More difficult, however, can be the transition period for a company that outgrows its shared server. A dedicated server can seem intimidating or require extra spending on IT staff or new technology. Up to this point, the migration path from shared to dedicated has been complex, to say the least.

This week, Web hosting provider Verio (verio.com) released a new family of Windows-based hosting services - a managed virtual private server hosting solution - designed to provide a logical growth path for shared hosting customers to a more flexible virtual or dedicated hosting server solution thanks to a shared code base and control panel.

Based on the Microsoft .NET framework, Windows Server 2003 and Internet Information Services version 6.0, Verio's Web server hosting solution, says the company, offers scalable, fully-managed hosting solutions and provides an obvious and easily-navigated migration path for customers outgrowing their more limited shared hosting solutions.

Customers currently using one of Verio's basic Windows hosting solutions can upgrade their accounts to virtual managed or dedicated servers without having to cope with a technical learning curve and without additional investments in server management or IT.

Verio says it is supporting the solutions with its unique MultiSite technology as well as more advanced capabilities such as sandboxing, bandwidth compression, site isolation, multiple application pools and resource virtualization, enabling users to more closely manage the Web sites hosted under their Verio accounts, and granting them freedom to manage each sites' applications and other features individually.

David Kidd, senior product manager for Verio Windows hosting, says although there is a base level of tools and functions that never change as a customer moves up the value chain from shared to virtualized hosting, a few specific differences are worth noting.

"As you move up our hosting plans and our virtual managed servers, you get multiple app pools. So you'll get functions enabled that allow you to isolate and sandbox a site, move things around kind of on the fly and essentially allow you to be a mini-hoster," says Kidd. "The other thing is that all plans have a certain number of virtual resource units that allow us to manage accounts on the server. As you move up, we allow you to take those virtual resource units and manage them among your sub-hosted sites. So for example, if you had a business that required most of your resources for your account, you could set most of your CPU and RAM to go to that site and divide the rest of the CPU and RAM among your other sites."

Kidd says Verio has a clear notion of the type of customer who stands to benefit most from its virtual managed Web server offer.

"A customer that has a small e-commerce site and gets picked up by a popular advertising venue and suddenly finds themselves inundated with new business, or a company that has a peak time issue where certain times of the day they're just going crazy - well it's just not enough to be on a shared plan anymore, they really need to be on their own server," says Kidd. "As they move up, if they're not an IT person and they don't have an IT staff and they don't want to make that investment in a complete change in technology, they'll be able to move their site up to a virtual server with little to no hassle because it's an in-site move."

Kidd says that although the product is different from what is usually available, the familiarity of the Windows-based technology makes migrating easier for SMBs.

"We have essentially built an offering around the advantages of the Windows technology. So instead of trying to re-write the platform and make it look like Linux or Unix and the features that are available there, we've focused specifically around the things that Windows is strong at, in particular the app pool functionality," says Kidd. "What we've noticed, and it's been prevalent in the Windows industry in general, is there's not a good migration path once you've outgrown a shared account. There's been people making attempts to fill this gap, but filling it the old Unix way with completely different technology that's just the next step up. On the Windows side we try to keep it as seamless a migration path as possible."

The new hosting solutions from Verio are available immediately beginning at $89.95 for a Virtual Web Server Pro.