Once you have a powerful web server and add-ons (e.g. Database) you can put together powerful and globally accessible company systems.

This sounds like hard work, but actually a lot of the work has already been done for you and is up to you to what level you want to go. There is a whole world out there called Open Source that lets you pull together web based applications and host them yourself.





The main requirements for a good application server are:

• PHP
• Perl
• Java
• MySQL
• PostgreSQL
• WebDAV
• HTTP-PUT
• FTP
• SMB
• DAV
• NFS
• Authentication and authorization
  
  

With this you can now host your own Internet applications.
As mentioned before the other side of the Internet is it to host your own web site. Once you understand that a web site is, basically, just a set of pages you will understand that there is very little mystery to building a web site yourself, in its basic form.

If you want to become more sophisticated then you can turn to the Open Source world again for a content management system. This then lets you house much more complex systems.
With a powerful application server like the one from Collax, the world becomes your playground.