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May 24, 2002 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Managed hosting service provider Rackspace Managed Hosting (Rackspace.com) announced on Thursday the results of two studies commissioned by the company, relating specifically to the area of service level agreements.
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The studies conducted by independent research company Vanson Bourne, says Rackspace, demonstrate that Web developers find SLAs with Web hosting providers very difficult to police, and that many UK companies are settling for unacceptable levels of uptime from their hosting providers.
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In the first of the studies, 56 percent of Web developers surveyed said they found service level agreements with Web hosting providers very difficult to police, with that number jumping to 76 percent for companies with between 26 and 50 customers.
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The most common complaint, says Rackspace is that hosts are not able to provide the guaranteed uptime, with 58 percent of developers saying their service levels are not met, often due to get out clauses in the agreements.
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“The results match what we have been hearing from customers about their previous experiences with the Web hosting market,” says Dominic Monkhouse, managing director at Rackspace. “Many companies are discovering that once they have signed a service level agreement they aren’t actually protected. They presume that once they have signed on the dotted line they are guaranteed 100% uptime and reliable security.?
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The second study, says Rackspace, indicates that 84 percent of Web developers are settling for an inadequate level of Web service connectivity.
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Of those questioned, 65 percent said they would be satisfied with a guarantee of less than 99.5 percent uptime, a number that equates to nearly a working week of downtime each year.
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The research, says Rackspace, showed that while over half the developers believe that downtime is impacting negatively on their clients’ businesses, only 2 percent of developers understand the importance of a “five-nines” guarantee, which ensures less than five minutes downtime per year.
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“Five nines shouldn’t be a bonus offered in the service level agreement,” says Monkhouse. “It should be a pre-requisite for companies when they choose a Web host. We’re shocked at the low levels of uptime that businesses are currently accepting from other web host providers. Fanatical support is our driving force – our customers have experienced 100% uptime in the past year.”
