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What is the market for A5 hosting?

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    #16
    Re: What is the market for A5 hosting?

    Originally posted by Steve Wood View Post
    <<varying time of day of each answer.>> Twin toddlers at home.

    I'm not positive I can make money by hosting A5 applications. I know there is an expanding need based on conversations with my own clients, not sure about the 'at-large' part. It would round out my services, but its a big committment to service level.

    I also think that Alpha needs to be available on multiple hosting situations to be a viable web solution. The fact that there is essentially only one remote hosting source, causes clients some distress. You can host a PHP application with almost every hosting service.
    You could also just use a "co-location" hosting service: you provide the software, could be anything which is needed to run your apps, put it all on hardware you rent with such a co location provider and let them provide the hardware and web bandwidth. Then you have your own Alpha WAS running on hosted services with quaranteed bandwidths..Now you only have to deal with all those incidents coming in...

    Regards, Ron

    Comment


      #17
      Re: What is the market for A5 hosting?

      Steve,

      We had quite a journey with A5 hosting this year.

      Our first experience was with A5 Online (slow and lots of downtime)

      Our second was Firm Support (speed was good, the support was very good, downtime wasn't rare but it did happen)

      Our third was with EasyCGI.com on a virtual windows server (slower than Firm Support and it wasn't very reliable)

      We learned that we have to zero tolerance for downtime and even less tolerance waiting for anwsers when our clients are calling about the system.

      Currently, we have Alpha on two identical dedicated servers hosted by two different providers. The servers share traffic 50% and they failover to each other automatically. We use EasyDNS for this service (this setup is extremely fast, affordable and we have 100% uptime!) These servers only run WAS.

      We have other servers to manage our html pages, security, frontpage, subdomains, etc which are for us is more difficult and time consuming than Alpha5 is to setup. We have hope for Version Eight's new security capabilities.

      If you decide to provide shared hosting like Firm Support I would only host WAS and do it extremely well. It is my opinion that anyone running anything important to them on Alpha will utimately decide to go with dedicated servers and you may want to keep them as your customer.

      Jim Gocek
      LMRPManager, LLC
      www.lmrpmanager.com
      [email protected]

      Comment


        #18
        Re: What is the market for A5 hosting?

        I am hosting one of my domain names (A5) with firmsupport. I have 5 other frontpage sites hosted with Interland (now web.com). I would like to have all my domain name sites on A5 as I become more comfortable with developing in A5.

        Most of my sites are for medical registration for specific events on specific dates, these sites can't afford to be down.

        Price is not as important to me, but speed and reliability is.

        Comment


          #19
          Re: What is the market for A5 hosting?

          Hello,

          I have no experience at all with WAS and a very little bit with Alpha5, but I want to inform you about this mail I received in march 2005 :
          ------------------------------------------------------------
          My dear Alpha friends in the Benelux,

          With Alpha Five version 6 you develop database applications for the Internet. These Web-based-applications use the Alpha Web Application Server (WAS). This means that the WAS must be operational voor 24hrs / 7days (continuously) and online connected to the Internet. Not every Alpha developer can or will keep it's own webserver open the the Internet day after day.
          So if you are looking for an external WAS hosting service here is the solution.

          Our company Basys in The Netherlands (Alpha Distributor for the Benelux countries) has set up an external Alpha WAS host in Amsterdam starting from today. This is set up in conjunction with an external hosting company who offers this service for Alpha developers (Basys does not). This hosting service is available right now for a special price and with even more services then just the WAS.
          If you are interested in this external Alpha WAS hosting service, please send an email directly to [email protected] and you will receive the details.

          With kind Regards,
          Adri Veldwijk

          Basys / Alpha Software Benelux
          Adri Veldwijk

          � Horsterweg 192, 3853 JG Ermelo
          [email protected]
          � +31 (341) 550055
          � +31 (341) 550035
          � +31 653 502803
          --------------------------------------------------------------------
          If it's still up ? I don't know.

          Regards,
          Teun van Unen.

          Comment


            #20
            Re: What is the market for A5 hosting?

