ACT Premium Hosted on AWS (Amazon Web Services)

[Leadership_BTE]

Instead of maintaining our own server, we plan to host ACT on AWS (Amazon Web Services).

1. Does anyone have experience with this?
2. What problems or issues should we be aware of before looking at a web hosted solution?

We are a small business with 5 people working from home offices.

Thank you in advance for your answers and ideas.

(We are currently using ACT 2008 (10) so we'll have to buy all new licenses.  I prefer this to paying an ongoing monthly fee to a web hosted company like Salesforce dot com.   We've been using ACT since 1994.)

[gleo]

If your asking in general terms is hosting  a good option, yes from our experience hosting our own services. If your asking in particular on Amazon Web Services, they have a good reputation for quality of services.

You don't necessarily need to be limited to running Act! Premium for Web, you could run Act! as a Windows application in a desktop environment (rdp).  With 5 users you have reached the threshold which makes it cost effective. Secondly you are remaining in control of your data and if anything hosting services will become cheaper. If you choose a different hosting service you just backup your databse and move to another service provider. Overall a good choice and your not at the mercy of a CRM hosted service such as SFDC, tied to a particular contract. Yes, in my opinion, good choice.       

[Leadership_BTE]

Graemo,

Thank you.  I appreciate it.

You said we could run in a desktop environment.  Would that require synch?

Cheers.

Scott

[staylor100]

Does anyone have this up and running on AWS with users accessing it via terminal services/remote desktop? I saw threads with Act! for Web access and sync users but not terminal services. 

I have a client moving over to AWS and the IT person says each user will log into AWS and have their own work environment like terminal services so wondering if we can install Act! there as well and do away with sync users and maintaining Vmware windows since they all have macs.

Thanks in advance for any words of wisdom.

Shannon

[benhamilton]

Whether it's AWS, Rackspace or any of a hundred others, Act! works fine in a hosted Terminal Server scenario. We do this for clients where it's appropriate, it also makes the need for RDB's less (although not nil).

Ben.