By Carl Burnham

This is an excerpt from Web Hosting: A Complete Strategy for Delivering High-Quality Web Hosting Services (Osborne/McGraw-Hill).

Providing services is what the Internet is all about -- whether for e-commerce, content delivery, e-mail or other applications. It is important to provide written guarantees to ensure the reliability and quality of those services. In a 1997 survey conducted by ISPs, Inter@ctive Week reported that 33 percent of businesses had service-level agreements with their Internet providers.

The survey noted that guarantee of availability was important in 94 percent of businesses, with 85 percent stating that they would pay to get this type of guarantee. An SLA is further defined as a guarantee of performance tool, which is individually negotiated through a written contract agreement with the customer paying extra for enhanced levels of service.

SLAs (service-level agreements) are used to further define the relationship between a Web host and select customers who require a high level of services. SLAs include a written contract agreement, which specifies the expectations for Internet services that are maintained on a continuing basis, to include the following areas:

• Reliability and redundancy.
  
• Server throughput and responsiveness.
  
• Customer support.
  
• Network security.
  
• Performance.
  

Customer service levels are usually clarified within an SLA that is mutually agreed upon at the beginning of the customer relationship. This is especially common with hosting accounts that go beyond the shared hosting level, and can prevent confusion and finger pointing over who gets blamed if something goes wrong.

The SLA should define what the responsibilities are, and the level of service and responsiveness that is the customer should expect. This usually involves a higher cost to the customer if a high priority is placed on specific customer service areas (for example, 24-hour technical telephone support or specific written guarantees of high Web site availability). The customer should know what to expect.

SLAs are especially common among ISPs and other Internet-based services as a way of demonstrating the level of competitive services available. In planning for an SLA, one factor in deciding on a level of service is how your backbone provider and associated partners have their SLAs organized. If you guarantee a two-hour response time within your SLA, make sure your associated partners and providers should have similar SLA response times specified within their agreements.

The issue of performance has become an important one with SLAs. Some carriers, such as UUNet, one of the first ISPs, specify 100 percent availability within their SLA, and go further to specify that latency will be no more than 65 milliseconds. Latency is loosely defined as the speed of the connection between two computers on the Internet.

The performance of the network is posted and available at UUNet's Web site; it provides statistics on how it is performing relative to the SLA and how the customer will be contacted within a set time frame in case of network unavailability. UUNet's agreements specify three main things: the quality of the network (latency), quality of service (100 percent availability) and quality of customer service (notification to customer within set time period should service become unavailable). Packet delivery is specified to average 99 percent or more.

Some hosts will specify an acceptable packet loss during a certain period. This will be the loss that occurs with the initial hop within the network; the average is less than 1 percent over a month's period. The higher the level of Web hosting, the more comprehensive an SLA should be; especially to provide the support components that guarantee a 24/7 uptime arrangement. From a customer service standpoint, a customer will be concerned about the following areas to ensure that their Web site performs optimally; these should be highlighted within a SLA:

• Reliability and redundancy. Customers obviously want an optimal level of uptime for their Web sites and services and will be interested in how servers are mirrored and backed up, and whether the host is using multiple primary carriers to the Internet backbone. Savvy customers will inquire about what private peering arrangements are in place to optimize traffic flow, and how close your network is to the backbone provider.
  
• Server throughput and responsiveness. Inadequate servers that are not updated and are not actively managed lead to sluggish and slow response times. An insufficient connection to the Internet itself also can lead to reduced speeds for accessing Web sites. In addition, if you do not plan for scalability, a Web site might experience sudden bottlenecks in the critical stage of its popularity, which could hamper the effectiveness and serviceability of the Web site.
  
• Customer support. Providing timely and responsive customer support is a key concern in how a host handles questions and addresses questions and problems that might appear. Be accessible and able to address issues in a timely manner.
  
• Network security. Security breaches where a system is compromised by a hacker, virus, or Trojan continue to be customer concerns. The headlines have noted many leading Web sites that have experienced attacks and breaches of security. Critical customer account information, including credit card numbers, has been stolen in some cases. A customer will expect the Web host to have an active security plan in place, and will want to be notified immediately if any security breaches are discovered.
  
• Performance. Performance tools to ensure compliance include log analysis of applications and server-based monitoring. If you provide specifics regarding percentage availability, furnish the customer with some type of recourse if their Web site continues to be down because of the Web host or carrier from which Internet backbone services are acquired, or because of a performance-based issue. Some common methods include providing account or billing credits for the next billing period or a free day of service. These also might be used because the Web site is experiencing higher traffic levels and a plan upgrade is required.
  

