I'm potentially going out on a limb and offering a database solution to a new problem which local governments have had dropped in their lap.

If you were to offer a database product to small/local government customers which required a server computer (win or Linux) for the clients to connect to, which way would you to do it?

Would you rather have the server computer be provided by the customer, kept at their location, and remotely administered by you or you own your own centralized server supporting all of your customers who would connect to it over the internet?

There's definitely pros and cons for both:


At Customer Location:
-A failure/issue will only effect one customer, not them all.
-PITA to remotely maintain each individual server at each location.
-Free to me since customer is providing hardware and it can be low-end hardware to support only a few users.
-Backing up data from each location (my responsibility) is more difficult.
-Even with internet outage, they can connect to the server across their LAN.


Hosted at my own data center:
-All my 'eggs' are in one basket if something bad happens to the server
-Only one server to maintain
-I would need to buy nicer hardware and off-site hosting to support all customers at once.
-Any issue takes down all customers
-Running backups for all customers is easy.
-Customer cannot access server if their internet or the internet at my hosting center is down.


So which would you go with? It seems to make more sense with a central server. However, it might be more safer (but more headache) to have a server at each location. What to do?

I'd say it depends on the technical knowledge of the people you're working with there. If they have a good IT department that can take care of minor issues with the server then let them have the box. If not, you might as well have it yourself.

I have the same dilemma as a web designer; do you let the customer stick with their current hosting, or do you move the domain over to your own? I usually lean in the direction of moving them over to my own web server, but then most of my clients know absolutely nothing about computers. I think if I was building a web site that included a database (I don't have any clients with databases now but I do offer the service) I would lean very heavily in the direction of hosting it on my own server, unless the company already had very competent IT staff, in which case they probably wouldn't be hiring me in the first place.

Posted by trent -PITA to remotely maintain each individual server at each location.

It sounds like you're responsible for maintaining it one way or another, so I'd say host it yourself. If you were just handing the product over to their IT teams and only had to deal with fixes and development-type support, it'd be one thing. Sounds like you're going be responsible for backups, monitoring, and all that sort of sys-admin goodness, though, so I'd say host it yourself.

Thanks guys. Yah, having separate boxes all over the state is just not cool if you think about it. I really don't want to be driving all over replacing power supply's and shit.