When choosing a hosting provider, uptime and availability is perhaps the most critical aspect to look at.

The first question you should ask is ‘Does my potential hosting provider have a trust website – a site that provides complete statistics on their availability?’ You would be amazed at how quickly you can eliminate hosting providers just on that one question, because even most of the largest providers do not provide such transparency. And without this transparency, how can you possibly trust them? What would you be going on?

The second question, should this potential provider pass the first question, is what is their actual uptime? If your potential provider does provide their statistics, you should remember that the bar is at least 99.9% uptime. Anything less is simply not a number you should accept.

In 2009, Nerds On Site achieved 99.9191% uptime across ALL our systems, and we are aiming for at least 99.999% uptime in 2010. Our 2009 availability numbers put us in the top 87 of all hosting providers world-wide for uptime. Our goal in 2010 is to be in the top 5 world-wide. Watch our trust site (http://trust.nerdsisp.com) for up to the day statistics!

Most small and mid-sized businesses are using email as a primary communication channel with customers, colleagues and suppliers. But many of these companies stop there, missing out on productivity-boosting features like shared calendars, contact information and files. By upgrading to the world’s most popular business messaging software, Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, you can significantly raise your team’s efficiency for a small monthly fee. Basically, Exchange is a computer server that stores your company’s email, calendars, address books and files centrally, so they are available 24×7 and can be shared among your team, if you wish. It is the messaging system of choice for most Fortune 500 corporations.

Nerds On Site offers hosted Exchange for our clients, which takes your email to the next level. Hosted Microsoft Exchange means that we provide all hardware and software, then run and maintain it for you in a tier-1 datacenter. You pay a low monthly fee, and can access your email using Outlook or Entourage on your desktop, Outlook Web Access (OWA) in any Web browser, or wirelessly from a device like the BlackBerry or Treo.

Our service operates out of a tier-one datacenter, with state-of-the-art cooling, power supply, backup generator and fire suppressants. For you this means that your email is constantly running. Your Exchange service will run on clustered servers and an EMC storage area network – so if one server or disk drive stops working, your email keeps working. As well as offering the highest-quality IT infrastructure, we do nightly backups to protect your data.

We offer a complete range of add-on features. For instance, hosted BlackBerry and GoodLink (for Treos and other devices), so you can instantly activate email service for your handheld. Rather than spending thousands of dollars on your own server, you can use our managed service for just a few dollars a month. You can also add archiving – from simple message journaling, to keep an exact copy of all your message, to compliant archiving, which fulfils regulatory requirements from the SEC, NASD, HIPAA and so on. Also available is fax via email, which gives you a local fax number and emails your faxes to you as PDFs.

When looking for a new domain name for your business, it is always important to first determine what is available in the rapidly dwindling domain pool. Unfortunately, some registrars play loose and fast with the rules, and will actually register any available domains that you lookup using their WHOIS tools. For that reason, Nerds On Site offers a public WHOIS tool that can be used without fear of losing your domain or being locked into a contract with a registrar you didn’t choose. We welcome you to use: http://whois.nerdsisp.com.