Privately held dedicated web hosting company, The Planet, has released a new technical brief, containing comparisons of the business benefits of its dedicated hosting and colocation services for small and medium-sized businesses.

"Dedicated Servers or Colocation: Which Is Best for Your Hosted IT?" - weighs the capital expense of colocation versus subscribing to on-demand dedicated hosting. It also evaluates the costs associated with a typical colocation scenario, which include setting up, configuring, maintaining and updating servers, as well the staffing and travel costs incurred by IT experts who are required to travel to the colocation site for repairs in the event of a hardware or software failure. In contrast, dedicated hosting from The Planet provides a scalable IT infrastructure with 24/7/365 support, rapid server deployment, customized server applications and an uptime guarantee.

"By offering an affordable dedicated hosting solution with a wide scope of products and services, The Planet puts SMBs on a level playing field with their larger, better-funded competitors. By hosting with The Planet, businesses can gain access to high-powered information technology, backed by our world-class data centers and high-performance, fully redundant network. This new white paper demonstrates the value we provide customers with around-the-clock support and an infrastructure that is both reliable and scalable," said Urvish Vashi, Director of Product Management at The Planet.

According to the report, colocation represents a less-than-optimal solution for SMB customers, considering the prohibitive cost of hardware ownership and in-house staffing, coupled with the limited response time to correct problems. Choosing a dedicated hosting solution from a provider like The Planet offers cost savings and increased performance. The paper also asserts:

A fully scalable IT infrastructure allows businesses to grow as quickly as necessary, without investing in more hardware than needed.

Dedicated hosting allows businesses to outsource the management burden associated with day-to-day hardware and facilities maintenance costs.

Businesses gain a competitive advantage by leveraging the latest server technology and software solutions offered by dedicated hosting providers.