Monitoring tools
As application and managed hosting services become more popular, in order for Web hosts to abide by SLAs, SLA tools can be used to gauge performance. Software is available that enables Web hosts to monitor the network and compare it with the individual parameters of SLAs. Firehunter, one such product offered by Agilent, provides the ability to monitor network performance against the specifics of SLA agreements and within targeted areas to isolate where potential problems might occur.

This provides added verification that SLAs are being adhered to. You can set baselines that establish standards for accepted performance for individual Web sites. A typical report also provides a tracking mechanism for gauging the overall health of a system and how it is responding to user requests.

Through active monitoring over a Web browser, Firehunter enables an alarm if a problem occurs that is identified within the specifics of a SLA agreement. A customer can monitor its Web site through the browser in real time, gauging such areas as server performance and network responsiveness, and to generate statistical reports.

These types of snapshot views allow customers to visualize and track performance clearly. This can be especially beneficial to gauge the responsiveness of a Web site as it generates hits, with the ability to track how certain sections of a Web site are performing.

Some of Agilent's customers include Verio and Qwest. According to Dan Vortherms, vice president of product engineering for Verio, “Firehunter/PRO offers Verio the ability to differentiate our services based on performance guarantees.” SLAs also often are specified in relation to an overall Web hosting QoS (quality of service) standard. This often will be in coordination with a Web host's partners (especially the carriers, which provide backbone connectivity).

Managed hosting
Because of these attempts to address application scalability and infrastructure maintenance issues, an even newer hosting model, managed services hosting, is becoming increasingly popular. Managed services hosting includes the management of services, whether it is scaling an application, clustering among servers, caching, load balancing or monitoring.

The managed host provides a specialized service that ensures the efficiency and availability of the customer's online services. Companies such as Loudcloud specialize in these services by providing proprietary Web services through the application of off-the-shelf software, to ensure 100 percent availability of a Web site.

As noted in a study of Loudcloud customers, which focused on outsourcing of Internet infrastructure, the Intermedia Group found that the many benefits customers cited included the reduction of costs. Over a two-year period, customers will save an estimated average of 87.3 percent in capital cost avoidance and associated IT support costs. These types of avoided costs included:

• Operations and IT staff. System administrators, database administrators, application server administrators, network engineers, security engineers, deployment managers, and 24/7 operations support staff.
  
• Hardware. Production server hardware, staging server hardware, immediate availability network, device replacement (including Virtual Private Network, Caching DNS Servers, load balancers, firewalls, and Gigabyte Ethernet Uplink), high availability storage, tape backup, backup and restore hardware, routers/switches, and console servers.
  
• Software. Server software, network devices/software, network management software, systems management software, intrusion detection software, Web visit analysis software, and backup and restore software.
  
• Facilities. Data center selection, leasing of space, rack space, and cage setup.
  
• Support costs. Capacity planning service, application architecture expertise, database servers architecture expertise, network architecture expertise, full stack monitoring tools/ processes, configuration management/provisioning infrastructure, and security log management.
  

Greater scalability. Customers were able to better take advantage of market opportunities through systems, which could expand as needs required and for services to be paid for only when used. According to one customer, “Loudcloud is proactive rather than reactive, knowing about problems and potential problems before I do.”

Software companies such as Microsoft also are addressing this need. Microsoft has recently introduced Application Center 2000, which provides tools to effectively enable and monitor clustered servers. As the hosting market expands into providing managed services (more than half of the growth in hosting is predicted for this niche market by 2004) expanded SLAs that cover performance issues will become commonplace as standard components that customers will come to expect.

Newsletters
Provide a monthly e-mail or newsletter to customers, designed to provide an overview of your latest Web hosting features, highlight enhancements, and provide technical tips to Web sites to keep running smoothly. You can make available a similar monthly e-mail or newsletter for prospects who visit your Web site to subscribe to, with content focusing on monthly specials, contests, and success stories of satisfied customers. Include easy methods for subscribing and unsubscribing—and abide by them.

The personal touch goes a long way. Think in terms of your customers and what they want to accomplish through you, their Web host. Opportunities abound for you to go beyond the ordinary in providing exceptional service to impress your customers. In doing so, you create confidence in your services, generate referrals, and raise the bar for your competition.

Providing prompt and responsive customer service, whether it be for billing, sales or technical support is critical to ensuring a long-term relationship. By focusing on the customer and the recommendations here, a Web host can gain competitive advantages.

About the Author
Carl Burnham is an IT strategy specialist, author, and former network administrator. His books include Web Hosting, A Complete Strategy (2001, Osborne McGraw-Hill). He has also coauthored the popular Ace the Technical Interview (2000, Osborne McGraw-Hill) and Professional JSP (2000, Wrox). Check out Carl's Website to learn more.

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