Web ASPs Raise Service Level Concerns

SAN MATEO (02/11/2000) - Your company is paying thousands of dollars each month to tap into a ready-made Web collaboration tool and avoid implementing one in-house. But when users start to gripe because they can't access the program and the company is losing precious, productive time, who's to blame?

When it comes to Web-based services, it's not easy to pinpoint the problem, the responsibility, or the remedy. The struggle to find answers to Web-hosted application snags is very real.

A variety of companies from different ends of the Web-based business services market -- such as Andale, Jamcracker Inc., and Geneer -- are coming up with strategies to address the responsibility quandary at a critical time in the life cycle of such services, especially for new ASPs (application service providers) that are trying to convince businesses to seriously consider them as an extension to their IT resources, experts say.

"The ASP is [in] the ultimate 'the buck stops here' kind of position," says Greg Blatnik, an analyst at Zona Research Inc., in Redwood City, Calif. "Their responsibility extends, in some cases, beyond things they have direct control [over] ... but they still have to write agreements that will encompass end-to-end performance."

Until now, no one has been able to provide a definitive answer to this complex problem, but fledgling developments currently under way bear watching for companies trying to forge effective SLAs (service-level agreements) with Web-based services. SLAs commit the service provider to a set level of performance, availability, and, in some cases, security, according to agreed-upon criteria. If the service provider fails to meet these commitments, it may incur penalties.

"The SLA is important to us so we can hold [the vendor] responsible and have them take care of our users as we would be able to take care of them," says Deb Joyce, information systems manager at Aventail Corp., a Seattle-based extranet service provider that is currently considering its SLA requirements as it tests the services offered through ASP aggregator Jamcracker.

At one end of the market spectrum is Andale, a Santa Clara, Calif.-based auction management service that helps customers peddle their goods on eBay, Amazon.com, and Yahoo Auctions, and also track their transactions. Starting in April, Andale will give auction sellers a guarantee of "availability, reliability, and customer support," says Andale CEO Munjal Shah.

Although all the details won't be released until then, Shah says the company's infrastructure is built for "99.999" percent uptime. If eBay or other marketplaces Andale supports go down, Andale will store customers' ads and automatically list the ads when the marketplace comes becomes available again, Shah explains.

Yet an SLA can be a hollow promise if there's no effective mechanism for oversight, says Feisal Mosleh, vice president of marketing and strategy at Jamcracker, in Sunnyvale, Calif.

"The buyers don't have the time to monitor SLAs; they almost need a guardian angel," Mosleh says. "Even if they did have the bandwidth, they'd have to invest in some very sophisticated monitoring software ... to know that problems had occurred."

According to Mosleh, Jamcracker is trying to act as that guardian angel.

Jamcracker resells ASP services as a bundle tied together with a common interface and set of services, including support and monitoring.

Meanwhile, Geneer, a Des Plaines, Ill.-based software developer for ASPs, is taking the SLA question one step further. The company is encouraging its clients to determine their SLA strategy even before writing code, says Bob Zimmerman, CTO at Geneer.

Then Geneer can build the software to match those requirements and suggest an appropriate data center to host the application. As part of its package to attract ASP customers, Geneer will monitor the software and, if necessary, troubleshoot at the business customer's site, Zimmerman says.

"If something goes wrong, regardless of whether it's the software, the data center, or the connectivity, [the ASP has] one place to call if [they] want to hold someone accountable -- and that would be Geneer," Zimmerman says.

To find a reliable Web-based service, Zimmerman recommends three procedures:

Check to see that the provider has a clearly defined SLA strategy, ask for metrics, and demand references.

Also, Zimmerman adds, stay tuned: "The market is still shaking out on how the customer experience is going to be managed and who owns it."

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