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Apple is reportedly planning to sell subscriptions to certain video services directly in the Apple TV app, instead of having users buy subscriptions from third parties. From there, Apple could then move to have streaming be entirely in-app as well. The tech giant is also slated to roll out original shows next March.

Meanwhile, several TV and music services are teaming up to offer a more comprehensive streaming experience. Hulu and Spotify, for instance, have teamed up to offer a $12.99 per month bundled subscription for access to Hulu's Limited Commercials plan and Spotify Premium. Industry rivals Philo TV and Pandora are offering a similar deal: You can get three free months of Pandora Premium thrown into the mix with either of Philo TV's two main subscription plans.

In no particular order, here is a list of the pros, cons, and what to watch for each of the most popular streaming services:

Plans: For $7.99 a month, subscribers can access the Hulu Streaming Library. For $39.99 a month, viewers have access to the Hulu With Live TV plan, which features more than 50 live and on-demand channels and allows streaming on two screens simultaneously. Add-ons like enhanced cloud DVR, unlimited screens, and no commercials are also available.

Cons: Those unlimited screens come at an extra cost. Available only to Hulu With Live TV subscribers, the add-on costs an additional $14.99 per month, nearly twice the price of the basic subscription itself. One of users' biggest gripes with the service is that it doesn't allow for offline viewing. A lot of subscribers also recommend the no commercials add-on.

What to watch: Small Business Revolution on Main Street. Hosted by Shark Tank star Robert Herjavec and marketing expert Amanda Brinkman, the show documents a $500,000 investment in one town and six of its small businesses each season.

Plans: For $7.99 a month, viewers can watch in standard definition on one device at a time with the Basic plan. The $10.99 per month Standard plan throws in high definition and one more device for simultaneous streaming. The Premium plan goes for $13.99 per month, provides ultra high definition, and lets you stream on up to four screens at once.

Cons: You might get impatient waiting for new episodes to be available on Netflix after they air. On the other end of the spectrum, old seasons are taken down when Netflix's license to show them expires.

What to watch: Something Ventured. The 2011 documentary takes a look at the growth of American venture capitalism and its influence on companies like Apple and Intel.

Plans: The base plan, Sling Orange, gives viewers more than 25 channels for $20 per month. You can get Sling Blue and the more than 40 channels that come with it for an extra $5 per month. For the best of both worlds, get the Sling Orange + Sling Blue plan, which comes with more than 50 channels for $40 per month.

Pros: Sling TV offers a sizable variety of add-ons, including country- and language-specific packages. You can get 50 hours of cloud DVR recording for $5 per month.

Cons: Offline viewing is out of the question, even if you have the cloud DVR add-on. Network sports broadcasts are pretty hard to come by with Sling TV. The price per channel may not get you the most bang for your buck. (Think of FuboTV, for example: Its Premier plan is an extra $5 per month but also gets you at least 20 more channels.)

What to watch: The Profit. Camping World CEO Marcus Lemonis is a one-man Shark Tank, investing in small businesses in the CNBC show.

Plans: This service (not to be confused with HBO Go, which requires a television subscription) runs for $14.99 per month.

Pros: One cool perk is you can watch your shows in virtual reality on the HBO Now VR app. You also won't have to sit through any ads.

Cons: One drawback is that the service doesn't allow you to download shows to watch offline. And the content is limited to what's on the network's channels. Your simultaneous streams are also limited, but the company doesn't offer a specific cap on the number of devices.

5. Amazon Prime Video

Plans: If you already have an Amazon Prime subscription, you're in luck. Amazon Prime Video comes included for Prime members. If you aren't an Amazon Prime customer, you can subscribe to the video service alone for $8.99 per month.

Pros: The service has a surprisingly large collection of titles.

Cons: You can only stream on up to two devices at once, however. There also isn't much room for personalization, since you can't create multiple accounts under the same subscription.

6. YouTube TV

Plans: The only plan available costs $40 per month, with add-ons like the Showtime network available for an additional monthly fee.

Pros: One benefit is unlimited DVR storage. Your recorded programs will be saved for up to nine months, compared with only about a month on some other streaming services. With more than 50 networks plus local news and sports, YouTube TV's offerings are greater than most of the others on our list. Also, you can create up to six accounts with your subscription, and you can stream on up to three devices at once.

Cons: Variety comes at a pretty penny, though. YouTube TV is tied with PlayStation Vue for the most expensive base subscription on our list. And many programs show ads.

Plans: You can get 37 channels for $16 per month, or 46 channels for $20 per month. Channel add-ons are available for an extra $4 per month.

Pros: Viewers can watch on up to three devices at once, or use a cloud DVR service to record shows to watch up to 30 days later.

