As everybody already knows, SharePoint 2010 is a platform for effective business and collaboration.  Many companies prefer using it as a tool that increases productivity, saves money and time. It has an easy and familiar interface, so there is no need in additional education of employees, and it is flexible for some specific needs.

 When choosing this platform customer has two options – purchasing dedicated SharePoint 2010 or hosted. This choice usually depends on several factors, like size of the company, its specific business needs, space requirements and other. If the company needs having a full administration control of a site or a server, it is better to choose the dedicated environment for the site.

Dedicated SharePoint 2010 provides customers with more fundamental control of their SharePoint farms. They have an ability to access Central Administration and RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol).  Also the space storage is rather large – from 100 GB. This is the best solution for IT professionals and developers, as it allows any ways of customization sites, like deploying custom web parts. Some additional features of the dedicated solution are Web Analytics, Developer Dashboard, Business Connectivity Services, Profile Pages, and Federated Search. Users also can appreciate developing and adaptation of business solutions and applications using familiar tools – Microsoft Visual Studio and SharePoint Designer. It should me mentioned also that for dedicated SharePoint 2010 Windows Server Client Access licenses, SQL, and Client Access licenses required.

Hosted SharePoint 2010 is a shared solution for companies of smaller size. It allows users to subscribe a suitable plan without installing and deploying Microsoft SharePoint Server on-premises, which saves time and money and give the opportunity appreciate abilities of Microsoft SharePoint 2010. It is the hosting company that performs root control of the servers.  And the data storage may be much smaller –from 500 MB. Hosted SharePoint 2010 does not require additional licensing and provide almost all the capabilities of dedicated solution, except those ones described above.

So, depending of what you need, you can find the best way of using SharePoint 2010. But firstly you should consider that not all of hosting company’s offers both services and not all of subscription plans are available in the hosting companies. It is the better way to find a reliable hosting company that offers secure and flexible services, backups and high level of support. I can recommend PlexHosted, which delivers high level of services in addition to dedicated SharePoint 2010 and Hosted SharePoint 2010.