Connectria Customers Pleased with Hosted Services

October 17, 2011 Dan Burger

No matter if you call them hosted services, managed services, or cloud services, the common denominator is services. Can a hosted services company provide service at a level that meets extremely high expectations? Inquiring minds want to know. A simple “trust me” doesn’t close the deal.

So to make sure customers are satisfied, a hosted survey provider checks in frequently with its customers. A customer satisfaction survey comes in handy in determining what’s right and what’s wrong.

Apparently, Connectria is keeping its eye on its customers like a cat watching a mouse hole. Last week, the company sent out a press release that told the story based on customer survey results.

The poll, conducted by TechValidate, gathered data from Connectria’s largest customers with hosting requirements spanning multiple server technologies and customized software. IBM i shops made up 24 percent of the survey sample. They may be utilizing their own servers in a co-location data center or Connectria may be providing the servers. In some cases, it’s a combination of the two.

When looking at any survey data it’s difficult not to stare at a statistic that reflects unanimous agreement from all participants. But that’s what this survey had to say about customer satisfaction. Every customer surveyed would recommend Connectria’s custom hosting solutions and support. Love stories don’t get any better than that, even in fairy tales. Take note all of you who say “you can’t make all of the people happy all of the time.” Connectria’s custom hosting clients had other options to consider from competitors including IBM, Savvis, and Rackspace Hosting.

Connectria’s IBM i business is part of what the company calls its custom hosting client base. That portion of the business includes more than 20 platforms. Also in this category are IBM AIX, Hlewtt-Packard HP-UX, Oracle Solaris, Microsoft Windows, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The hypervisor layers supported by Connectria include VMware ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix Systems XenServer, and on the database side, you’re talking about Oracle 10g and 11g with Real Application Cluster (RAC) extensions, IBM DB2, Microsoft SQL Server, and MySQL (now owned by Oracle). Connectria also does Lotus Notes/Domino, Microsoft Exchange/Outlook, Microsoft SharePoint, Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) for collaboration and Microsoft .NET, Oracle WebLogic, Oracle Application Server (OAS), and IBM WebSphere for middleware. There are other programs that can be used in this custom hosting offering.

Aside from the custom hosting clients, Connectria also has customers in a managed hosting business that runs on Dell PowerEdge dedicated servers and private clouds for Windows, Linux, and VMware. Plus there are Windows and Linux cloud servers in standard and high-availability configurations.

Connectria has more than a decade of experience running IBM i servers for some of the best-known brands, including Louis Vuitton, Things Remembered, Ecko Unlimited, and Gulfstream. The company has more than 1,000 customers, and operates data centers in its St. Louis, Missouri, headquarters and in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Skimming through the highlights of the report based on this survey, several things caught my eye. Here are some of the percentages that provide insights into who is interested in hosted services and why they are interested.

67 percent said filling skills and resource gaps was an important benefit.
55 percent said reduced operating expenses were achieved.
52 percent said it allowed their companies to focus on business rather than running servers.
36 percent said reducing capital expenses was important.
33 percent said quick deployment of the latest technologies was a decision factor.
Half said they are using the cloud for application development testing.
More than 70 percent had their production IT environment in the cloud.

Although the economic downturn had a significant impact on the adoption of the hosted model, cost containment or cost reduction isn’t the only high priority for enterprises that that chose hosted services. You can see from these survey results that other priorities are higher on the priority list.

For more information on the Connectria customer survey, visit this link.

Recently advertised prices show the company’s System i remote monitoring at $795 per month, System i remote administration for $1,495 per month, and System i hosting for $1,795 per month.