Sep
8
2009

Beyond the Hype – Data Center Ratings & Your IT

Data center ratings have become an increasingly popular marketing point for dedicated web and application hosting providers, but what do those ratings really mean, and how do they impact the success of your business? By understanding how data centers are evaluated and scored, you can make a more informed decision about your specific business needs and maximize the value of your IT costs.

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.
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Apr
17
2009

Why NaviSite – Dedicated Hosting – 100% Guaranteed Service Level Agreements

When it comes to Service Level Agreements, talk is cheap, but downtime is expensive. Many service providers boast of 99% SLAs, but when you read the fine print there’s actually a lot of wiggle room. Here’s a typical scenario- Provider X promises 99.9% annual uptime with a money back guarantee. This means that in the course of the year, you won’t exceed more than 52 minutes of downtime. For the purposes of this example, let’s say that you have an outage that lasts an hour, which means the SLA is applicable and you are owed a refund.
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Feb
27
2009

Five key things to look for in Service Level Agreements

All SLAs are not created equal.  If you’ve spent any time comparing managed dedicated server hosting providers, chances are you’ve seen a lot of emphasis put on Service Level Agreements (SLAs).  Sure, 99.9% uptime sounds great, but what does that really mean, and how do you know your provider is living up to it?  Here are 5 key points to consider-
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