So You Think You Need A Server?

There’s going to be a point in the growth of a business where your office may need a little more out of your technology infrastructure than just the ability to surf the web and share a printer. You may need to share files and folders amongst multiple users. You also may need to control user access and permissions to those files and folders, not to mention access to the workstations themselves. Additionally, depending on the business, you may have requirements to use some specialized, industry related software that needs to be accessed by one or more workstations on the LAN. At this point somebody will likely suggest that you buy a server.

Before you rush out and buy a piece of hardware which may require you to reconfigure every machine on your LAN or to instruct your end-users in new methods of interacting with their workstations, you might want to think long and hard on whether or not you actually need a server. Specifically, you should pay close attention to alternative ways you can address your business needs without buying one. The reason for so much introspection is two-fold. First, a server requires an administrator, especially if it takes over business critical functions – if something goes wrong with it, you don’t want your business to grind to a halt. Secondly, the marketplace may offer an online application which will allow you perform same business related tasks without an expensive client/server setup. This internet based setup is called Software as a Service, or SaaS.

Before we get into SaaS let’s look a little closer at the so-called traditional client/server setup for a business application. In this set up you buy a (usually expensive) software package and install the server part of it on a (usually expensive) machine that meets the software’s requirements. That machine will be probably expected to be running all of the time and will often have fault-tolerant components allowing it to do so. Also, it will usually be expected to be faster than your average desktop machine because it may be required to handle multiple things at a time. Your software package will also come with a client part that will need to be installed on all of the desktops that require access to the application. Not only will the server need to be maintained but the desktop application will also need to be supported on every workstation it’s installed on. That may mean patching and updating multiple machines when necessary.

With SaaS you don’t buy a server, you don’t even buy the software package, you subscribe to it – paying (usually monthly) for access to it. Your desktop client is a web browser. All you need is a decent internet connection and you get to use the software on the vendor’s servers through the web. They host and maintain the application (as well as your data) so you don’t have to. The downside to this is that when they have an outage, it becomes your problem – and there is nothing that you can do about it but wait for them to fix it. Also, the fact that they also host your data, you’ll have to trust that they have the proper security, redundancy and back-up/recovery procedures in place to protect it.