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High-end managed hosting providers?
Posted by mhalligan, 06-04-2007, 11:13 PM Beyond Rackspace Intensive, EDS, AT&T, IBM, who are the other interesting higher end managed hosting companies? (yes, I am fishing to read up on my competitors). It seems to me like it's either a niche market not representated on WHT at all, or perhaps still a somewhat underserved one.
Posted by utropicmedia-karl, 06-05-2007, 01:25 AM WHT is not meant for large corporations. If you want to reach the larger players, look at direct sales and trade publications. btw, You forgot HP and CSC.
Posted by mhalligan, 06-05-2007, 02:28 AM I'm not so much looking for large corporations as I am looking for the large corporations who have mid-level offerings.. I'm a small company and have been coming up against IBM & Rackspace Intensive in bids lately.. the service comparisons have been apples/oranges but with the same intended goal, makes me think I'm too cheap.. Trying to find out if there are any other companies in my realm.
Posted by utropicmedia-karl, 06-05-2007, 07:38 AM Do you go to your customers or are they coming to you?
Posted by lockbull, 06-05-2007, 10:51 AM I'd agree with your assessment of WHT; there isn't much discussion here of the higher end offerings. Whether or not it's an underserved niche I'll leave to your own market research, but the market research I've seen seems to indicate that many hosting providers are attempting to move up the service chain (and thereby improve margins). My company develops hosted applications, primarily in Java; we have a mix of startup, midmarket and Fortune 500/Global 2000 clients. Along with the move towards SaaS or SOA, for the most part these companies are looking for higher level managed hosting, with services like database management, SLAs governing incident response times, more in depth application knowledge, etc. Oftentimes we're called in to help with the decision process; I've had direct experience or solicited bids from most of the players in this market at one time or another. In addition to the ones you named, I would add the following. I would also add that these brackets are based on price, not service. Low Contegix (focused on open source Java environments) Datapipe Middle FastRoot LogicWorks NaviSite OpSource Sun/Sevenspace (remote management only) High Savvis Verizon/Digex Last edited by lockbull; 06-05-2007 at 10:52 AM. Reason: Typo
Posted by wubwob, 06-05-2007, 01:25 PM Verio do some managed hosting i believe in the big big corp sector.
Posted by mhalligan, 06-05-2007, 08:14 PM Generally a mix. 90% of our customers have come from word of mouth, but 10% have come from seeking out recently funded startups, and proposing our offerings to them.
Posted by 01globalnet, 06-05-2007, 08:45 PM DynamicNet, CartikaHosting ...
Posted by mhalligan, 06-05-2007, 11:39 PM Hmm. CartikaHosting is definitely not an apples to apples comparison. DynamicNet is closer, but I don't think they provide the high-level of handholding & application understanding.
Posted by mhalligan, 06-05-2007, 11:41 PM lockbull, thanks for your list! Your middle-tier ones definitely look like a closer comparison. Especially fastroot and navisite (who seems to do a lot more nowthan I remember them doing 5 years ago)
Posted by Apolo, 06-06-2007, 12:15 AM I would add to that list, in no certain order: Xand INetU Peak10 SunGard DataReturn And perhaps, in another range, and again, in no certain order: Data393 CarpathiaHost FastServers.net Regards,
Posted by Giraffian, 06-06-2007, 07:13 AM You're right, not much talk on this forum that's priced at over $500/mo. Google turns up a staggering array of 'managed hosting' services (no costs of course, if you have to ask ... you can't afford it. Sadly, I'm one of those startups seeking funding, and you need to know how much funding to seek ...). I chose one based purely on their having the right services on their website and the lingo on the site not being ridiculous sales jargon, contacted them via email, and despite the 14 hour time difference, they are calling tomorrow morning to discuss. We shall see how it goes ... at worst, I'll just learn some more buzzwords that I can use when discussing with *other* potential hosts.
Posted by mripguru, 06-06-2007, 07:43 AM I'd like to hear more about why you think we're not an apples-to-apples comparison....
Posted by mhalligan, 06-07-2007, 01:57 AM Mripguru, I'm not bashing Cartika, or anything, far from it. From a cursory review of your website, it definitely seems like you provider far more interesting services than some guy who buys a bunch of cheap dell/supermicro/whitebox servers, throws cpanel on it, and calls it managed. The main services/distinctions I'm trying to find good comparisons for are: Infrastructure management being the primary focus, hosting being more of a side-effectWorking with customers to design the infrastructure, act 100% as their systems administrators/network administrators/infrastructure architects (to the point whereFlat-rate services on everything but bandwidth (including all-you can eat management that's done by strong sysadmins who know the customers' applications)Providing fleshed out configuration management (cfengine, puppet, bcfg2, whatever)NOC functionality, including custom application-level monitor checks, NOC staff that have run-sheet checks to perform on a customer's site several times to day It seems to me that Cartika is a cool blend of traditional managed hosting, and SaaS which I like (especially since there's probably great margin in it), but just isn't the same thing. I guess the real hard thing is every time we've had competitive bids on a customer it's either been a complete mis-match towards the lower-end (like coming up against softlayer or some generic dedicated server company), or a strange mismatch towards the higher end (like coming in at 1/3 the pricing of EDS or Sprint).
