the aspectra blog IT know-how & more, since 2012

Managed Hosting

Outsourcing is here to stay, and managed hosting remains in high demand on the market. In recent years, the range of services behind the term "managed hosting" has changed dramatically.

From servers to services

With the advent of outsourcing IT services, numerous new terms have emerged over the last 20 years. Many of them have disappeared again, but the umbrella term "managed hosting" is still common. In the ‘00s, managed hosting typically translated into a managed physical server, located in a data center. Firewalls and backup as well as system monitoring were usually also included. Then as now, "managed" means that a service provider actively supports both the central system and the peripheral systems required for it, for example by patching them and fixing hardware failures.

Virtualisation

 

With the advent of virtualization, a further level of abstraction entered the picture, which of course must also be attended to. Virtualization has relegated hardware, both in terms of servers and storage, into the back seat for end users. With the latest development towards containers and the operation of entire systems in the cloud, the service spectrum for managed hosting continues to evolve.

Managed Services

In addition to the active operation of applications, be it on virtual systems, in containers, in the data centre or in the cloud, managed service providers such as aspectra now offer a variety of further services. These include DDoS mitigation, web application firewalls, load balancers, firewalls, vulnerability scans, backup/restore, log analysis tools, SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) and much more.

Certifications

Companies responsible for operating applications and managing customer data in data centers and in the cloud bear a great responsibility. By means of audits and certificates, these can be checked by external bodies and the reports then can be shared with their customers.

aspectra is certified by KPMG according to ISO 27001:2013, the quality seal for information security and ISO 27018:2014 (Compliance and Cloud Security) and is regularly audited by Ernst & Young for compliance with FINMA/EBK guidelines.