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Discussion on hosted service options at The Sleeter Group ASC 2012

Are you having a hard time understanding the best approach to hosting your business applications – wondering why it costs what it costs, and why some applications seem harder to get hosted than others? While installing applications on your desktop seems pretty straightforward, it may seem like nothing short of rocket science to get an application installed with your hosting provider. And, to make matters worse, a handy little software widget you just bought for $20 now means you must have your own entire virtual server just to run it in the cloud? What’s up with that?

There is a lot of confusion regarding application hosting services, what customers expect from them, and what service providers are reasonably able to deliver. Unfortunately, software developers, customers and service providers are not always on the same page when it comes to trying to solve the problem or making it easier for businesses to adopt the service.

To attempt to address the issue, and to (hopefully) provide some clarity and guidance around the application hosting service model and its use in your business, I will be presenting a session on application hosting, including QuickBooks hosting, at the 2012 Accounting Solutions Conference, presented by the Sleeter Group and being held this year in Anaheim, California on October 22-24. The discussion will include information on typical hosting provider models, as well as application issues and considerations businesses should be aware of when looking to have their software and systems delivered by a 3^rd party.

In all fairness, I will not be recommending specific providers, nor will I suggest that any one provider is better than another. Each hosting company has their own strengths and weaknesses, which is true with all businesses. The focus of the session is helping attendees learn what they need to know to begin a basic evaluation of whether or not hosting of their applications makes sense, and to recognize those factors which will impact cost, performance, and usability. Further, I’ll also be talking about how hosting isn’t a standalone solution, and how cloud-based applications and services may be combined with hosted application services to deliver the necessary functionality for the best value (“can you say chunkify!” to use a Doug-ism).

So, I guess you need to come to Anaheim in October to learn some stuff, and then take a day at Disneyland.

Make sense?