Hi Ari, i've quoted the relevant section below from the Survey of Museum Web Implementations, 2005. it is interesting that this decision seems to be related to when the site was launched -- older sites, (those launched before 2000) are much more likely to be hosted in-house than later ones.
we're in the hybrid model here; some functions are hosted, some not, depending on how close i need to be to the technology, and whether or not we could find an economical hosting package for a particular function. best, jennifer Excerpt from Survey of Museum Web Implementations, 2005 David Bearman and Jennifer Trant, Archives & Museum Informatics http://www.archimuse.com/research/mwbenchmarks/report/mwbenchmarks2005.html II. Technology A. Hosting the site Museums that launched their web sites early are more likely to host their sites on their own servers (52.1% of self hosted sites were launched by the end of 1996, while more than 53.3% of IS hosted sites were launched after 1998). But early launch does not correlate with whether museum staff, an outside group or a combination of the two designed the site; almost half of all sites are designed in tandem with in-house and contracted staff. Even national museums used outside contractors and museums staff as often as museum staff alone, and over 20% used outside contractors solely despite an enviable average of 5FTE dedicated to their web sites. [Chart Comparing year launched and hosting choice on-line at http://www.archimuse.com/research/mwbenchmarks/report/images/image018.png ] Many museums reported arrangements in which they do not solely host their sites. Frequently these were co-location agreements under which the museum server, or one belonging to a university of government entity superior to the museum, is located at a commercial site for backup purposes. In some cases, e-commerce functions or streaming media were supported by a commercial host while other functions ran off the local server. Museums do, however, maintain their own sites. Over 85% do so when they host the site, but even the majority of those hosted on ISP's are maintained by the museums own staff (55%). Fewer than 5% of museum sites were fully maintained by outside contractors. " At 12:28 PM -0500 1/10/07, Ari Davidow wrote: >I have been at several organizations in the last few years, and one of the >difficult questions has always been whether or not to host the website >(which is increasingly a collection of specialized applications tied >together by a common web interface) locally, or with an ISP. > >My own prejudice is to host the organizational website externally. I want >the website monitored 24x7, I wanted it backed up and cared for, and if >we're successful and the website gets lots of traffic, I want to keep that >away from the bandwidth I need to run my organization. I want that bandwidth >overseen and tended to by folks who do it for hundreds of other websites a >day. Same applies to security (not just from crackers, but including the >basic expectation that data will remain accessible, unchanged; backups; >denial of service attacks; etc. > >Most of all, I don't want to hire staff to ensure that all of this is >possible--at my organization's size, we can't sustain an FTE for that >purpose (especially when one considers that it would have to be at least two >people sharing a beeper for reasonable 24x7 coverage). And I don't want >part-time staff who are better and more focused on other things tending to >this in their spare time. > >There is a downside. I have some personal websites hosted at an ISP that >went down for several hours (out of control denial of service attacks) last >year. It's true that I don't have the resources to deal with power outages, >natural catastrophes, or denial of service attacks in my organization, but >none of likely in my area. If my ISP goes out of service (or runs into >trouble, resulting in reduced QoS for my site), I'm in trouble. So far, that >has been less likely than losing local staff at inopportune moments or >having bandwidth chewed up by a special, non-web-related project, but I >don't know how representative my experience has been. I do know that at >organizations where I've worked, some sizable, experiments in in-house >hosting have led to finding a reliable external vendor relatively quickly. > >What is other people's experience? When might one want to host one's website >onsite? > >Ari >_______________________________________________ >You are currently subscribed to mcn-l, the listserv of the Museum >Computer Network (http://www.mcn.edu) > >To post to this list, send messages to: mcn-l at mcn.edu > >To unsubscribe or change mcn-l delivery options visit: >http://toronto.mediatrope.com/mailman/listinfo/mcn-l -- __________ J. Trant jtrant at archimuse.com Partner & Principal Consultant phone: +1 416 691 2516 Archives & Museum Informatics fax: +1 416 352 6025 158 Lee Ave, Toronto Ontario M4E 2P3 Canada http://www.archimuse.com __________ -- __________ J. Trant jtrant at archimuse.com Partner & Principal Consultant phone: +1 416 691 2516 Archives & Museum Informatics fax: +1 416 352 6025 158 Lee Ave, Toronto Ontario M4E 2P3 Canada http://www.archimuse.com __________
