You Must Employ To Be Successful!  Don’t neglect these top web strategies!

March 2011 Newsletter — You’ve Got Mail. Lots of Mail! Maintenance Schedules And More.  Email etiquette tips, maintenance scheduling and application spotlight.

February 2011 Newsletter — Have A Website You Love To Hate?  Content Management Systems (CMS) – What’s Not To Like!

A major terrorist attack or unintended accident involving chemical, radiological, nuclear or explosive instruments could produce thousands of patients with critical injuries. To address those concerns NVHA, an alliance of 14 member hospitals and six free standing emergency departments was established in 2002 to respond to significant incidents in a coordinated and collective matter. Its sole function is to coordinate emergency preparedness, response and recovery activities for the member hospital and healthcare systems in cooperation with local, regional and state response partners. To that end, NVHA will significantly update its current website.

SiteVision will be responsible for working with NVHA to establish site architecture, content, and component integration to include a new site design, templates and required custom components. Development and programming will include template integration into a content management system, incorporating built-in functions such as calendar, image gallery, news, content collection, registration and member form and permissions. New will be a project area with a descriptive page for each active project. A member resource section will present important resources by topic, and will inform users about available training, plans and policies and best practices, together with any available videos, webinars, and training events.  Also integral to the new site implementation will be WebEx user training sessions, hosting services, QA, testing and final deployment.

The Virginia Hospital and Health Care Association’s (VHHA) Emergency Operation Center (EOC) is a pivotal tool of its Virginia-wide Hospital Alerting and Status System (VHASS). VHASS was created to enhance the distribution of critical emergency management information needed by Virginia hospitals and healthcare providers.  Likewise, the system is designed to provide Virginia residents with superior interoperability of communication and response efforts during a time of crisis.

SiteVision, who has closely assisted in the development of the network centric parent site (VHASS), will be responsible for providing project management, scope, module specific programming and development, QA and Testing, as well as final deployment and testing.

VHASS and, respectively, the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) is a completely web browser based application to allow Virginia members to maintain and update emergency status information in real time and as required. The system is a statewide cooperative effort that includes Virginia hospital members, the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) and the Virginia Department of Emergency Management.

A recent addition to the WebEOC was a separate MedEvac WeatherSAFE module created to let emergency air transport organizations share and inform each other of flight and dangerous weather hazards in their daily operations in real time.

With the scheduled enhancements The MedEvac WeatherSAFE module will have a new status board to receive emergency alerting messages transmitted by the Emergency Operations Center and permit transport members access to the main WebEOC Board. Air transport organizations will update their helicopter availability status and other information while VHHA users may monitor the status board and make contact with an air transport organization if needed during an incident. Importantly, the new status board enables VHHA hospital and healthcare members and Air Transport Operators to effectively interact during critical mass emergency incidents.

In addition, hospital members will now be able to enter Hospital Landing Zone information that includes landing imagery, potential site hazards and the like.  This information will be accessible by the MedEvac WeatherSAFE members to assess hospital landing sites as required.

In total, the new VHHA enhancements will further improve an already impressive alerting and status system utilized by Hospitals, Healthcare providers and Emergency Response members throughout Virginia.

January 2011 Newsletter — Happy New Year. Time To Tell Us What You Think!  We hope you’re looking forward to a great year!