LoudCloud may be new to the game, but it knows which direction it's headed in. While it would do well to partner with IBM or Digitas for development, its postdeployment support and ongoing maintenance offerings make it an excellent choice for our scenario.
LoudCloud was up-front with its security verifications and assessments, offering them up under an NDA (nondisclosure agreement) to its prospective customers. Its focus on automation of change management, monitoring and disaster recovery is excellent. Another bonus that pushed LoudCloud to the top is an offering of application verification -- functional, performance, stress and load -- as well as complete rollback and versioning of code changes. An automated tool offers the ability to update the site at scheduled periods or on the fly.
If secured connections (SSL, SSH) and ACLs (access-control lists) are used to provide authentication, the approval process is left to the customer. If the new code fails the verification process, the customer is notified and action is taken, but in all other cases the code flows through the automated system and is properly deployed without interference.
Monitoring is provided for every aspect of the application, from the hardware to the network, and is available via a customer portal for viewing on demand. Full nightly backups are provided, with a week's worth of data kept on-site and a full year's worth off-site. SLAs regarding restoration of data are fully detailed within the response.
Web log analysis is also offered via the portal. This isn't a must-have; it is more like a nice-to-have service but is rapidly becoming a high-demand offering for service providers.
SLAs regarding uptime and performance were detailed and so was the company's financial culpability should it not meet those performance levels.
LoudCloud, (408) 744-7300; fax (408) 744-7382. www.loudcloud.com
Digitas
Digitas' detailed responses to the development portion of our MDD scenario was excellent. Digitas outdid both NaviSite and LoudCloud by a long shot.
Unfortunately, Digitas' vague responses in other areas made it extremely difficult to judge the worth of the proposal. Generally speaking Digitas' offerings comprised mature and trusted tools and processes. We were impressed with its quality-assurance outlines, which included both testing and test plans.
Digitas and LoudCloud provide 24x7 technical and end-user support--a definite plus when considering the staffing needs to support a B2C e-commerce site.
Digitas offers its customers biweekly reports on performance and availability as well as a detailed list of service-level response times. We liked the detailed list; we didn't like the biweekly reports. We'd like our reports on demand. A good performance-management system should offer the ability to e-mail scheduled reports as well as a more real-time view into performance.
We didn't like Digitas' refusal to detail financial culpability for unscheduled downtime. The response implies that Digitas does not believe in culpability for downtime. That concerned us.
Digitas, (617) 867-1000; fax (617) 867-1111. www.digitas.com
NaviSite
NaviSite's proposal fell far short of LoudCloud's and Digitas' solutions in almost every area. While Digitas and LoudCloud offer 24x7 technical and end-user support, NaviSite offers only 24x7 technical support. Security assessment and verification information was virtually nonexistent, aside from the nebulous "third-party" line. NaviSite offers an open-ended e-commerce development choice -- any one we wanted. Choice is nice, but most ASPs have partnerships with development outsourcers. These outsourcers provide the customer with easier integration into the hosting environment and better monitoring throughout.
The one exception to NaviSite's mediocrity is its proposal for the change-management process, which was very detailed, covering every imaginable scenario and including response time and required NaviSite lead times.
NaviSite, (978) 682-8300, (888) 298-8222; fax (978) 688-8100. www.navisite.com
Technology editor Lori MacVittie has been a software developer and a network administrator. Most recently, she was a member of the technical architecture team for a global transportation and logistics organization. Send your comments on this article to her at lmacvittie@nwc.com.
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