A small design agency you are a financial consultant for will be creating client websites and wants to purchase a web server so they can host the sites themselves. How will you advise them on this purchase?

What will be an ideal response?

They should understand the concept or model of total cost of ownership: the costs will go beyond the cost of the server, but they will also need to purchase the server software, along with any application software they will be using. They will also need someone in their IT department to manage and maintain the computers. They will also incur facilities costs for running the computer. They need to have a backup plan should the server fail. The design agency will need to add up all the potential costs and risks. Additionally, they need to prepare for the possibility they may need more servers. Will they eventually have to run and maintain their own server farm? What about scalability? What if one of their clients' sites is more popular than anticipated and the server has difficulty handling the load? How quickly can they add servers or processing power? The company should look at co-location, web hosting services, and service providers to see if their needs will be better met this way.