Cervalis: Bringing Enterprise-Class Solutions to SMEs
By Adam Eisner, theWHIR.com
October 9, 2001 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- When a solution is dubbed "enterprise-class", it causes most IT managers and executives to cringe.
After all, enterprise-class solutions are typically associated with expensive, high-end services that only Fortune 500 companies can afford.
Managed Web hosting firm, however, is aiming to defy this stereotype by bringing enterprise-class solutions to mid-market companies at an affordable price.
"We bring to the middle market the specific processes and procedures that are normally and typically implemented in enterprise organizations," says Zack Margolis, Vice President of Marketing and Business Development at Cervalis. "We bring Fortune 500 resources and processes to the mid-market.
"It works, because customers, even though they may be smaller, still expect the same service [as bigger companies]."
This means Cervalis , which was established in April 2000, doesn't discriminate between its clients, no matter how much or how little they may spend. Every account is subject to the same SLA, technical support standards and related performance guarantees, which include a 99.999% uptime guarantee. "Our approach is customer service and customer focus," Margolis says.
Aside from attentive, high-level customer support, Margolis also believes part of providing enterprise-class solutions entails consolidating most aspects of a company's Web presence in to one point of contact. This means Cervalis clients who employ other teams for various aspects of their Web presence, including programming and design, can consolidate all of their operations under one umbrella under Cervalis, making the company the central point of contact. If additional site work is needed, Cervalis will contact the client's contractors on behalf of them and co-ordinate the required work.
"We provide a single point of support for all their needs," Margolis says. "For the customer, we act as one company."
Cervalis is backed by a management team that boasts a tremendous amount of combined experience in the IT industry - Margolis himself spent 17 years with IBM in various technology and marketing positions. He says this collective experience has helped the company in both its internal and external development. "We bring all of these services, processes and procedures to our internal services as well as to the way we deal with our customers," he says. These processes include the "pre-architecting" of Cervalis solutions and accounts, whereby every client and service is planned, pre-designed and tested prior to going live.
"We feel that if we put some thought [in to planning] ahead of time, we can really architect the best solutions for the customer," Margolis says.
Management's collective experience has also helped the company develop innovative new solutions to help customers, including their new 'test environment', which provides "a very robust, tested environment for [Cervalis] customers," Margolis says.
"It's basically a test lab that simulates a real environment," he says. "[Customers] can actually come in, build a test plan and simulate a real environment before going live, which means that they'll know exactly how many hits they can sustain."
Looking toward the future, Cervalis is taking aim at companies that are still apprehensive about migrating their Web presence to an outsourced solution, despite the cost savings. Armed with a fully-funded business plan for the next five years, Magrolis believes bringing Fortune 500 services to the famed "Fortune 10,000" will benefit companies of all shapes and sizes. "We can definitely serve large organizations, but we also see departments of large organizations coming to us," he says. "We see ourselves as really becoming the champion of the mid-market."
