Re: Benifits of ASP CMS Hosted

At -0400Wednesday 5/12/04 07:27 PM, Tony Byrne wrote:

>Actually, some hosted WCM vendors *do* host your website,
>though the trend is not to do so

         No, just the opposite -- the trend will be _towards_ hosting. Why? 
Well, for one thing, a CMS ASP is essentially in the web hosting business 
(a _specialized_ form of web hosting) and the web hosting business is still 
growing apace notwithstanding the Chaper 7 bankruptcies of several 
prominent web hosting firms in the recent past. Second, and much more 
importantly, a great deal of the content in some CMS's lives in a 
relational database management system (RDBMS) and cannot easily be 
converted into static HTML through "baking."

>(e.g. Clickability now
>offers a CMS service without hosting your content delivery
>tier).
>
>Most customers seem to prefer it that way.

         Sure, if they have enough staff who know web administration using 
open source tools such as Apache, Tomcat, and MySQL / PostgreSQL. But many 
small businesses and trade associations do NOT. They have an IT staff that 
consists of one or two MCSE's (morons) who know nothing more than MS IIS, a 
notoriously insecure web server, and MS SQL Server, whose security record 
is almost as blemished as that of IIS. Furthermore, neither IIS nor SQL 
Server runs on Linux or FreeBSD, which are _much_ more secure than f_cking 
MS Windows.

>   Consequently,
>all the major ASP players have built out deployment
>mechanisms for pushing content from their CMS back to your
>web- or app-servers.

         When are CMS ASP's able to push the entire contents of the RDBMS 
to the customer's site? Only when the database (DB) is small. And the DB's 
behind most web sites are growing rapidly. Soon, most DB's will be far too 
large easily to send over the internet. Even when it is possible to send 
the entire contents of a large DB over the internet, it would take hours, 
which means that it would typically take place just once per day (at 
night). Many clients may want to update their web sites more frequently 
than once per day.

         Other complications include: (a) incompatibilities between the 
RDBMS's used by the CMS ASP and the client, and (b) the need for the ASP 
and the client to have identical versions of the CMS and identical 
configurations of the CMS. Even minor changes in the configuration of a 
complex piece of software, such as a CMS, can result in a badly broken web 
site.

>   To answer your question, then, the
>run-time datasource (either data or baked out HTML) doesn't
>reside at the ASP vendor -- it resides with you.
>
>Regards,
>
>Tony Byrne
>Founder, CMSWatch
>http://www.cmswatch.com
>
>On Wed, 12 May 2004 10:27:26 -0400
>  "John Hamman" <John-aEY09RPqFlFF/EzeuO4KJwC/[email protected]> wrote:
> > What are the benefits of
> > Hosting just the
> > App(backend) like SiteRefresh , Clickablility , and
> > iUpload. How come they
> > don't host the entire site, the app and the front end.
> > Wouldn't you loose
> > performace by having the datasource on a different
> > server?
> >
> > Thanks
> >
> > John
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