Resellers should offer advanced services to consumers who require
state-of-the-art web hosting and performance. Advanced services are defined as
high-end, complex IT infrastructures. They are not normally purchased by
small or mid-sized businesses because of the breadth of their scope and
their prohibitive cost. Advanced services are thus normally reserved for
larger organizations that require such options as redundancy and
quality-of-service (QoS). Resellers can benefit by reselling these services
to larger organizations in their capacity as an IT consultant. As a
knowledgeable consultant, resellers can determine the specific requirements
of their clients and recommend a solid and sophisticated solution after an
in-depth assessment. Often larger organizations are seeking content
delivery services, streaming media services or firewalls and virtual private
networks, which Web hosting resellers can locate and provide to them for a
marked-up fee or for a commission.
Content Delivery Networks
Many companies seek content delivery solutions in order to enhance their Web
content's redundancy and efficiency. Content delivery networks (CDNs)
accelerate Web sites by redirecting Web traffic to devices located near the
audience. These devices may be located on the networks of many service
providers, and involve using the edge computing capabilities to move content
closer to the actual user. CDNs are popular because they assist larger
organizations to deal with an immediate influx of demand for their online
content, and ensures that their online content takes a faster route to their
client. CDNs is regularly employed to not only improve public Web content,
but to support content delivery on corporate LANs or WANs within a company's
firewall.
Streaming Media
Streaming media is also another popular advanced service which resellers can
offer. Streaming media provides an alternative way for corporations to
deliver content, either through offering video-on-demand or webcasting.
Streaming media applications continue to grow in the technology marketplace
because the market penetration of broadband connections is greatest in the
corporate sector. For this reason, streaming media services are an excellent
product to offer larger corporations.
Virtual Private Networks & Firewalls
A virtual private network (VPN) is essentially a system that allows two or
more private networks to be connected over a publicly accessible network,
such as the Internet. It usually consists of an encrypted tunnel of some
kind, although a VPN can take several forms, using different combinations of hardware and software technologies. VPNs can exist between an individual
machine and a private network, or a remote LAN and a private network.
Firewalls act as gateways between two separate networks. This gateway
generally exists between a corporate network and the Internet. The firewall
is set up to let a pre-determined group of people on to the network while
keeping others out.
Recently, corporations have tended to outsource both VPN and firewall
services, or obtain the services of IT consultants if intent on provisioning
such services in-house. VPNs and firewalls therefore constitute a great
opportunity for resellers as a suite of services which can be concurrently
offered along with Web hosting or ancillary IT services such as CDN or
streaming media.
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