A01 chaf6542 06 se fm indd

Selecting hosting providers

While it is possible for companies to manage their own services by setting up web servers 

within their own company offices, or to use their ISP, it is common practice to use a specialist

 

 Service-  oriented 

architecture

A   service-  oriented 

architecture is a 

collection of services 

that communicate with 

each other as part of 

a distributed systems 

architecture comprising 

different services.

M03_CHAF6542_06_SE_C03.indd   102

7/22/14   1:37 AM

---

103

Chapter 3  Managing digital business infrastructure

hosting provider

 to manage this service. For example, Rackspace (www.rackspace.com), is 

one of the largest providers of managed servers and cloud services for corporate businesses. 

According to their site, they have delivered enterprise-level hosting services to businesses of 

all sizes and kinds around the world since 1998 and had grown to serve more than 205,000 

customers by 2014. They were rated a leader in hosting by analysts Gartner (2013) who 

reviewed the capabilities of different hosting providers.