Protecting your business data is more important than ever due to all the catastrophic, unforeseen events that can damage or destroy your data permanently. Customer data, accounts payable, invoices, email and historical communications and business applications are the backbone of your company. Without your business data, your business could not move forward on a day to day basis. Imagine not being able to access your business data for an hour, a day, a month or possibly forever. Now you can protect your small business from data loss, prevent unplanned downtime, and prevent business failure. NaviSite, a leading dedicated and managed hosting services company, shows you how vulnerable your data can be without the proper backup plan in place.

Please Click Here to access the complete White paper and Learn how you can protect your business and focus on what you do best

Depending on your point of view, you may focus on certain data center features when reviewing managed hosting and colocation providers. Some businesses are concerned with connectivity, others with environmental features, or physical security, or routing protocols; it’s a long and diverse list. At the heart of every individual concern is an overriding one and it’s the same for every business- uptime. As anyone who has spent time reading and evaluating service level guarantees (SLAs) knows, there are a lot of ways uptime can be defined.

Data center ratings ideally provide a standardized, industry accepted means to fairly and objectively review data centers, so customers can cut through the marketing hype and truly understand the differences when making important business decisions. In practice however, this hasn’t fully been the case.

Here’s the first problem- there are two different “industry standard” ratings systems, and likely more to come. SAS 70 Type I and II certifications refer to the rules followed by the Auditing Standards Board of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). Originally used for auditing profit and loss statements for organizations and businesses, the IT dependencies of large financial institutions has led to SAS 70 audits being done on service providers as part of regulatory requirements. Successful completion of those audits was viewed as a market advantage, and today a relatively obscure finance term has become an advertising bullet point.

Parallel to this, a ratings system was developed by the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) and The Uptime Institute more specific to data center operations. They established a tier system that focuses largely on physical infrastructure, so for example a Tier 1 facility fulfills minimal operating data center infrastructure requirements, while a Tier 4 facility has fault tolerant redundancy. While there has been some debate on the methodology used, both the AICPA ratings system and the Uptime Institute’s Tier system provide solid yardsticks to measure the uptime and reliability of a data center. As Shakespeare put it, there’s the rub.

Data center uptime does not necessarily equal uptime for your Website or hosted applications. In real world business situations, your success isn’t dependent on having four identical routers on standby in the event of an equipment failure; it’s dependent on the live person who is on site ready to answer your call in the middle of the night. That’s the difference you get with NaviSite. We’ve covered the infrastructure bases, gotten the SAS 70 Type II certification, and built the N + 1 redundancy into our data centers. We consider that merely the groundwork. Just as a 5 star restaurant rating is no guarantee you’ll be satisfied with your meal, when you are evaluating potential managed hosting and colocation providers, data center ratings should just be one item on a long checklist. At NaviSite, our top rated data centers are just step one of our total commitment to your success.

One of the first places to focus on when developing a monitoring system is for server and process uptime. As most of us have experienced firsthand with home computers, the fact that the computer is up and operational is no guarantee that your desired program is running. Identify all the critical applications it takes to deliver your web site and other services. This would include your HTTP server software, DNS, inbound and outbound mail server applications, authentication servers, and anything else particular to your environment. Your process and uptime monitoring scheme should also include IPs for internal and external server interfaces, routers and switches, network attached storage devices, and any other important hardware with an interface reachable with PING or other network monitoring protocols.

It is helpful for administrators to have visibility into the other systems that deliver your web site and network applications, for example, temperature, humidity, and power in the operating environment where your infrastructure is deployed. If you have peering with multiple backbone providers, you’d want to know the health of those network connections. You’ll also want to monitor resources like processor overhead, memory usage, and available storage space. When it comes to monitoring, more is almost always better, and the information you gain from monitoring processes has a hidden value.

Typically, monitoring is used as an alarm system, reactive in nature. A server crashes, the monitor detects that it’s offline, and a series of notification events is subsequently triggered. That system is tried and true, but it misses a larger point- when used effectively, monitoring systems don’t alert in the event of downtime, they prevent the downtime from occurring in the first place. This is where the secret weapon comes in.

A good monitoring system generates a tremendous amount of valuable information that can be used for a variety of business planning purposes. Utilization numbers can be graphed to plan for infrastructure upgrades. Traffic numbers can be analyzed to help gauge the effectiveness of sales and marketing initiatives. These statistics can also come in handy when it’s time to negotiate service contracts, by understanding which providers carry the bulk of your customer traffic. The sum total of all this is a tremendous advantage when coordinating activities across different teams in your organization.

