Three Companies Aim to Host Mission-Critical Apps

By KATE GERWIG

Web hosting companies are increasingly focusing on the pot of gold at the high end of the corporate market: outsourcing contracts to host mission-critical applications.

But in order to lure customers' apps out of corporate headquarters requires carrier-class data centers, increased reliability--with money-back guarantees to back it up--and the IT talent to fix the most complex database problem any time, day or night.

Three ISP/hosting companies have elbowed their way into the increasingly long line of competitors aiming to win this business.

Exodus Communications increased its network availability service-level guarantees to 99.97 percent (which allows for 15 minutes a month of downtime), 1 percent packet loss, and 120 millisecond round-trip transit time through its network, in addition to a two-hour repair time guarantee.

NaviSite , a CMG Information Services company, today upped the ante by adding end-to-end service guarantees of 99.999 percent for its data center facilities, 99.99 percent for network availability, and 99.9 percent for its Web and database servers. NaviSite originally was the Web hosting company for CMG's Internet incubator companies until last year, when the company began offering its hosting services commercially.

PSINet joined forces with Hewlett-Packard to offer dedicated hosting services. In so doing, PSINet is standardizing on HP software, hardware and network management services for Unix and Microsoft Win dows NT. The company said its aim is to offer its customers site management services that were previously unavailable.

All of these moves are designed to increase IT managers' confidence in outsourcing applications. "These hosting companies need to shed their ISP skins and become high-value integrators to succeed in the long term," according to Forrester Research analyst David Cooperstein.

NaviSite doesn't have high brand recognition yet, but it is going after the highest end of the hosting market by including database management expertise on its staff. The company acquired New York-based Servercast Communications, an Internet applications developer and integrator, and will host servers for its customers, too.

"NaviSite has been under the covers and is just getting its message out to the market," Cooperstein said. "It should tap into the high-end, dedicated business market to set itself apart from collocation companies, which, while growing, will become a commodity as telephone companies like Fro ntier and AT&T integrate the offer into their sales channel."

PSINet is expanding its Herndon data center to offer several classes of HP servers and a choice of service levels to its customers. HP's Web Quality of Service (QOS) technologies are available to give customers user-class, service-class and peak-usage management.

Cooperstein said the HP alliance will give greater stamina to PSINet's hosting business.