Virtual servers are the key to stable computing infrastructure for SMEs

March 22, 2011 - PRLog -- "Virtual servers are perfectly designed to help SMEs break down some of the barriers to success in an increasingly competitive market” says Jean-Pierre Dumont, CEO of Cape Town-based ISP WebNow.

By necessity, the owners of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) must be expert multi-taskers, simultaneously managing the finance, HR, sales, marketing, administration and IT functions, all while servicing their clients or customers. In parallel, they face many challenges as they walk a fine line between managing costs and investing in business growth. In an increasingly connected world with a growing number of web-based businesses, these SMEs must also find cost-effective, energy efficient computing solutions.

Previously, high pricing structures meant that SMEs would have to resort to sharing server space with sometimes hundreds of other businesses. In these cases, if one site caused a server fault it would take down all other sites sharing the servers. For mission-critical websites, such as ecommerce businesses, this could have disastrous results – especially if the business is an SME whose success is entirely reliant on a stable infrastructure.

The key lies in virtualisation, or virtual servers.

Virtual servers offer small businesses 99.9% server stability, with more intensive monitoring conditions and the ability to contract their service provider to service level agreements. And by eliminating the need for space-grabbing hardware, SMEs can reduce their electricity, insurance and security costs. As a more energy efficient solution, virtual servers also allow SMEs to reduce their carbon footprint.

Cape Town-based ISP WebNow has launched a new virtual server product aimed primarily at SMEs whose limited resources and specific needs preclude them from taking up dedicated server offerings. Priced from R189 a month for a Linux server package, the WebNow product is one of the more competitively priced offerings on the market, adding more fuel to the virtual server pricing fire.

Using geographically local servers, this offering makes virtualisation more accessible to thousands of smaller businesses who rely on stable server capacity for their business success.

Jaco Liebenberg, WebNow sales and marketing manager explains why they felt it important to create the offering: “In talking to our clients, and as an SME ourselves, we are deeply aware of the restrictions created by high hosting infrastructure costs. We can offer more stability and better security for a fraction of the price.”


CEO Jean-Pierre Dumont added: “Virtual servers are perfectly designed to help SMEs be successful in the world of ecommerce. As a hosting company, we are always thinking of how we can break down some of the barriers to success that SMEs face today. By restructuring our virtual server pricing packages, we can help SMEs to grow and become more competitive in today’s busy market.

The WebNow virtual server packages are available on either Linux or Windows platforms. The Linux package is priced from R189 per month and the Windows packages from R450 per month.

All virtual servers are hosted on enterprise grade Dell PowerEdge servers with Microsoft Hyper-V technology at WebNow’s Teraco-based data centre. The Window-based virtual servers run Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Web Edition with optional upgrades to Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard Edition and a choice of database storage solutions.