I am frequently called upon to recommend a hosting provider. Company A needs SAS certification, company B needs Tomcat, company C can work with shared hosting, company D needs a dedicated server, etc. I don't know how to even start the search process. Web searches are not helpful. Even specific search words generate too many results. Sites that rank and review providers are suspect -- I can't tell what is real and what is an advertisement or a link farm.
What do you recommend as a way to identify a list of likely candidates from which I can start my real research?
[Edit] I did not really want to ask for a specific solution to a specific example because
- That type of question sometimes gets voted closed as argumentative.
- I seem to go through the same problem every time and I was hoping for generic suggestions.
But since a commenter asked, this time I need
- A host with a SAS 70 certified facility.
- A physical machine not shared with another company.
- A server supplied and minimally managed (security updates, backups, etc.) by the hosting provider.
Next time, the requirements will be different, but the challenges of finding the provider will be the same.