Cons: Sports fans, beware. Philo TV doesn't offer any cable sports (or local) networks. And, if you want to watch your shows on a TV instead of a laptop or other device, you had better have a Roku--it's the only streaming device that supports Philo TV.

What to watch: Save It or Sell It. On the A&E show, hosts Robert Hirsch and Eric Casaburi give struggling small businesses advice, while the business owners decide whether to save or sell their companies.

8. PlayStation Vue

Plans: For $39.99 per month, users get more than 40 channels of popular live TV with the Access plan. One step higher up the ladder is the Core plan, which adds sports to the mix for a total of $44.99 per month. The $54.99 per month Elite plan throws in movies, and the priciest subscription is the $74.99 per month Ultra plan, which includes all of the above plus premium networks like HBO and Showtime, for a total of more than 90 networks.

Pros: Local broadcasts are included. Viewers also have the option to purchase channel add-ons by themselves, no subscription necessary. They can also watch on up to five devices at once.

Cons: PlayStation Vue has the most expensive plans on this list. And if you record shows, be sure to watch them before they're deleted from your storage in 28 days.

What to watch: Relative Success With Tabatha. In the series, Tabatha Coffey, star of the Bravo TV show Tabatha Takes Over, helps businesses plagued by family drama.

Plans: None. Pluto TV is 100 percent free to use.

Pros: As the only entirely free service on our list, Pluto TV offers more than 100 channels, no subscription necessary. Besides TV and movies, the platform even features internet radio stations and videos. The streaming service is compatible with many devices, including smart televisions like Vizio TVs or connected TV devices like Amazon Fire TVs.

Cons: The catch? You can't avoid ads. Also, take the large channel library with a grain of salt: Because internet videos make up some of the service's content, some channels run on cat videos, for example.

Plans: ItsEnglish-language subscription plan, Fubo Premier, comes at a discounted rate of $19.99 for the first month, but then rises to $44.99 for each month after that. There's also a Fubo Latino plan for $17.99 per month and a Fubo Português plan for $19.99 per month.

Pros: The service offers an impressive 85 channels on the Premier plan as well as add-on channel packages. Fubo Premier subscribers can record and save up to 30 hours of programming with cloud DVR, or splurge on 500 hours for an additional $9.99 per month. The best part? The recordings are saved for as long as you want.

Cons: For a service that started as a soccer streaming service and continues to heavily target sports fans, it's disappointing that FuboTV doesn't offer some major sports networks, like ESPN. And, since it falls on the more expensive side of the list, your wallet might have a bone to pick with you for that $45 outlay every month.

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Here Are the Top 10 Streaming Services by Price, Usability, and Content

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Apple is reportedly planning to sell subscriptions to certain video services directly in the Apple TV app, instead of having users buy subscriptions from third parties. From there, Apple could then move to have streaming be entirely in-app as well. The tech giant is also slated to roll out original shows next March.

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What is virtualization?

Virtualization is the creation of a virtual -- rather than actual -- version of something, such as an operating system (OS), a server, a storage device or network resources.

Virtualization uses software that simulates hardware functionality to create a virtual system. This practice allows IT organizations to operate multiple operating systems, more than one virtual system and various applications on a single server. The benefits of virtualization include greater efficiencies and economies of scale.

OS virtualization is the use of software to allow a piece of hardware to run multiple operating system images at the same time. The technology got its start on mainframes decades ago, allowing administrators to avoid wasting expensive processing power.

How virtualization works

Virtualization describes a technology in which an application, guest OS or data storage is abstracted away from the true underlying hardware or software.

A key use of virtualization technology is server virtualization, which uses a software layer -- called a hypervisor</a -- to emulate the underlying hardware. This often includes the CPU's memory, input/output (I/O) and network traffic.

Hypervisors take the physical resources and separate them so they can be utilized by the virtual environment. They can sit on top of an OS or they can be directly installed onto the hardware. The latter is how most enterprises virtualize their systems.

The Xen hypervisor is an open source software program that is responsible for managing the low-level interactions that occur between virtual machines ( VMs) and the physical hardware. In other words, the Xen hypervisor enables the simultaneous creation, execution and management of various virtual machines in one physical environment.

With the help of the hypervisor, the guest OS, normally interacting with true hardware, is now doing so with a software emulation of that hardware; often, the guest OS has no idea it's on virtualized hardware.

While the performance of this virtual system is not equal to the performance of the operating system running on true hardware, the concept of virtualization works because most guest operating systems and applications don't need the full use of the underlying hardware.