Here’s a real world example- your marketing group lands a featured role in a high profile event that will showcase your company to a new customer base. They confer with the IT group, who uses the information gleaned from monitoring processes to discover that projected upgrades will need to happen right around the same time as the scheduled event. The necessary upgrades are accelerated by several weeks, putting the company in an optimal position to make a strong impression. Without the advantage of a strong monitoring procedure, this was a potential disaster.

That’s the kind of monitoring edge you get included with all of NaviSite’s managed and dedicated hosting services. Our team of 24/7/365 Always There ™ engineers isn’t just watching for systems to fail, they are proactively monitoring to head off potential failures, ensuring your performance and availability. It’s just one more way that NaviSite is totally committed to your success.

While every business is unique, their requirements from a service provider are often quite similar. They want things to work, and when problems occur, they want quick resolutions. That second part is important. Hosting customers are much more sophisticated, they understand that when it comes to complex applications and server deployments, occasional issues are inevitable. As Webchutney COO Rahul Nanda put it, “Just about any host is going to work okay 95% of the time. How they respond when you are having problems is the key.”

Businesses need more in a vendor relationship than just a supplier of goods and/or services. As Webchutney discovered, customer service issues were the tipping point in choosing NaviSite as their managed dedicated server hosting provider. Although they had concerns about the quality of the hardware and reliability of their previous host, it was a lack of professional, efficient customer service that pushed them to make a move. The poor quality of support had a direct, negative impact on their ability to do business.

Sadly, it’s not hard to find examples of bad customer service. A recent problem with home satellite TV service was only resolved after 5 phone calls and more than an hour of getting transferred back and forth between two different departments. As aggravating as that was, it didn’t result in lost revenues.

Businesses can’t afford to wait hours before talking to a service engineer, and with award winning Always There™ support, NaviSite customers don’t have to. Webchutney learned this early on in their relationship, as an issue that came up shortly after their deployment was resolved quickly thanks to an aggressive response by the NaviSite team. It was exactly the level of support that they were looking for, delivering what Mr. Nanda termed “that delight factor.”

The value added by exceptional customer service is realized in other benefits as well. Monitoring and analysis allows downtime to be eliminated, while providing a baseline to identify when and where upgrades are needed. Deep experience in networked applications and other technologies provide valuable resources for businesses that wouldn’t otherwise be able to maximize those efforts.

More than anything, Webchutney was looking for a vendor/partner that freed them from concerns over IT operations and allowed them to focus on their core business. Outsourcing those IT needs to NaviSite put Webchutney back in control, and outstanding customer care was the glue that cemented the relationship.

If you aren’t getting that “delight factor” when dealing with your managed dedicated server host, then you need to consider how that’s impacting your ability to deliver quality service to your own customers. Building a long term relationship with a vendor partner that has the added value of superior support is a real difference maker, and can have a tremendous impact on your continued success.

Webchutney had a very clear mission and their reason to look for a new hosting provider was the quality of service they were getting from their dedicated server hosting provider. Sporadic outages were frustrating, but even more troubling was the lack of professionalism and follow through on the part of the engineering and support staff. The servers were under powered by industry standards, and Webchutney had little visibility into what was going on from day to day. As COO Rahul Nanda summed it up, “We didn’t feel like we were in control.”

After making the decision to change providers and following a period of research Webchutney selected NaviSite as their managed dedicated and virtual server host. “Several factors contributed to the selection of NaviSite, including their reputation as an experienced provider of enterprise-class dedicated hosting solutions, a long history of excellence, and their broad portfolio of solutions that met our requirements,” says Rahul Nanda, COO, Webchutney.

Click Here to Download our Client Case Study with Webchutney: http://dedicatedhosting.navisite.com/specials/pdf/NaviSite-Dedicated-Hosting-Webchutney-CaseStudy.pdf

Webchutney now enjoys great visibility into the health and performance of their servers thanks to the NaviView control panel, and will be utilizing the functionality to give their own clients limited visibility, adding value to their scope of services.

Click here for more details: http://www.navisite.com/about-navisite/media/press-release/?p=137

Click Here to read more about how Webchutney Reduces Downtime with NaviSite Dedicated Hosting Solutions: http://biztech2.in.com/india/news/enterprise-solutions/webchutney-reduces-downtime-with-navisite-dedicated-hosting-solns/55862/0?utm_source=dailynewsletter&utm_medium=email

What should SMBs consider when shopping for long term provider and vendor relationships? One item that should be on the top of every list is longevity. It takes more than smoke and mirrors to have survived the dot com implosion of the late 90’s, much less thrive in today’s rocky economy. A provider that has weathered tough times is one that knows how to retain customers, and you do that by delivering.

