Businesses, if they are doing well, will eventually expand to the point where a small group of networked computers will no longer be enough to handle all the data you have or provide the customer service levels your clients have come to expect. It is at this point centralising data on to one server, accessible by everyone at varying levels, needs to be considered – but which server and which software running on it should a business choose?

A server will basically act as a database for all the data a company has, from address books through stock levels to sales records and a whole lot more. For growing companies this can amount to a lot of data, therefore choosing the right server is important. It has to be big enough to handle the amount of data now and in the future and it has to be fast enough to serve that data to users when it is required.

It is also important to run the right server software to handle the requests put upon it and to be able to do what is required in the future as the business itself evolves – this will reduce ongoing IT maintenance costs.

There are several types of server available and different kinds of software too. For hardware, a small server which is only slightly more powerful than a desktop computer may be enough, depending on the size of the business. However, for larger or faster growing companies that require an application server it will have to be more powerful. A server with large amounts of RAM and hard disk space would be better, with a multi-core for handling lots of requests rapidly. For the largest of companies running an intranet, the most expensive servers will be needed, with lots of processors, RAM and hard disk space. Read the rest of this entry »