This allows for greater flexibility, control and isolation by removing the dependency on a given hardware platform. While initially meant for server virtualization, the concept of virtualization has spread to applications, networks, data and desktops.

A side-by-side view of a traditional versus a virtual architecture

The virtualization process follows the steps listed below:

1. Hypervisors detach the physical resources from their physical environments.

2. Resources are taken and divided, as needed, from the physical environment to the various virtual environments.

3. System users work with and perform computations within the virtual environment.

4. Once the virtual environment is running, a user or program can send an instruction that requires extra resources form the physical environment. In response, the hypervisor relays the message to the physical system and stores the changes. This process will happen at an almost native speed.

The virtual environment is often referred to as a guest machine or virtual machine. The VM acts like a single data file that can be transferred from one computer to another and opened in both; it is expected to perform the same way on every computer.

Types of virtualization

You probably know a little about virtualization if you have ever divided your hard drive into different partitions. A partition is the logical division of a hard disk drive to create, in effect, two separate hard drives.

There are six areas of IT where virtualization is making headway:

1. Network virtualization is a method of combining the available resources in a network by splitting up the available bandwidth into channels, each of which is independent from the others and can be assigned -- or reassigned -- to a particular server or device in real time. The idea is that virtualization disguises the true complexity of the network by separating it into manageable parts, much like your partitioned hard drive makes it easier to manage your files.

2. Storage virtualization is the pooling of physical storage from multiple network storage devices into what appears to be a single storage device that is managed from a central console. Storage virtualization is commonly used in storage area networks.

3. Server virtualization is the masking of server resources -- including the number and identity of individual physical servers, processors and operating systems -- from server users. The intention is to spare the user from having to understand and manage complicated details of server resources while increasing resource sharing and utilization and maintaining the capacity to expand later.
The layer of software that enables this abstraction is often referred to as the hypervisor. The most common hypervisor -- Type 1 -- is designed to sit directly on bare metal and provide the ability to virtualize the hardware platform for use by the virtual machines. KVM virtualization is a Linux kernel-based virtualization hypervisor that provides Type 1 virtualization benefits like other hypervisors. KVM is licensed under open source. A Type 2 hypervisor requires a host operating system and is more often used for testing and labs.

4. Data virtualization is abstracting the traditional technical details of data and data management, such as location, performance or format, in favor of broader access and more resiliency tied to business needs.

5. Desktop virtualization is virtualizing a workstation load rather than a server. This allows the user to access the desktop remotely, typically using a thin client at the desk. Since the workstation is essentially running in a data center server, access to it can be both more secure and portable. The operating system license does still need to be accounted for as well as the infrastructure.

6. Application virtualization is abstracting the application layer away from the operating system. This way, the application can run in an encapsulated form without being depended upon on by the operating system underneath. This can allow a Windows application to run on Linux and vice versa, in addition to adding a level of isolation.

Virtualization can be viewed as part of an overall trend in enterprise IT that includes autonomic computing, a scenario in which the IT environment will be able to manage itself based on perceived activity, and utility computing, in which computer processing power is seen as a utility that clients can pay for only as needed. The usual goal of virtualization is to centralize administrative tasks while improving scalability and workloads.

Advantages of virtualization

The advantages of utilizing a virtualized environment include the following:

Lower costs. Virtualization reduces the amount of hardware servers necessary within a company and data center. This lowers the overall cost of buying and maintaining large amounts of hardware.

Easier disaster recovery. Disaster recovery is very simple in a virtualized environment. Regular snapshots provide up-to-date data, allowing virtual machines to be feasibly backed up and recovered. Even in an emergency, a virtual machine can be migrated to a new location within minutes.

Easier testing. Testing is less complicated in a virtual environment. Even if a large mistake is made, the test does not need to stop and go back to the beginning. It can simply return to the previous snapshot and proceed with the test.

Quicker backups. Backups can be taken of both the virtual server and the virtual machine. Automatic snapshots are taken throughout the day to guarantee that all data is up-to-date. Furthermore, the virtual machines can be easily migrated between each other and efficiently redeployed.

Improved productivity. Fewer physical resources result in less time spent managing and maintaining the servers. Tasks that can take days or weeks in a physical environment can be done in minutes. This allows staff members to spend the majority of their time on more productive tasks, such as raising revenue and fostering business initiatives.

Benefits of virtualization

Virtualization provides companies with the benefit of maximizing their output. Additional benefit for both businesses and data centers include the following:

Single-minded servers. Virtualization provides a cost-effective way to separate email, database and web servers, creating a more comprehensive and dependable system.

