Hi.
I have been speaking to a company called 'Hosted Accountants Ltd' recently - the offer to host software for accountancy practices on their servers - so the accountancy practice accesses online - this includes Digita software which we use.
This seems very interesting as it would save hassle with backing-up the database, etc (they back it up for you) and mean we could access the data from anywhere with an internet connection (security concerns permitting).
I do like the idea, and found the demo worked very well.
Does anyone in Accounting-Web-land already deal with this company (or had previous dealings with them)? - I am interested in hearing any opinions before I commit.
Many thanks in advance.
Darren.
Related resources
Replies (3)
Please login or register to join the discussion.
Lots of choices
Hi Darren - never heard of Hosted Accountants Ltd but what you describe is available from lots or sources these days, after all, all you are doing is moving your computers to another building and connecting your keyboard & screen over the internet.
We did it over a year ago with Hosted Desktop UK and it's one of the best IT decisions we've ever made.
When you think about what you're doing it's a huge step, you're entrusting your entire IT infrastructure and client data to an organisation, you may know next to nothing about. It's important therefore to research exactly how it works, what you can't host, whether you can pull down a local backup of all your data, where your data will be held, how long the company has been going and, most importantly, whether you can talk to at least two existing accountant users.
For an idea of the issues have a look at this thread from last month.
Just a few checks
As it is a new company (inc 3/10/11) and no accounts have been filed you need to ascertain :-
Do they own their own servers or hire space from someone else's.If the latter it doubles your risk in that you rely on a separate trading relationship to protect your data. Also where are the servers based and what insurance cover is in place to protect you from data loss... Etc,Etc.Etc
Hi Bernard
I thought it polite to answer your questions....
We are a newish company but all our main staff have many years experience dealing with IT and/or have experience in practice. Our main technical person has been an IT partner at large practices.
We own much of our equipment and this is held in a number of UK ONLY data centres that are level 3 or higher (The bunker, Zen, many others exist).
On our systems you can take your own backups at any time and we are underwritten by comprehensive insurance cover designed for cloud situations.
Going hosted is really not as scary or risky as some (general IT companies) make out. If the data is secure, replicated and you can take backups if you wish, then it is really just like outsourcing your IT, as Paul says.
Regards
Dan