Live linkup
Normally, your website is located on a shared web server in our high capacity datacentre with a fast and wide connection to the internet, whereas your main database is probably located on a server at your main office.

The challenge then becomes to make sure that the data on each computer is in synchronisation. For instance, if you receive a new shipment of product, the website needs to reflect that you may have some additional items for sale, whereas if the website sells the last of an item, the stock control database needs to indicate that it is time to reorder.

For companies that only do business on the web, there are more integrated solutions available, but many of our clients already have existing database management systems in house.

Hosting Your Own Website
A question we're asked fairly frequently is "Can I host my own website?" For those who opt to go down this route, a fast, reliable, and permanent connection to the internet is required. It has been known for companies to set up a web server in their office and connect it to their ADSL line, but ADSL does not come with a service level agreement commensurate with a mission critical application such as this. A leased line is normally required, and for most websites, it would need to be at least a 2 Megabit line (ie 32 x faster than an ISDN connection). However, running a web server is a full time job for a specialist, and may not be the best use of your staff's time.

Moving your main database server to our datacentre For companies that are largely or exclusively web-based, another option is to set up your internal database server in our datacentre. We have one client who does this, and it can be beneficial for companies that have many overseas offices. It does mean that you need a very reliable connection to the internet, but it need not be a 2 Megabit line as with the previous solution. With both this and the previous option, security is an issue.