Posted by mhalligan, 06-07-2007, 02:00 AM Sad that I've never bothered considering Inetu in this realm, when they're clearly a good fit. I worked for a hosting company in '96, Internet Unlimited that Dev (Inetu owner) I believe had co-founded. He split-off to go more of the managed hosting direction, and IUINC went more towards the whitebox dedicated model. IUINC got bought out by fast.net and lost their shirts while InetU is one of the more successful tech companies in it's region (Lehigh Valley, PA, US).. INetU is pretty awesome in their longevity, uptime, and service offerings.
Posted by cartika-andrew, 06-07-2007, 12:35 PM Hi Michael, Although I do not necessarily agree with your assessment of our offerings - but, philisophically, you are somewhat correct. For the record, our management is complete management. Customers pay for bandwidth, hardware upgrades, etc - but, rest assured, we are speaking a full range of management services here. This includes consultations, pro-active management, application level management and support if required, etc... Personally, I completely understand the mis-match you are speaking of. We try to fill that void and are trypically too expensive for the "traditional" customer (especially around these parts ) and too inexpensive for the larger corporate customers - however, the end result has been a healthy mix of various types of customers including lower end clients who are willing to pay a premium to receive top shelf service and large corporate clients whos decision makers on various projects have the onions to make a decision that is best for their company and represents the greatest value. Our customer set includes Sprint, Comcast, Habitat for Humanity, etc... and also includes a wide array of SMB clients. So, as you put it "Cartika is a cool blend" - and that probably isnt far off from the truth... To your original point however, I would not include rackspace in that list either (at least not with IBM, AT&T, etc). If you wish to compete with IBM, HP, etc - that is one thing, but, theres only a handful of organizations that can be mentioned in the same breathe - and unfortunately, that list does not include anyone on this board, and that includes Cartika, Rackspace, Dynamicnet, etc... (though, I do have respect for the unique value rackspace and dynamicnet (and cartika for that matter ) bring to the table, they are not and cannot be listed in the same list as IBM, HP, EDS, AT&T, etc....
Posted by DarkRaider, 06-18-2007, 04:04 PM I would add PEER1.CA to that list
Posted by meporter, 06-21-2007, 11:15 PM I absolutely appreciate the mention. I will keep this short and sweet for respect of advertising and the rules governing it. For reference, we would do a lot more than just Java, including some rather large RoR and PHP Sites. Cheers, Matthew
Posted by Giraffian, 06-27-2007, 07:42 PM We did an enormous amount of asking around and researching, found most of the places we contacted (including most mentioned in this thread) to offer less than we need, and are probably going to use Macquarie Telecom for hosting down the track. Rackspace was one of the ones found wanting ... a lot of the smaller companies want to sell you hosting by the computer, the larger ones tend to offer a more all-round service that doesn't mention gigabytes and megabits at all, and all the talk is about quality of service and scaleability and they'll offer sensible recommendations about what software to use (we've settled on MS SQL, .aspx and .NET on Windows, because it works out so much cheaper). After talking to 20+ companies, the differences between them are striking.
Posted by utropicmedia-karl, 06-27-2007, 08:31 PM Could you post some examples of their offerings with arpoximate costs? It would be very useful to the community as a whole. Kind Regards,
Posted by KimberlyH, 08-08-2007, 02:16 PM Just my 2 cents but as a person doing a lot of research looking for managed hosting I am finding Rockspace and IBM are very expensive however they are professional and dont seem to have hidden cost. These web site also do you look like templates edited. I am finding my biggest problem with lower cost manage hosting I am finding is the lack of professional person asking the phone. I am mostly hitting kids with no clue and if one more says uh ya cool I think I will scream. I feel like I am getting some kid paid to answer the phone who could care less about why I am calling. Or I get a person who makes me feel like I am in a car dealership, just because I am a women and married does not mean dont have the say so over what money I spend. There are a lot more of us work at home Moms running web sites I think is realized. The more I talk to companies and I have been cold calling a lot the since Monday morning the more I feel like I am in a car dealership. I dont want to haggle, I dont want to be treated like a stupid women who can be easily ticked because women and cars dont mix. What so hard on sending me a freaking price sheet!!! What I am finding is the web hosting market needs so honest nice middle ground offers and pricing managed hosting. Not all of us want customer this and customer that. Just a simple this cost this and you get full management at this cost. I feel like you guy are all so busy biting each other heads off that you are alienating your customers. Right now I have seven other women in my Women Work at home Group who are also running web site to big for shared hosting, to small to really afford IBM and Rackspace however after taking them all the information I have gotten from this forum, we still cant figure out who to trust. I swear, a woman trying to get a managed web host is like a women trying to buy a car. You just want to grab the young male salesman but the *alls and sake them silly. So anyway, you all who want to provide a good service that can run against please like IBM & Rockspace managed web hosting, you need to find a way to show that the customer they can trust you. Stop being a car salesman. Just my honest input.
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