Case Studies — HOSTING ZOOM — A Full-Service Provider Of Web Hosting Services

Highlights

Hosting ZOOM — a premier Web Hosting Company based in Houston, TX considers service reliability as a major precondition for the success of its business model. Customers' expectations from a Web Hosting company begin with service reliability, and it is an essential component of the industry-standard SLAs. Third party provided server monitoring, alert notifications, and accountability metrics are the best reference for the quality of the hosting services and the business credibility of Hosting ZOOM.

WebSitePulse robust server monitoring platform, a service of Image Project, with instant alert notifications, and sound analytical reports provide the best cost/benefit ratio for Hosting ZOOM needs. Performance measurement data is successfully used as an objective verification for the guaranteed 99.9% server uptime for all Hosting ZOOM customers.

The Challenge

To provide credible third-party, objective performance measurement and reporting data to be used for the SLAs, at a cost that does not weaken Hosting ZOOM competitive advantage, and does not affect its profitability.

Hosting ZOOM — a full-service provider of web hosting services and member of the Better Business Bureau (BBB) - gained its reputation by guaranteeing the highest hosting service standards to its customers.

Hosting ZOOM's powerful and reliable servers utilize the best equipment consisting of Dual Xeon processors and RAID hard drives. The network is fully meshed and redundant with 10 tier-one backbone providers with at least 1Gbps or greater uplink including AboveNet, AT&T, Broadwing, Global Crossing, Level3, nLayer, Sprint, Time Warner, UUNET, and Verio.

Hosting ZOOM performs consistent network monitoring 24x7 by both an in-house staff, and remotely by the WebSitePulse monitoring service, as a third-party network and server monitoring company. Server availability is checked every few minutes from various monitoring locations around the country. If a problem occurs, the technicians are alerted immediately, and address the problem before the end users will ever notice. Server uptime is calculated in real-time and displayed for internal and public reference.

Hosting ZOOM SLAs guarantee 99.9% server uptime for all web hosting services.

The Solution

WebSitePulse Core Network and Server Monitoring and Alert Notifications Service

«We use WebSitePulse as the official measure of our network and server uptime across all hosting services for our 99.9% server uptime guarantee policy. Server uptime is one of the most important criteria current and potential clients look for in a web hosting provider, and WebSitePulse allows us to demonstrate the reliability of our network via a 3rd party for unbiased accuracy. We don't wait for the clients to report a problem or that a server is inaccessible. We already know about the problem» — Kiet Duong, President of Hosting ZOOM.

After testing various configurations, Hosting ZOOM selected a combination of features that provided an optimal cost/benefit ratio for their needs:

The relatively high number of monitored servers was offset by using just basic notification options. The compromise was possible because Hosting ZOOM had its own technicians available 24/7, ready to respond to the very first alert notification. Therefore, there was no need of multiple and escalating alerting solutions;
Hosting ZOOM optimized the cost of the remote monitoring service by limiting the number of the monitoring stations per server, but carefully selecting their geographical locations, to reflect the typical end users' experience;
Finally, no compromise was made with regards to the monitoring intervals: servers availability and functionality is checked in very short intervals, preventing lengthy server downtime that is the basic metrics used in the SL agreements.

The Result

WebSitePulse core network and server monitoring services became the cost effective solution that Hosting ZOOM needed to ensure objective, third-party confirmation for its servers uptime. Even though this premier hosting provider had multiple web servers to monitor in short intervals, the overall cost of the remote monitoring service was not prohibitive and did not decrease Hosting ZOOM competitive advantage.

Differently from other web monitoring companies, WebSitePulse offers unparalleled flexibility of the monitoring configurations resulting from its technological excellence. Service packages, levels, and pre-configured solutions characterize most of the players in the web-performance monitoring and measurement industry. WebSitePulse introduced the flexible, server-centered service configurations to allow a wide variety of Clients to custom build their monitoring solutions and to pay only for what they really use.

The ultimate benefit, of course, is for the End users. Thus, Hosting ZOOM does not have to pass some high costs over to its Clients, while - in the same time - offers them premier hosting service and a guaranteed level of performance. The resulting cost savings make a world-class service affordable to a large number of Customers and enhance their overall Internet experience.