Why Web Hosts Need Certified Staff

By Rawlson O'Neil King

From Web Hosting Monthly, October 2003 Edition

November 3, 2003 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Certification gives hosting providers an edge over the competition by ensuring the competency of their staff. Certified personnel are trained to provide quality support for hosting products and technologies, including installation, configuration, maintenance and support.

To become certified, candidates must demonstrate their knowledge and expertise by passing one or more proficiency tests. They must posses some working knowledge of server equipment and software and complete a series of demanding tests.

The use of certified personnel however is not prevalent in the hosting industry. Hosting firms, especially those that cater to small and mid-sized enterprises, are most often started and populated by technology enthusiasts. The ironic result is that the majority of hosting firms do not have staff with technical competency in the technology they specialize in and sell. This is a major problem, as hosting environments are ever changing and complex, requiring proper configuration.

The major advantage of certification is that candidates are given in-depth instruction concerning the intricacies of specific software. As a result, a certified technician will know how to upgrade and maintain a hosting environment against exploits and intrusion.

As security has become the most important consideration for corporate customers, in-depth knowledge of systems are required in order to protect them from being compromised. Such knowledge can be gleaned from certification. Better-informed technical staff members lead to better-quality systems and often to better customer relationships. Because certified staff can both understand and mitigate risk and relate these issues to consumers, they are highly sought by the more established Web hosts. The use of certified personnel also provides a marketing benefit to hosting companies, since consumers are assured that the staff of the provider has the credentials necessary to operate hosting systems properly.

In an effort to increase the attractiveness of their offerings, hosting companies might also choose to have their entire systems and processes certified to give their customers an accurate picture of their capabilities.

The overall purpose of providing organization-wide certification is to give consumers the confidence that someone knowledgeable and trustworthy has looked at the provider and given their approval.

Many large hardware and software vendors, such as Sun Microsystems and IBM, offer certification programs designed to certify hosting companies that use their respective platforms or key e-business products and technology.

Most of these programs consist of the completion of an extensive self-assessment document followed by an on-site review. The review is conducted by software vendor staff and includes an in-depth examination of a hosting firm's current hosting environment, as well as its operational procedures for availability, capacity planning, security, backup and recovery, performance, support and more.

Certification is based on hardware and software deployments that use processes, equipment and software that vendors have developed over years of running high-availability systems.

The main advantage of obtaining certification from a well-known vendor is that they undertake a marketing effort to publicize the certification of a Web host. Consumers usually react favorably to service providers who comply with the technical specifications of a well-known vendor because of the name recognition and quality that it brings to the fore.

The only major consideration concerns the costs involved with both personnel and organizational certification. Both can become extremely costly exercises, since personnel and organizational examinations can run into thousands of dollars. As a result, any certification effort must be measured against long-term benefits. Personnel certification should only be considered for long-term hires and organizational certification should only be considered if a service provider is committed to a specific brand of hardware and software.

As a cheaper alternative, service providers might want to consider whether their data center deployments can simply conform to established best practices.

An excellent option for consumers is to determine whether a service provider is following ITIL guidelines. The I.T. Infrastructure Library (ITIL) provides consistent and comprehensive documentation of best practices for I.T. service management. Such guidelines are tremendously less expensive to conform to, and do not require the continued use of a specific brand of equipment, or continued training upgrades.