Until a few years ago, you had your desktop machine and a mobile phone; some people had a PDA which would (kind of) sync with their desktop machine. Companies had back-end Windows dedicated servers or linux dedicated servers too. Then came the iPod/iPhone and the Blackberry and we had more things to carry with us and more things for our internal IT departments to have to support (and more things that could go wrong!).

Fast forward to today and the mobile Smartphone is almost, but not quite, there as far as being an all-in-one device which can do everything that you need when out and about, without the need for additional MP3 player, PDA, laptop, Blackberry – even the most non-technical person can get everything they want on one!

And, believe it or not, the business world is in a similar position with regards to those back-end servers we mentioned earlier. It’s now possible to work with a partner hosting or managed services company who can provide managed or outsourced hosting with dedicated servers in their own data centre for a fraction of the cost of doing it yourself with none of the challenges.

Want your email provided as a managed service with uptime and availability guarantees? No problem.

Want your servers to be available 24 hours, 7 days a week? Easy peasy.

Technology has advanced so quickly in the last five years that there’s really no need to invest in your own IT systems, when managed hosting companies can do a better job for you, at a considerably cheaper price.

Any guess what? You can even access all of these managed services on dedicated servers via your Smartphone, wherever you are on the planet!