            Thank you everybody for the responses so far. I am glad to see there is quite a bit of activity taking place, both sides of the pond. I recognize their is a significant increase in expected service level (i.e. immediate response) with hosting than standard consulting activity. I'll keep playing with the numbers and other factors and see where I get this time in a few weeks.
            Steve Wood
            See my profile on IADN

            Comment


              #21
              Re: What is the market for A5 hosting?

              Hi

              Ever since the WAS came out I have been running a server with it on here in the UK. It's a small operation mainly for developers and hosting web sites I have written for clients.


              It's a friendly operation with users helping each other, however it will never make me rich - however it does get me out of xmas shopping etc.

              I see it as an extra tool which can be used to generate income rather than a core business.

              Ian

              Comment


                #22
                Re: What is the market for A5 hosting?

                Regarding hosting services, how often do they, or are they willing to apply WAS patches? Seems kind of critical, don't you think?
                Peter
                AlphaBase Solutions, LLC

                [email protected]
                https://www.alphabasesolutions.com


                Comment


                  #23
                  Re: What is the market for A5 hosting?

                  For my own server as soon as a patch is released it's installed.

                  Ian

                  Comment


                    #24
                    Re: What is the market for A5 hosting?

                    Ron I think you are right on the money with your assessment. Jumping into the hosting business requires a great deal of thought. Unlike many other businesses, hosting requires professionals who understand the technology and the security issues that are constantly changing. You must be commited to making a substantial investment in your infrastructure. Providing hosting services is not a part-time job. Hosting customers are very demanding, they expect that the web server is up all of the time and that is secure.

                    We at Firm Support spend a great deal of effort to ensure that our servers are always up, we monitor our servers 7/24 and can attend to any issue within minutes of a problem. Those who provide hosting services by farming out the hosting to a third party have to open a ticket and then have to escalate the ticket to get a response. A few years ago we tested farming out a couple of servers to a large hosting company...it was not a good experience. We had no control over the large hosting company's priorities. They got to our server when the had a chance. Meanwhile what do you say to a customer whose site is down..."I'm sorry but you have to wait for the company where your website is hosted to reboot the server"?

                    That is why we have our own data centers with our own servers. We do not farm out the hosting. We are hands-on with our servers. We directly contract with two high speed providers (for redundancy) and we have a team of 3 full time tech support engineers to support the Alpha Web Application Server.

                    We are going to be shortly offering virtual dedicated servers. This will allow us to provide independent dedicated Alpha hosting servers for much less then what a managed dedicated server costs today. We are really excited about this option.

                    If you are looking for hosting, contact Leah 845-338-1490 x6118 or [email protected]

                    Comment


                      #25
                      Re: What is the market for A5 hosting?

                      I can attest to the substantial cost and thought required! Hosting one or two of your own applications is not that difficult. But providing the right environment for hosting multiple system, authored by multiple individuals, requires a massive commitment. It’s near impossible to properly isolate each WAS application and still provide a cost effective hosting solution.

                      Although it reduces the cost somewhat, VPS is not going to get the cost down comparable to what it costs to host other web database applications. The lower price of VPS also comes with a lower set of resources. Your drive space and Memory will be less than on a dedicated server. Well, you could beef up your VPS to match, but the cost then would be back up to the Dedicated cost. VPS also means you are sharing the hardware with another 20 guys and subject to their usage. A VPS machine may have 4 processors and 16 Gigs of RAM, but your "share" is just a fraction. Even so, VPS is a decent solution for Alpha web applications.

                      The hosting provider has to manage or provide near 100% uptime with effective resource balancing, disaster recovery, FTP, EMail, backup server(s), and other services. Although you can run on one copy of Alpha WAS, truly isolating users means you have to run multiple copies of Alpha Application Server, each on a different port, not to mention some will be V7 and some V8.

                      If you do farm out for the servers (which I have to) you have to find a very responsive provider that gives you an direct-contact account manager to take care of you.
                      Last edited by Steve Wood; 03-02-2007, 01:35 PM. Reason: spelling
                      Steve Wood
                      See my profile on IADN

                      Comment

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