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NETWORK WORLD NEWSLETTER: JEB BOLDING
on APPLICATION SERVICE PROVIDERS 10/24/01 - Today's focus: Service guaranteed Dear Wincenty Kaminski, In this issue: * Guaranteeing service levels when things go wrong * Links related to ASPs * Featured reader resource _______________________________________________________________ How will LAN/MAN Technologies Disrupt the Status Quo? LAN/MAN industry leaders have one question for you: Do you want to fall behind? Even with a shrinking LAN/MAN budget, you can still make the changes and updates you need to stay ahead. Find out how at Network World's FREE Town Meeting, State of the LAN/MAN: Embracing Disruptive Technologies. Register today at http://nww1.com/go/1022lan.html _______________________________________________________________ Today's focus: Service guaranteed By Jeb Bolding I spend a lot of my time at EMA focusing on service-level agreements and the service-level management tools that attempt to guarantee those contractual relationships. Generally speaking, everyone - enterprises, xSPs, and ISVs - are candidates for purchasing service-level management (SLM) products to ensure their service-level agreements with their customers. However, most toolsets on the market are in a nascent period of development as they get a handle on how their prospective customers want to see the reported SLM information and what kind of action they want to take based on the metrics they've gathered. One thing we at EMA stress is that business transaction should be the center of the service level agreement. While SLM tools need to have a clear understanding of the integrity, performance, and availability of components that support that transaction, ultimately, the goal of SLM tools is to provide the data and the automated actions that will guarantee a consistent user experience. As straightforward as this goal may sound, the vendor landscape in support of this is quite scattered. Most vendors have a product roadmap that leads toward a business transaction monitoring solution, but many are still heavily focused on providing detailed metrics about components, regardless of their impact on the business process. Assuming that an xSP has deployed some good, business-focused SLM tools, things will still go wrong, transactions will be lost, content will not be served up properly, and users will leave because performance doesn't meet their expectations. Since an xSP's business is dependent on its digital presence always being there, xSPs need to implement solutions that engage the user while there are problems so that the users don't simply disappear into the Internet. One potential solution that I've come across is a product called RainAssure, created by Rainfinity. RainAssure software sits between a company's Web servers and the switch or load balancer. RainAssure correlates transactions to faulty infrastructure components, and as it watches the transactions coming into the site that are answered by 404 errors or incorrect content, it serves up configurable Web content designed to ensure user experience continuity. For example, in a faulty financial transaction series, RainAssure could display pages that provide the users with a mirror of where they were in the transaction process and then either a phone number or e-mail address that they can use to complete their transaction. Alternatively, a Web page could be displayed that tells the user there was a problem completing the transaction, but that their session state was maintained and if they should retry their transaction submission once again. Finally, on the administrative side of things, RainAssure provides detailed reports of completed and incomplete or "dropped" transactions. In this way, xSPs can tie direct dollar value to the transactions that they support, and more importantly, RainAssure can provide financial value to transactions that were not completed. In the end, SLM tools are there to give IT some breathing space for fixing the problems that occur along their infrastructure. If a technology solution can give IT an extra 10 minutes to fix a problem while still engaging an online customer, that technology has done its job. _______________________________________________________________ To contact Jeb Bolding: Jeb Bolding is senior consultant with Enterprise Management Associates in Boulder, Colo., an analyst and market research firm focusing exclusively on enterprise management. Bolding has 10 years of experience in the network systems industry, most recently with eCollege.com, an ASP for higher education, where he was director of product development. He can be reached at mailto:jbolding@enterprisemanagement.com. _______________________________________________________________ RELATED EDITORIAL LINKS Rainfinity http://www.rainfinity.com Managed hosting vendors winning converts Network World, 10/22/01 http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2001/1022specialfocus.html Breaking ASP news from Network World, updated daily: http://www.nwfusion.com/topics/asp.html Archive of the ASP newsletter: http://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/asp/index.html ______________________________________________________________ FEATURED READER RESOURCE Network World Fusion's Net.Worker site Whether your company is growing larger or scaling back, corporate managers are looking for ways to cut costs while retaining and recruiting star employees. One smart solution - at least on paper - is to let some employees work from home. Network World's Net.Worker Web site bridges the gap between the telework concept and the hardware, software and services needed to make it happen. We bring you news and reviews, sound advice and keen insight into the technologies and solutions you need to manage a remote and mobile workforce. Visit http://www.nwfusion.com/net.worker/index.html _______________________________________________________________ May We Send You a Free Print Subscription? You've got the technology snapshot of your choice delivered at your fingertips each day. Now, extend your knowledge by receiving 51 FREE issues to our print publication. Apply today at http://www.nwwsubscribe.com/nl _______________________________________________________________ SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES To subscribe or unsubscribe to any Network World e-mail newsletters, go to: http://www.nwwsubscribe.com/news/scripts/notprinteditnews.asp To unsubscribe from promotional e-mail go to: http://www.nwwsubscribe.com/ep To change your e-mail address, go to: http://www.nwwsubscribe.com/news/scripts/changeemail.asp Subscription questions? Contact Customer Service by replying to this message. Have editorial comments? Write Jeff Caruso, Newsletter Editor, at: mailto:jcaruso@nww.com For advertising information, write Jamie Kalbach, Fusion Sales Manager, at: mailto:jkalbach@nww.com Copyright Network World, Inc., 2001 ------------------------ This message was sent to: vkamins@enron.com
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