Expedited deployment and redeployment. When a physical server crashes, the backup server may not always be ready or up to date. There also may not be an image or clone of the server available. If this is the case, then the redeployment process can be time-consuming and tedious. However, if the data center is virtualized, then the process is quick and fairly simple. Virtual backup tools can expedite the process to minutes.

Reduced heat and improved energy savings. Companies that use a lot of hardware servers risk overheating their physical resources. The best way to prevent this from happening is to decrease the number of servers used for data management, and the best way to do this is through virtualization.

Better for the environment. Companies and data centers that utilize copious amounts of hardware leave a large carbon footprint; they must take responsibility for the pollution they are generating. Virtualization can help reduce these effects by significantly decreasing the necessary amounts of cooling and power, thus helping clean the air and the atmosphere. As a result, companies and data centers that virtualize will improve their reputation while also enhancing the quality of their relationship with customers and the planet.

Easier migration to the cloud. Virtualization brings companies closer to experiencing a completely cloud-based environment. Virtual machines may even be deployed from the data center in order to build a cloud-based infrastructure. The ability to embrace a cloud-based mindset with virtualization makes migrating to the cloud even easier.

Lack of vendor dependency. Virtual machines are agnostic in hardware configuration. As a result, virtualizing hardware and software means that a company does not need to depend on a vendor for these physical resources.

Limitations of virtualization

Before converting to a virtualized environment, it is important to consider the various upfront costs. The necessary investment in virtualization software, as well as hardware that might be required to make the virtualization possible, can be costly. If the existing infrastructure is more than five years old, an initial renewal budget will have to be considered.

Fortunately, many businesses have the capacity to accommodate virtualization without spending large amounts of cash. Furthermore, the costs can be offset by collaborating with a managed service provider that provides monthly leasing or purchase options.

There are also software licensing considerations that must be considered when creating a virtualized environment. Companies must ensure that they have a clear understanding of how their vendors view software use within a virtualized environment. This is becoming less of a limitation as more software providers adapt to the increased use of virtualization.

Converting to virtualization takes time and may come with a learning curve. Implementing and controlling a virtualized environment demands each IT staff member to be trained and possess expertise in virtualization. Furthermore, some applications do not adapt well when brought into a virtual environment. The IT staff will need to be prepared to face these challenges and should address them prior to converting.

There are also security risks involved with virtualization. Data is crucial to the success of a business and, therefore, is a common target for attacks. The chances of experiencing a data breach significantly increase while using virtualization.

Finally, in a virtual environment, users lose control of what they can do because there are several links that must collaborate to perform the same task. If any part is not working, then the entire operation will fail.

Continue Reading About virtualization

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Read about how virtualization works, the virtualization types and when to use the technology.

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Amazon
Ebay
Asda

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Remote hosting is a method by which software applications, databases, and files are housed on servers in data centers rather than directly on users' PCs or laptops. When a user wishes to run an application or access files, they securely log in to the remote server via the Cloud, and then access their software or data.

The built-in centralization of hosted applications allow IT departments to add and authorize users, update each application, back up and restore data, and deploy data directly to the departments and users who specifically require it. And by accessing software through thin clients or tablets, users' devices rarely crash or become corrupted.

Hosted solutions also enable levels of security often not found with traditional IT systems. By physically storing and maintaining software and data in offsite data centers, businesses can minimize the risks (i.e., loss, theft, and natural disasters) inherent in storing data on traditional devices such as desktops and local servers.
Hosted Applications
A business may choose to house one or more business applications on a data center server hosted in the Cloud. To access the applications, users choose their device (e.g., thin client, laptop, tablet), and then log in to the Cloud from anywhere on the Internet. Once logged in, the user sees their application just as they would with a desktop PC.
Hosted Exchange
Microsoft® Exchange is a server-based system that delivers email services between users via PC, smart phone, tablet, or other devices. With Hosted Exchange, a business' Exchange server is hosted and managed in the Cloud, and delivers email, calendars, and contacts to users' thin clients, laptops, or mobile devices via the Internet.
Hosted Desktop
Hosted desktop (aka remote desktop) solutions allow users to access their productivity software and documents via the Cloud. A user chooses their device (e.g., thin client, laptop, tablet), and then securely logs in to the Cloud from anywhere on the Internet. Once logged in, the user sees their Microsoft Windows® desktop, software, and files, just as they would with a desktop PC. Whether in the office on a laptop or at home on a tablet, the user's entire desktop is always available and always secure.

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What is remote hosting? - Kodiak Systems

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Remote hosting is a method by which software applications, databases, and files are housed on servers in data centers rather than directly on users' PCs or laptops. When a user wishes to run an application or access files, they securely log in to the remote server via the Cloud, and then access their software or data.

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avoid wasting expensive processing power

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