Pros and Cons of Internal vs External web hosting? [duplicate]

Question

Possible Duplicate:
Self-host an application or outsource it?

Putting together a high level set of notes for a client proposal, and just wanting to get some general pros and ocns of doing internal vs external web server hosting.

We have no real preference as we are memrely invovled in the end software solution/website, but need to present some arguements for the client to review. Just looking to provide an unbiased viewport to help in the final decision. We typically use whatever the client prefers, but want to provide some general insight to them.

The security, monitoring, support that a hosted data center provides are typically what we see is the major pros for hosted, such as Rackspace or others, especially if internal IT staff is low. On the internal side the biggest issues we have run into is general lack of access to servers behind firewalls, etc within the corporate envornment, which typically makes having the public facing sites seperate in all ways a benefit as well.

Any general comments on this would be appreciated so we can expand on some coomon industry thoughts.

Answer 1

Internal gives you immediate access to your hardware, but it means you need bandwidth for site provisioned to your location.

External means you may have to take a drive or call up someone else to get physical access to your server, but it's hosted in a location that is well-connected to the web.