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Teaming Up with the Right Management Service: Page 4 of 25

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.


Atlanta-based PerformanceIT won us over with its no-nonsense RFI response, which addressed our requests, showed due diligence and offered the most aggressive cost offset, with a reduction of $163,000 per month from IT personnel budget. Initially, PerformanceIT's response didn't offer any reduction, and we had to prod the company to make some recommendations. It was clearly a touchy subject because the company wished to avoid the negative side of outsourcing--layoffs. But in the end, the MSP not only offered a near-term reduction of at least 20 FTEs (full-time employees), it also projected that an additional 20 workers could be cut within the first year. For our comparison we took them up only on the initial 20, wanting to remain conservative.

PerformanceIT also led the field in the one-time cost category by offering predictable and comparable costs and a no-fault contract termination: With 30 day's notice, and without any penalty, TacDoh could dump PerformanceIT. The company stated that it felt so sure TacDoh would be happy with its services that no penalties, buyouts or commitments were necessary, and it stated that this is standard for all customers.


PerformanceIT's service-level management stance was equally aggressive and unique. From the get-go, it made this simple statement: If the service fails, TacDoh gets a refund. The provider then went on to explain how each service would be monitored, and what constituted the service's success and failure. Provisos were reasonable, boiling down to factors beyond PerformanceIT's control, such as earthquakes. However, even in such a case, the RFI stated that PerformanceIT would respond. Like most of the vendors, it offered a simple weighted formula that became more severe as the outage lengthened. The SLA met the response times requested and offered warning and critical fault levels.

PerformanceIT was the only vendor to respond to all of our special incident situations, such as NTF. In each case, it took ownership, vowing to resolve the problem first and figure out the cause later. The recurring motif was that PerformanceIT would stay engaged until TacDoh was satisfied--no ifs, ands or buts.

PerformanceIT offers 24/7/365 monitoring via its SOC (Support Operations Center) team for responding to problems and performing proactive maintenance. But before we engaged its services we'd want to see an outline with a level of detail similar to that provided by HCL.