Service First, Price Second

NoIdea · 22nd February 2006

Gents,

I have a potential requirement (June) for a fully managed service. My customer is a TV station. I need a price for the full monty.

200 Gbs bandwidth per month to start

Win2003 advanced with SQLServer 2005
Dual processor, 2Gb memory, system(40Gb-ish) & data(100Gb-ish) disks both SCSI RAID mirrored. Firewalled & virus guarded. SSL.

Overnight offsite backup (50Gb). Onsite support at least in office hours.
Potential to spread across more machines in different locations ultimately.

Key points are security and service. As the system will be carrying potentially millions of pounds worth of business, security (access & data ) is paramount. Service needs to be immediate.

As this customer is not poor ( and rarely sober...) the key points are more important than the price.

I just need a ballpark monthly inclusive price for now.

Thanks

edb49 · 22nd February 2006

NoIdea - if you drop an email with your email address to sales@rapidswitch.com we can prepare a proposal for you.

neilrbowen · 22nd February 2006

Hi NoIdea,

OH Telecom will be able to supply you with a first class servers as well, we are ISO 9001 Quality assured as a company.

You can drop me a email to neil@ohtele.com and i will prepare a proposal for you.

adamsmith · 22nd February 2006

Ballpark figure from us of £500/month (exc. VAT of course) with a 25% discount if you pay annually. For a formal quote, please email adam.smith@2host.co.uk at your convenience.

NoIdea · 22nd February 2006

Gents,

Thanks for the responses so far. I am really after a ball park figure at the moment. Don't need a formal proposal yet. The client won't be signing until late March. I've had quotes in the £300 to £600 per month range. This is comfortably below my budget, to emphasize the need for service over price.

Does anyone do penalty clauses these days...

)

adamsmith · 22nd February 2006

Quote:

Originally Posted by NoIdea

Does anyone do penalty clauses these days..

We can if you really want one but you'll pay for the privilege. It's not really something we actively promote - they're somewhat of an outmoded concept in my opinion. We prefer instead to engineer in reliability when designing a system making an SLA pretty much redundant.

I can't imagine a 10% credit will be much comfort to you when your client's sites are down. In today's competitive market, it's in our interests to ensure the maximum possible uptime. None of our dedicated services have a minimum contract as standard therefore we know that, if the service is not up to par, you will simply move. You're frankly spoilt for choice!

JamieBeeston · 22nd February 2006

We operate 200%-1000% penalty clauses on some of our larger client contracts to whom cost is tertiary to Service and more Service.

Large penalty clauses are the norm for our Banking / PLC clients. It gives them the reassurance of a lovely great stick with which to beat us should they ever need

To date we've never had to pay out.. which is obviously great for both us, and our client!

Terry, I'll drop you a PM with more options.

4dhosting · 22nd February 2006

Quote:

Gents,

I have a potential requirement (June) for a fully managed service. My customer is a TV station. I need a price for the full monty.

Hi,

Just to let you know I've sent over a PM with some ideas and feedback.

David.

philb · 23rd February 2006

Ballparking - the basic kit spec would put you around the £600+ a month mark, depending on how much throughput/failover you want on the hardware firewall solution we'd dedicate to you.

If you really mean that you want things fixed (such as server hardware failure) "immediately" then you're looking at a ballpark of £1500-2000 a month for a 30 minute response (with parts) SLA on top of the core cost. We'd rather you built a resilient system to begin with instead of wasting money on an expensive safety net - we'd be more than happy to provide consultancy and assistance (or deliver a complete solution) to give you something as rock solid as possible, and can then couple it up with a less immediate hardware replacement scheme.

Penalty clasues (beyond the standard - a representative value of the service not provided) can be worked in if required, but levels of liability will obviously need discussing in depth, and will provide a hefty chunk of additional cost.

Further information would allow me to provide you with a detailed specification to suit your client's exact requirements, so I would be grateful if when the time comes to ask for specific pricing that you mail us a copy of your requirements for us to examine, so that I can prepare a quotation and specification for your review.

craigasuk · 23rd February 2006

If the service is that critical I strongly suggest you look at a multi-server solution with built in redundancy and load balancing. Depending on specs, costs range from £1000 per month upwards. DediPower is used to dealing with these kind of platforms for some very large projects/clients (including sites for TV stations), so when you're ready make sure you give us a call so we can chat through precise requirements.

In my experience though, most failures of 'critical' hosting platforms are due to the application level and not the hardware/ISP. You would be surprised what happens to a poorly structured or indexed database which seems fine with a few thousand users, bit when hit with 50,000-100,000 users after a series of adverts on TV it will grind to a complete halt almost instantly regardless of what hardware you chuck at it! Large projects such as this usually have at least a 30 day aggressive testing period, so make sure everything's in place well in advance - don't be tempted to skip or cut down testing like I see so many times over and over again, if uptime is key this stage is the most important of all.

Sounds like an interesting project to be working on so good luck and I hope it pays well!

NoIdea · 23rd February 2006

Penalty clauses are a bit of "closing the stable door..." but I need to cover myself in case the client asks. But I won't mention it unless they do...

You make some good points Craig. I have certainly seen some howlers in my previous existence with a major software house. Unfortunately things have a habit of slipping towards the end of a project. The client on this one is making the final decision end of March and wants to go live in June. Not likely...

My problem is this. I have had kit with 3 different hosting companies. All of them provided the contracted service adequately, but in a crisis situation did not pull out all the stops (I can go on about this endlessly, so don't get me started...) So how can you measure how well a supplier will respond in a crisis? All I've been able to do so far is pick one, wait for a crisis, be disappointed and move on.

Anyone got a better approach?

adamsmith · 23rd February 2006

Quote:

Anyone got a better approach?

Meet the people involved. Find out what their business is about. Find out what they can do for you and discuss ways of implementing fault recovery into the solution rather than making it a reactive thing. Discuss all possible scenarios with your host. That way, there will be no need to 'pull out all the stops' in the event of a crisis, it can all be included in the contract.

Good luck, however you choose to play it

.

JamieBeeston · 23rd February 2006

Indeed,

How about turning up at the datacentre unannounced, and asking them to have someone meet you.. see how rapidly they are able to respond. (obviously inform them in advance that you will be testing them in this way so they do not thing you're some nutter

)

Another good indicator is the calibre of clients they have on network. See if they can put you in touch with someone of their 'big name' clients for referrals / comments / testimonials..

Actually going on-site and meeting them and their staff, visiting their offices gives you a good 'feel' for someone.

markcastle · 23rd February 2006

Quote:

Originally Posted by NoIdea

So how can you measure how well a supplier will respond in a crisis?

Talk to existing clients.

seiretto · 23rd February 2006

Hi,

Check our Managed Windows Dedicated Servers here:
http://www.s4servers.com/windows_dedicated_servers.php

100% SLA, Standby server, No minimum contract, No setup costs, No bandwidth limits, and off-site tape backups can be added in 20GB chunks at any renewal time (monthly, quarterly or annual).

Our good service can be confirmed by our existing clients:
http://www.seiretto.com/featuredsites/

I wish you all the best with your project who ever you choose.

Dave Walker
Seiretto Ltd.