There are two general things to consider when hosting and managing e-commerce applications - the infrastructure environment and data center location, and the overall SaaS environment.

The Infrastructure Environment and Data Center Location

The first is the hosting environment, which is specifically designed to host a particular application, such as OpenCart. If the application is open source, it will most likely require a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) hosting environment. The good news is that there is a huge market for hosting open source LAMP-based applications. So there are plenty of infrastructure providers to choose from.

The second thing to consider is location. The best infrastructure case is to host your open source application environment on a server in the same geographic area where most of your customers are located. Why? Because the round-trip delay of data delivery matters a lot.

Let's say your target market is in a European country. You do not necessarily need to host your applications on US dedicated servers and use North American data centers in general. The farther the data centers and servers hosting your applications are from your target market, the longer the information travels and the more hops it has to go through before it reaches your intended users. Latency of up to 40 milliseconds is generally considered acceptable. However, the optimal latency for delivering content and hosting e-commerce sites and applications to the target market is somewhere between 5 ms and 15 ms.

How can you reduce latency and improve application delivery?

The first is to use a content delivery network (CDN) to cache your static HTML content, files, and images to ensure instant delivery. CDNs like CloudFlare are used in addition to hosting providers. They provide name servers and some other features that allow the static content to be cached while the databases and other dynamically changing parameters are hosted on your server.

The second way to reduce latency is to use an edge hosting service. Edge hosting refers to the use of IT infrastructure located at the edge, i.e. very close to or virtually at the target service market. For example, any hosting service for New York is considered edge if the data center hosting the applications provides up to 5ms of network latency to the local target market. In other words, when it comes to New York, local Internet users should experience less than 5ms latency when trying to open a website or use any application hosted at the edge.

The combination of edge hosting services and the use of CDN is the best possible use case scenario to deliver content and applications instantly with the least possible delay. 

Types of Edge Infrastructure

There are two types of edge infrastructure - bare metal and cloud-based environments. Bare metal servers refer to a hosting scenario where the e-commerce or application service provider leases a physical server to deploy an IT environment and host its applications. It is called bare metal because the user who rents the infrastructure has access to the physical functionality of the server and other hardware devices in use.

Bare metal infrastructure can be deployed for a specific use case scenario, and the servers can run operating systems directly without virtualization technology. They can also run enterprise virtualization technology and be clustered to form a dedicated cloud infrastructure.

The second type of edge infrastructure scenario is a cloud-based environment. This generally refers to renting virtualized instances without having access to the physical hardware and appliances that provide the compute capacity. Depending on the cloud service used, administrators may or may not have access to a management interface that allows them to manage the entire infrastructure.

Whichever scenario you choose, make sure you can use different payment options, such as buy dedicated servers with bitcoin.

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Environment 

When selecting an e-commerce solution, there are eight key criteria to consider, regardless of whether it is OpenCart, Shipping Cart, or another application.

Open Source & Cost-Effective: Open source applications are advantageous because they prevent website and application owners from being locked into a particular software as a service (SaaS) model. It is also important to select software that is either low cost or free to download and use.

User-friendly Interface: Choose a software application with a simple and intuitive graphical user interface (GUI) to ensure that administrators with limited technical proficiency can efficiently set up and manage e-commerce sites.

Customizable Software: The front end of your e-commerce software interface interacts with Internet users and consumers, so ensure that your e-commerce software application offers extensive customization options, such as a variety of modules and design templates (also called themes or skins, depending on the software application).

Multi-language & Multi-currency: An online business that sells internationally should be able to provide information and support, such as a FAQ section and others, in more than one language, and definitely be able to price products and services in different currencies.

Reporting: It is important to use an e-commerce software application that provides as many metrics as possible about the customer acquisition process. This will allow your business to monitor performance and make data-driven decisions.

Payment & Shipping: Compatibility with a wide range of merchant account options, payment gateways, and shipping methods is crucial, providing flexibility and ensuring convenient payment and shipping options for customers.

SEO-friendliness: Utilizing an e-commerce application with robust built-in SEO tools, such as the capacity to customize meta tags, URLs, and sitemaps, is paramount for enhancing online visibility and attracting potential customers. This is a critical aspect of positioning an online store in the market.

Multi-store management capabilities: When selecting an e-commerce software platform, ensure that it enables the launch and management of multiple online stores.Multi-store features are essential for creating sub-sections (sub-stores) on your e-commerce website, enhancing the customer experience.

If you have found an infrastructure environment and data center location on the edge, close to your target market, and selected e-commerce software that meets the requirements we have outlined, you have already laid the technology foundation for a successful dot-com-based business.