The Internet Encyclopedia (Volume 3)

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708 WEBHOSTING

with flexible MSPs as well, of course), but also shares the

cost of training that staff, because customers are all using

the same technology. Furthermore, when a new problem

occurs with a given component or combination, there is a

good chance that another customer will have experienced

the problem first, giving the benefit of a preventive fix, be-

fore the problem shows up on a given customer’s Web site.

The rigid model is not perfect, either, of course. The

obvious disadvantage is that customers often cannot have

things entirely their way. If an MSP supports only Ora-

cle databases, for instance, but a customer wants to use

Sybase, it will have to go to another vendor or manage the

database itself.

Facility Neutrality

The primary value of an MSP is its ability to manage

Web sites and keep them running. The physical infrastruc-

ture of the data center—the air conditioning, power, and

security—is not the forte of most MSPs. Yet these things

are still required. Each MSP, therefore, has a way to pro-

vide such infrastructure for its customers. How they do

so, however, varies greatly, and this is another important

criterion for an evaluation of MSPs.

Figure 6 is a family tree of MSPs, illustrating how they

can be further divided into groups according to their re-

lationships to data center facilities.

The first group—facility-owner MSPs—comprises

those that own their data centers. In addition to being

MSPs, these vendors are also in the colocation business,

and they manage Web sites and servers that are located

in their own facilities.

The other MSPs all belong to thefacility-neutralgroup.

MSPs in this category do not own data centers. Instead,

they provide management services for sites and servers

that are colocated at third-party facilities.

The facility-neutral group is further split into two sub-

groups according to whether the MSPs work only with

specific colocation vendors or are entirely independent of

the hosting location. The first subgroup (tenant MSPs) rent

dedicated space within the data centers of one or more

colocation vendors and require that their customers’ sites

be housed at data centers operated by one of those part-

ners. Tenant MSPs have these special relationships with

one or a small number of colocation vendors.

MSPs

Facility-Owner

MSPs

Facility-Neutral

MSPs

Tenant

MSPs

Portable

MSPs

Figure 6: MSP facility ownership.

Monitoring Only

$1,000 $10,000 $100,000 $1,000,000

OS and Web Servers

App Servers and Databases

Custom Applications

Service Level

Figure 7: MSP monthly pricing ranges.

Portable MSPs,members of the other subgroup of

facility-neutral MSPs, areentirelyneutral and will man-

age sites located anywhere in the world, even in their

customers’ own corporate facilities. MSPs in this group

neither own nor rent data center space.

Service Levels

The range of services offered by vendors that call them-

selves managed service providers and the range of fees

paid by their customers have a big spread. As a group,

MSPs are generally aimed toward the high end of the over-

all Web-hosting marketplace, with contracts starting at

$1,000 per month. But some managed service contracts

exceed $1 million per month—a 1000:1 range.

The range of services and the associated monthly prices

are illustrated in Figure 7. The monthly fees shown are in

addition to the capital expenses of hardware and software.

Monitoring

Note that at the very low end, starting at about $500

per month, MSPs provide only monitoring services. This

means that for the established price (up through as much

as $10,000), they will monitor a site and notify the Web

site owner or specified third parties in case of outages.

The only reason MSPs offer such a basic service is to

provide an entry point for customers that they hope will

upgrade to higher cost services. The difference between

monitoring for $500 per month and $10,000 per month

depends on the number of the servers monitored and the

complexity of the Web site.

Platform Management

Basic monitoring does not include services to diagnose or

resolve problems. The first level of service at which MSPs

take responsibility and agree to meet service levels is in

the management of theplatform. At this level, an MSP will

take responsibility for infrastructure, server hardware, the

operating system software, other highly generic compo-

nents (such as Web-server software), and backup and re-

covery.

Platform management starts at about $5,000 per

month. The high end ($100,000 per month) represents a

site that includes 10 cabinets, at a higher ($10,000 per

cabinet) price point.

Application Management

Managing applications (databases and application

servers) is the goal for most MSPs, and for this, they