It’s never been easier for consumers to make essential purchases from the comfort of their homes. Thanks to e-commerce giants such as Amazon, quick purchases with even quicker delivery times have taken over our lives. Gone are the days of the traditional brick-and-mortar shopping, surrounded by other equally keen shoppers mooching about the shops. Unfortunately, with COVID-19 bringing the closing of many of our stores and increasing the demand for easier purchases with super fast delivery times, foot traffic for traditional retailers has hit an all-time low.

Many well-known brands did not make it during such a tough period. However, those that did, did so by embracing new relationships with technology and re-imagining what their consumers desire from them. This can come in the form of improving the brand’s e-commerce presence, creating and endorsing personalised loyal programmes, target marketing, or even, something as simple as implementing contactless self-checkout hardware.

If you’re looking for a solution that is simultaneously reliable and cost-effective, then having a cloud-like environment powered by server resources is what your organisation needs.

What is a Dedicated Server?

To keep things simple a dedicated server is a physical machine with its own RAM and CPU running its own operating system of the user’s choice. Whether it is share web hosting, virtual private servers or even major public cloud solutions such as AWS or AZURE all these solutions are utilising dedicated server resources to power their process. The biggest difference is related to how much access you have to the underlying hardware and how many tenants you share resources with. With a shared hosting environment, your data is still being stored on a specific server, you are just sharing the resources with many other users at the same time. This can often lead to a plethora of security issues and decreasing system predictability.

So what are the Benefits of Dedicated Servers?

Firstly, increased processing power is the most obvious benefit of the dedicated server. When it comes to CPU-intensive processes, nothing can beat the computational speed of a bare metal server. As traditional retailers grow more and more reliant on sales through their e-commerce stores, brick-and-mortar chains are also seeing the need for quick and effective websites. Something as simple as page speed can have a significant effect on your site’s bounce rate. The faster your system can sort through large volumes of product and payment information, the better the user experience for your customers and the more likely they are to return in the future.

Secondly, reliability, which in this context can have two different meanings. The first meaning relates to the predictability of knowing your applications and instances will consistently run as intended, free from the potential issues of a multi-user environment. The second meaning of reliability can also relate to trust. The knowledge that your system will be up and running when the consumer needs it.

Thirdly, how cost-effective is it really? Well, for larger organisations, dedicated servers are definitely, the more affordable option. To put it simply It’s all a question of scale. If your website is merely an informational getaway for your clients and you don’t need to store customer and product data, it is unlikely that you need a dedicated server solution.

Is the Dedicated Server Solution right for you?

To put it simply, it all depends on the size of your organisation, the volume of data you need to move around, and the growth plan of your business. Each of these components is essential in deciding whether this solution is the right one for you.