Finally, WAN circuits are occasionally disconnected by mistake. It's up to the NSM group to jump up and down to get the service restored. We considered it vital to pin down exactly how the MSPs would react in these cases--especially considering that TacDoh might not have any network-savvy people left on staff once the outsourcing went into effect.
Our final two evaluation categories, operations and reporting, are much more important in real life than in the land of TacDoh. Operations is our catch-all term for a wide range of service differentiators, from strict change control to the cafeteria and recreation available to the NOC staff. The common denominator: Acing these criteria indicates stable, reliable and mature operations, lending credence to the idea of trusting them with the deep-fry kingdom.
Reporting, of course, is the conduit by which network and application health and activity are communicated. Each MSP cited complete and comparable reporting engines, with what appeared to be some differences. We say appeared to be because we didn't test them. Nor did we visit the network operations center, taste the lunchroom special or play any late-night ping-pong. So while we recognize the importance of these categories, we minimized their overall weight.
We broke reporting scores into two basic areas: The breadth and depth of the reporting, including how flexible it was, and report publication. As mentioned above, all the vendors promised link, availability and even application statistics on a store-by-store basis. (Read more on how we graded.)
Who Won and Why
Our Editor's Choice is PerformanceIT, which provided excellent cost, service management and reporting. Its RFI response addressed all of TacDoh's needs. A close second, iNOC addressed TacDoh's requirements, but was a bit less aggressive in terms of cost savings and didn't give quite the same level of service assurance as PerformanceIT. HCL did well overall, providing granular detail about its operations and reporting, but it didn't compete as aggressively on the cost side as did iNOC and PerformanceIT. Also, HCL ignored TacDoh's special requests (see "Specific Requirements"). NetProactive Services offered what appeared to be above-average reporting and good service-level and operation assurances, but at a price that didn't compete.
The pricing we received was based on TacDoh's specific requirements, and none of the vendors was aware of rivals' responses. In real life we could have pitted them against one another and perhaps gotten them to shave off a few bucks.
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