It’s also a good idea to judge your vendor partners and providers by the company they keep. Specifically, who are their customers? A provider that can meet the demands of an enterprise multi-million dollar organization will have world class backend infrastructure. That’s infrastructure that you can leverage at a fraction of the cost.

The danger here is that for many companies with enterprise customers, the support and resources for smaller customers is limited. If you can’t get a living person on the phone in the event of a problem, millions of dollars in technology don’t mean a thing.

Don’t just consider client lists either. Your provider’s vendor partners are a solid indicator as to their performance and status in the industry. Companies like Microsoft, HP, Intel, Cisco and others won’t enter into high profile partner relationships with dodgy providers with poor customer service reputations.

NaviSite has over 10 years of consistently delivering world-class, enterprise-grade services to businesses and organizations of all sizes. We’ve flourished in the worst business environment in decades for a simple reason- we combine best in class technology with Always There® service and support, delivering a customer experience that is unequaled.

More than 1,500 customers that include HBO, The Salvation Army, Blue Cross Blue Shield, various levels of government and many others have discovered the difference that NaviSite and Always There® support can make. Our products and services are scalable from small sole proprietorship to large companies with thousands of employees, and every customer receives the same level of service and support.

NaviSite’s status as a Microsoft Gold Certified partner, as well as relationships with VMware, HP, SUN, Intel and other leading IT infrastructure providers are real world validation that you and your business are in good hands. No other hosting provider offers you more or better services than NaviSite. It’s the kind of track record that can only be earned over time.

Here’s a classic example. Company A and Company B both sell beachwear online. The majority of the sales are seasonal, and come in the spring and summer months. Company A puts together a great marketing campaign. They purchase hardware and software to support the new initiative, they manage the project efficiently and on budget, and they enjoy record breaking sales and everyone is pleased at a job well done. So what’s the problem?

Let’s consider Company B. They also put together a solid campaign, but instead of purchasing servers and application software outright, they outsource it though managed dedicated servers from NaviSite. Instant scalability allows them to beef up their deployment in advance of the rush. Company B also enjoys a record breaking year, but here’s the difference. Company B can now scale back their server infrastructure to allow for significant savings during the slower fall and winter months. Company A has more server power than they need, underutilized and draining revenues.

Now project this same situation out over time. The following year, Company A is ready to duplicate their sales success, but there’s a problem. The accounting department is resistant to re-invest in new servers, so the campaign is executed on the servers from the previous year. Company B simply ramps their dedicated server infrastructure back up, confident that they are on the best available hardware. It’s easy to see how before long Company A is dealing with several disadvantages, paying more for slower hardware. When your sale is dependent on fast reliable transactions and customers who will abandon a sale if it becomes too slow by just a second or two, this can be the death of a thousand cuts.

This can be bad enough in the normal course of doing business, but what about dealing with the unexpected? Among IT geeks it’s referred to as being “slashdotted”, the spike in traffic that comes from being linked or referenced on a popular website. How many SMBs have worked hard to get that lucky break, only to have their servers crushed under the load of new users? Even after almost two decades of business living on the web, this is a near daily occurrence. Can your business afford to drop the ball on those rare opportunities, because you couldn’t scale your hardware quickly enough?

We want you to change and grow with us. That’s why we offer you multiple configurations to build on, plus affordable additional RAM, hard drives, and pre-purchased bandwidth packages. We enable you to grow as quickly as you need to and react to trends in your particular industry – without fracturing your budget. If you’re juggling budget concerns with business concerns, a NaviSite managed dedicated server could be the answer.

It’s more than high end server hardware and best in class applications. It’s more than just bandwidth. For the most efficient and best performing managed dedicated server, you need highly optimized, fully redundant, self healing network connectivity. With multiple enterprise datacenters around the world, NaviSite can deliver exactly that.

• 1. N+ 1 Redundancy
• 2. Multiple Tier-1 Peers
• 3. BGP4 Routing

NaviSite’s network engineers continuously monitor and manage connectivity, rerouting traffic on the fly to avoid bottlenecks and connection failures. Our network is built on an all-CISCO hardware layer, and connects to multiple Tier-1 network providers such as Level3, Sprint, Global Crossing, Cogent and AboveNet. We take a ‘fastest path’ philosophy to routing decisions, versus a ‘cheapest path’ approach.

Consider the example of a rush hour commute. One route is simple, involving just a few main highways. Because this route is simple, many more people use it, and even though there are only a few directions to follow, it takes much longer than a route that involves more complicated directions, but that avoids traffic congestion. We take that same approach when bringing customer traffic to your managed dedicated server.

