Taking advantage of virtual private servers can save staffing and hardware costs for any business. Most companies need servers for various reasons. They have web sites, email, collaboration software, HR software, and various other software running the business. The software needs a server to run on, so if a company needs to run one or more of these applications, they need servers. The problem here is that installing servers means that the company now needs people to run the servers. Setting up software to increase efficiency results in needing additional staff that's not used on the core business.
Outsourcing the servers can ease this burden on a company. Virtual private servers are dedicated virtual machines that run a standard operating system. Just about any software that can be installed on a physical server can be installed on a virtual server. From a security perspective, the server is isolated from other customers just as a physical machine would be. Since the server is virtual, the processing power and memory can be allocated as needed, instead of having to buy a large physical server in anticipation of future needs.
Using a virtual private server can provide all the resources of a physical server. With a physical server in a data center, all interaction with it is generally via remote desktop or remote terminal. Using a virtual private server, administrators access the server exactly the same way - there is almost no way to tell if a server is a virtual server in the cloud or a physical server in the closet in the back room.
Virtual servers are a much smaller ongoing monthly expense, as opposed to a large up front capital expense. Then consider that many server applications don't use much in the way of hardware resources, so that upfront expense is often overkill. If there are a number of corporate applications using servers, all those servers can be run on individual virtual machines with just the resources necessary to run the application with acceptable performance. If services are consolidated, or an application is retired then the virtual server can be released, saving that monthly expense. This gives companies a lot more flexibility with respect to expenses.
Virtual private servers can be used to replace any physical server on the business premises. Server software can be installed on the server, and accessed via either an authenticated connection over the internet or via a VPN connection to the server. Since virtual private servers are a lower expense, and can be added or released on the fly, businesses can also experiment with multiple-server configurations and then decide whether or not the expenditure is worth it.
'For example, a company may be running a CRM application on a single server, and they want to see if moving to a multiple-server configuration will improve performance. It's possible to bring up several virtual servers as a staging testbed, install the CRM software and configure it, then migrate the existing data and run tests to evaluate the results. If they choose not to pursue the migration, then they can release the servers and simply pay the cost of running them for the few weeks the test was run.
Virtual private servers recognize the dynamic requirements of the modern business, and allow a more flexible way of using server resources without investing in large capital hardware expenditures.