IT Industry news reports may include terms such as “cloud computing” and “distributed services” to describe the burgeoning paradigm shift into harnessing the power of an entire network to provide services online or through the use of online technologies – all of which may be delivered from a remote source. This reduces the processing power needed by a client computer or network.

The hosting service will know the likely new technologies that are not yet available to the majority of browser applications, and the likely technologies that are – so that visitors’ browsers don’t crash and the site visit is an enjoyable and memorable experience. However, such backend services are not just provided to public web sites. They are also provided to client networks so that a hosting service’s customers can utilize the power of the Web and many of the technologies associated with it to drive their businesses. So a hosting service may have new and powerful software available that their clients can download to their networks and use. In real terms, these technologies may run in reality at the remote host’s facility, but will react dynamically to inputs from the client computers at the hosting service’s customer’s offices. They therefore require very little overhead in maintenance at the client’s offices to run effectively. Any software updates or patches for glitches or bugs may be applied at the host source. Industry news analysts tout these new technologies as being extremely powerful tools – they enable the information contained in massive databases hosted by servers that run virtual networks to be exploited from a simple laptop or 3G cell or mobile. Very little work will be performed by the portable technology – the backbreaking functionality is all still residing at the host site.

As the industry news will tell you, the paradigm shift to cloud computing means that VPN hosting will be an integral element of IT for many years to come.