We also take a different approach when it comes to redundancy. Backing up your broadband connection with a 56k dial up modem might fit the definition of redundancy, but in practice it’s not a usable backup. We adhere to N+ 1 redundancy standards, backing up critical failure points with comparable hardware and data circuits. Service outages are transparent to you and your users.

The ultimate success of your managed dedicated server is tied to the ability to support users and give them an optimal experience. It takes ample bandwidth, but more importantly, it takes efficient bandwidth. Through our implementation of intelligent BGP4 routing, users have the fastest available path to your server, increasing conversion rates. NaviSite managed dedicated and virtual server customers enjoy the power and performance of network infrastructure built to support our enterprise level clients. From appealing to new customers or improving service for existing users, ultra fast networking gives you a real advantage over your competition. If you don’t think your connectivity is up to the task, maybe it’s time to fix that.

The fact is, people will make mistakes. A technician is distracted by a server crash, an irate customer, or even worried about a leaky water heater at home, and forgets to rotate a tape or make sure a batch process is running. Adding insult to injury, you will only discover this when you absolutely need a backup copy. Best intentions notwithstanding, if there’s an opportunity for human error to cause a lost backup, the odds are you’re going to have to deal with it happening, and usually at the most inopportune time. Unless your core business is information technology (and even if it is), chances are you don’t have the manpower and other resources to avoid this all too frustrating scenario.

A bulletproof managed backup solution must take this into account, and be engineered to prevent lost data despite the likelihood of someone somewhere eventually making a mistake. Full end to end automation is key. If an administrator needs to manually rotate a tape or move data volumes around, the system isn’t automated. From the end user perspective, a backup solution should truly be “set it and forget it” easy.

A complete managed backup solution also has to be flexible. One client doesn’t want the backup that was done yesterday, they want one from three weeks ago. They likely also just want parts of the backup, not a complete restore. A different client has a completely static web site, but has a massive transaction database that requires regular snapshots. When comparing managed backup plans, look for providers that understand and adapt to real world situations, versus generic broad brush applications. In the best examples, users have web based control panel access to configure exactly the backup schedule they need.

Avoiding single points of failure is also critical. If you back up one hard drive with another hard drive, what happens when they both fail? Don’t laugh, it happens. RAID-based network attached storage technologies spread data across multiple drives for true redundancy. There are ancillary benefits to this approach as well, such as avoiding downtime due to physical hard drive upgrades, and pricing schemes that allow you to pay for only the storage space you are using.

Tying all of this together should be an enterprise class provider. It takes massive human and technology resources to deliver a foolproof managed backup solution. Look for companies that already have large customers, because they will already be providing a much higher level of service and have already invested in best in class technology. Take advantage of that expertise and top quality infrastructure, and you’ll never have to tell the customer you don’t have the backup.

1. Platform and Investments: This is usually a good indication of how serious a player they are in the hosting landscape, and how committed they are for the long-haul.
a. What kind of financial investments has the company made into their hosting platform? Over what time period?
b. Do they own their own data center or colocate/rent space from another provider?
c. Are they a reseller of someone else’s hosting service?
d. Do they have their own help desk and associated tools or do they outsource their Level 1/2 support?
e. Is their facility certified by an external agency for security and other controls? A common standard cited in the industry is SAS 70 Type II certification.
f. Do they have spares and extra capacity and the ability to rapidly replace hard drives, memory and generators?

2. Existing Customer Base: This is usually a good indication of the level of complexity that the hoster is currently dealing with.
a. What type of clients do they manage presently?
b. Are these customers smaller SMBs or is there an even spectrum of small to mid-size businesses?
c. What kind of churn are they experiencing with this customer base?
d. What is the average life span of their customer?
e. Do they have a reputation of hosting spammers and other malicious content?

3. Depth of Experience: Beyond reading their SLA which is essentially at par with the competition, uncover the following which will truly give you a sense of if the company can deliver when stuff goes wrong (which is only a matter of when and not if)
a. How many technical support employees does the hoster have? Are these full-time or outsourced?
b. What is the level of partnership do they have with external vendors like Microsoft, Parallels, VMware, etc.  Are these platinum level arrangements which require the hoster to have a certain amount of certified and trained employees?

4. Company Information: Given the extent of consolidation taking place with very small hosters, and the increasing difficulty of the smaller providers to fund their operations and associated capex, it is always reassuring to have a high degree of transparency into the financial details of the hosting company.
a. Is the company willing to provide an audited income statement and balance sheet?
b. What kind of corporate governance model do they operate under? Is there any independent accountability and oversight?
c. How long have they been in business?
d. Do they have any poor ratings with the BBB or other review websites?