As a small company with several critical, revenue-producing websites that we host with a couple of different providers, we discovered:

1. No matter what, we need to take responsibility for our unique content which can include both software and databases/text/images/movies/etc. For example, no hosting provider is going to detect and repair broken links or corrupted databases. Most will not detect changes in our home page that could be malware. And any custom modules that we have created for our web site are outside their scope of knowledge or management.
2. We must detect and quickly repair any and all problems when they arise
3. Constantly carrying a laptop or even a cool device such as an iPad is neither desirable nor consistent with having a decent existence outside of work. Carrying a smart phone is, by contrast, usually mandatory.

So, our solution was to try to maximize the monitoring, troubleshooting, and repair tasks that we can do from a smartphone. Since we all carry either iPhones or Android phones, we started with an App for them.

We built a smartphone app that we have been using for awhile now. I am wondering if this is another feature that people will begin to demand of their hosting providers as a standard part of their service. It is completely complimentary to the other types of management apps such as cPanel, WHM, and various host intrusion detection facilities that are often bundled into host providers services.

There is a growing suite of Apps that facilitate systems administration from a smartphone. They all have their strengths and weaknesses. The need is there. Time will tell how it gets fulfilled.

Thanks again for the great post.
Betsy
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touchnoc.com