Managed Dedicated Servers

The value proposition for a managed data center is actually pretty simple:

1)      You can save money compared to operating your own data center.

Whether through basic colocation (where we provide the data center infrastructure and you manage your own servers), through managed colocation (we manage our your servers in our data center), or managed dedicated servers (we buy, operate and manage dedicated servers for you), we can deliver our data center solutions more cost effectively than the do-it-yourself model. With multi-tenant data centers, where our costs are amortized across hundreds of clients, we can offer a higher tier service at a lower price than most IT departments can do themselves.

2)      You can reduce your operational risk compared to running your own data center.

We hire the best and share their expertise across hundreds of our clients and thousands of servers. Chances are that our engineers have seen a wider variety of problems and issues than most IT departments will ever see.  This expertise and wealth of experience helps our colocation and managed server clients reduce their overall IT operational risk.

3)      You can achieve a higher level of operational excellence that is rarely seen with in-house data centers.

This is not to say that our clients don’t drive accountability and excellence by their IT staff, but in-house staff have responsibilities that go beyond keeping the data center running, the network operational, and the servers running 24×7.  That’s all managed data center operators do – we make sure our clients servers and applications are always on, always on-line and connected to the Internet, and always running.

At Online Tech, we have built a level of metrics, accountability and visibility in what we do that helps us drive operational excellence beyond what you’ll find at most data centers.

Some might say we go too far, but we measure everything that goes on in our data center.  We measure response time on support tickets, network bandwidth, power and network uptime, power usage, and even daily usage of OTPortal, our customer’s window into their data center operations. These metrics become the pulse of the company – were we can see the numbers on everything that is going on in our data center.

Along with these data center metrics, we also have built a high level of accountability into our daily operations.  From our systems that automatically track incoming tickets and how quickly we resolve those tickets, to daily huddles where the entire company conferences every single day for 7 minutes.  In our daily huddles, our employees track about a dozen daily metrics across the company – including the number of support tickets.  Any ticket open for longer than 24 hours is discussed with the entire company, along with the name of the engineer that “owns” getting a solution and when that solution will be in place.  This level of accountability has helped us drive average ticket resolution time from over 50 hours two years ago to less than 2 hours last quarter.

And finally, we provide a level of transparency and visibility into the data center that many of our clients say were difficult to achieve in their own data centers.  From running an open book company, to systems that share the status of our data center operations across the company and with our clients, we believe that transparency is a key value in our business and a key part of our success.  Read this post on transparency in IaaS companies and our core values.

When it comes to conducting a cost-benefit analysis of hosting your servers with a third party versus maintaining your own servers, take note that benefits lie primarily in security, support, reliability and scalability. Leaving IT up to the experts can save you time and money better spent on growing your business.

Security - Quality data centers will invest the capital and time to undergo audits to ensure their physical security, logical network security, employee training and company-wide policies and procedures meet national standards. The older standard used originally for financial reporting, SAS 70 (Statement on Auditing Standard), is now replaced by SSAE 16(Statement on Standards for Attestation Engagements) and SOC 2/SOC 3 reports to indicate data center excellence.

Managed hosting also provides timely software updates to ensure your servers are protected against any newly developed viruses or malware. Offsite backup is another critical service that could save your business in the event of a disaster by keeping your vital applications and data safe and available.

Expert support - An entire team of experienced, certified and responsive staff can provide 24×7 server monitoring and physical data center monitoring to stay aware of any potential issues.

While companies may not be prepared to invest in an in-house IT team, managed dedicated servers come with a high level of professional support, saving you time and money that can be better spent elsewhere. Cutting down on staff hiring and training can seriously help your bottom line and streamline business operations.

Reliable - When IT is not your industry focus, it can be a substantial burden as you try to manage your own servers. Worries about uptime can slow your business growth and become a distraction.

A managed dedicated server host can provide a quality data center infrastructure to ensure your servers are up and running. Since data centers are their business, they should already have uninterruptible power and network connections with no single point of failure. Why not take advantage of their investments?

Scalable - Dealing with outages when your business is outgrowing product or service demands can be a pain. Managed dedicated server hosts often have additional space available to support your expansion needs.

With the support of professional, experienced staff, you can flawlessly deploy new servers with full expert support. Other additional services can make tasks like updating or monitoring your bandwidth, disk space and CPU usage as easy as logging into a portal and sending requests to your host.