Comparing the Entries
Not surprisingly, each of our trio of vendors -- Digitas, LoudCloud and NaviSite -- responded to our RFI by focusing on its particular area of expertise. Each has a foundation in one area and provides additional services through third-party partnerships.
LoudCloud and NaviSite concentrate mainly on the hosting and management requirements, offering partnered e-business development services. In contrast, Digitas proposes to provide MDD with development services in partnership with IBM on the hosting side. All three companies offer big-name partners. IBM figured prominently in all the responses either for hosting or for development services. Other big names mentioned include Cisco Systems, Keynote Systems, Micromuse, Qwest Communications, Sun Microsystems, Veritas Software and Vignette Corp.
LoudCloud is the only respondent that answered all our security questions directly and provided an extensive list of verifications and firms providing third-party network-level assessments. Its up-front approach was refreshing as was the application vulnerability assessment it offered through Atstake.
We viewed the vague replies about "third-party" network security assessment from Digitas and NaviSite with a mixture of disdain and resignation. Unfortunately, it's a typical response and an easy way to hide. Digitas did provide a vendor name for penetration testing but left the rest of the network security up to IBM and its choice of third-party partners.
Physical security was a different story. All three providers offered detailed lists of their physical security measures. Physical security is routine at this point, so the similarity of responses in this area was not surprising.
With the demise of so many ASPs (application service providers), including Exodus Communications, vendor viability was something we took very seriously (see chart at right). Digitas' history and strong, steady growth show that it is likely to be around for a while.
In contrast, LoudCloud is relatively new on the scene. This dot-com-era start-up is headed by former Netscape honcho Marc Andreessen, which lends it a bit of geek glamour. However, the company is in the red and will probably remain so for awhile. Choosing LoudCloud for our fictional doughnut company is easy, but in the real world its financial state might rightfully give you pause.
NaviSite has managed steady growth since its debut, but at least for our RFI, it did not appear to have strong development partnerships. This concerned us. Most of its partnerships are with well-established providers: Akamai Technologies, Mercury Technologies, NetGenesis Corp. and NetIQ Corp.'s WebTrends. On the development side that wasn't the case. NaviSite gave us no suggestions and offered no partnered firms from which to choose for the development portion of the scenario. Giving the customer latitude is nice, but we were looking for a complete solution from a single source. We sought a source that includes development of the site -- not one that forces us to search out a separate provider for the development piece of the equation.
We were generally pleased with the level of detail regarding change-management procedures. LoudCloud uses a proprietary tool through which changes can be easily managed and that gave us the most control of timeliness of deployment. However, if we did not use the tool the company provides, we'd end up with a lesser level of service. Digitas and NaviSite both designated a detailed change-management procedure in their responses, complete with details on where responsibility for each step of the process would lie. NaviSite performed particularly well in this area with a detailed response that left Digitas' and LoudCloud's in the dust.
Dedicated staff is another area that varied. LoudCloud proposed to provide us with a dedicated team comprising a project manager, consulting engineer and an account manager. NaviSite offered us a single TAM (technical account manager), and Digitas offered us a single project manager. We'd prefer at least two dedicated personnel -- one primary and one backup. If our single contact at NaviSite or Digitas goes on vacation or flies the coop, we'll need to start over with new staff. With average contracts of one to two years, that's a possibility that needs to be better addressed.
It was obvious from examining the performance-monitoring and quality-assurance offerings in the responses that LoudCloud and NaviSite are hosting-focused companies. The wealth of information they provided on the subjects showed a keen understanding of their importance in an outsourcing relationship. Every metric -- from individual server performance (I/O, CPU, memory) to bandwidth to application-specific details -- was offered. Both companies provide portals with a view into the performance of all components.
Digitas' response was more nebulous and generally consisted of "IBM provides this." We're sure IBM does, but how does the company provide it and how good is it?
All three providers account for availability and redundancy extremely well. Site, data and configuration backups, and high-availability hardware and software configurations, as well as multiple ISP links for redundant network connectivity, were all part of the basic offering. We were pleased but not terribly surprised. After all, hosting companies have had years to figure out how to do this.
We like Digitas' focus on development and would love to see a partnership between LoudCloud and Digitas -- our dream team for Mountain Doozy Donuts. But our objective was to choose one provider, and after intense evaluation of all three proposals we gave the nod to LoudCloud for its extensive security precautions, monitoring and management, and well-thought-out provisions for content control. We do, however, wish it were in better shape financially.
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