One problem faced by all businesses, now more than ever, is budget constraints. Whilst demand for the latest IT services continues to increase, it's becoming ever more difficult to get CapEx sign off for IT projects.

Solution
No capital expenditure - all ThinkGrid's services are provided on a simple, per user, monthly subscription. This means no capital expenditure is required, all costs are transparent and predictable, and you only pay for what you use. virtual servers provide a cost-efficient alternative to making large investments in depreciating hardware at a time when IT budgets are increasingly being squeezed.

Most businesses servers will have set lifecycles and will require regular refreshes. Needless to say, the process of replacing/upgrading servers tends to be a very inefficient, cumbersome, management-heavy and CapEx-intensive process.

Solution
Switch to virtual servers - instead of replacing creaking hardware with yet more tin, moving to virtual servers can provide a rapid and cost-effective means of achieving the same end. Because it's not an 'all or nothing' model, you can move to virtual servers in phases, and there's no need to 'over buy', i.e. purchase extra server capacity just in case it's needed, because you can always add additional resources or servers on demand.

Approximately 80% of businesses that suffer a severe IT failure close within 18 months and, even without such a catastrophe, any unplanned downtime can have a huge financial impact on businesses. However, whilst this creates an obvious need for business continuity provisions, building truly resilient, n+1 IT solutions is often prohibitively expensive.

Solution
Affordable, off-site servers - virtual servers can be used for BC / DR provisions by offering server resources that are completely secure, backed-up, disaster-proof, have guaranteed availability and are supported 24/7 by exclusively UK-based teams. Instead of having to purchase in N+1 infrastructure and a co-located data centre yourself, with all the investment in time and hardware that entails, let ready-to-use virtual servers take the strain for you.

For many businesses, the size and scope of their server infrastructure is constrained by a simple lack of physical space. Given the premium rates charged for business premises, cluttering them up with servers is an expensive business, and there's a limit to how far that space can stretch. Equally, businesses may face limits to how much power/electricity they can access (particularly in metropolitan areas), or be under pressures to reduce energy costs.

Solution
Hosted, off-site infrastructure - virtual servers, entirely hosted by ThinkGrid, allow us to take all the strains and costs of physical space and power off your hands, and can help you to meet green IT directives.

With so many things to focus on, it's difficult for IT teams to find the time to implement new projects or address infrastructure issues. Given that upgrading or expanding server infrastructure tends to mean lengthy sign-off and procurement processes as well as installing, configuring and deploying, it's hardly surprising that this can be painfully cumbersome at times.

Solution
Instant, agile IT - virtual servers can be deployed immediately, on any scale - they don't require hardware investment or CapEx, nor is it necessary to worry about choosing from multiple vendors or waiting on availability and deliveries, or to install and configure. virtual servers can be provisioned in minutes, at the click of a button.

Most IT teams have to spend a disparate proportion of their time dealing with the day-to-day headaches of managing, maintaining and supporting their infrastructure, leaving them too little time to concentrate on their true function of actively adding value to the business.

Solution
Let ThinkGrid do the work - the ThinkGrid model is all about letting us take the administrational headaches of managing servers off your hands. We take care of patching, maintenance and upgrades, and all virtual servers are supported by exclusively UK-based teams, 24x7.

Many enterprise businesses have multiple offices/sites and need to maintain a consistent IT infrastructure between them. With the difficulties of mass managing desktop PCs across multiple locations, this consumes a large amount of time and resources.

Solution
Unified hosted infrastructure - among the key benefits of virtual servers is the ease of mass-management, because all servers reside centrally and can be managed with an easy to use control panel, allowing you to pull together disparate locations with ease.

Many businesses have significant seasonal changes in their workloads, which typically means having to over-provide in terms of resources so that the demands of peak periods can be met. This means investing in an excess of hardware that's otherwise redundant for most of the time.

Solution
IT on demand - all ThinkGrid's services are provided on demand, which means additional resources are only a click away. Instead of having to over-provide, you can simply add additional resources when you need them, then remove them when you don't, meaning you only pay for what you actually use. Thanks to our dynamic server infrastructure and grid computing model, all this can be done seamlessly, on-the-fly, which means you could, say, double your amount of CPU in seconds, without even having to reboot.