ColoAdvisor helps clients make informed decisions related to Cloud Computing, Colocation and Enterprise hosting services. To do this we need (many) partnerships with datacenter providers. To really outline this case study, a bit of background is needed:

We find that our colocation datacenter partners fall into 3 categories (this is our own take as there are many official classifications in use out there):

A. Super Mission Critical Datacenters

These facilities are the Tier 3+ facilities (using the Uptime Institutes rating) that are designed for applications that cannot tolerate downtime of any sort. They offer N+2 redundancy (2 being the needed amount of utility then there are 2 spares to backup the primary utility). These facilities have no compromise in design and are generally engineered in every way not to go down. We have 20% of our clients that require these types of facilities.

B. Mission Critical Facilities

These tend to be Tier 2-3 facilities that make up the other 80% of our client’s needs. Definitely redundant facilities and in the worst case will be N + 1 redundant, meaning that they provide the needed facility + 1 spare. Also rigorous in their design we find that for the price point per square foot makes  sense for most of our clients.

C. Non-Mission Critical / Secure Facilities

Sometimes we have clients that need secure facilities for hosting an alpha or beta test application. Sometimes firms looking for test labs find that these non-critical facilities are great since they are economical. If this facility takes a power hit or loses network connectivity it’s an inconvenience but no revenues or major productivity is usually lost.

We have a partner that fits into the A section which we’ve done business with successfully in the past. Even though our deal volume with them is quite light, they’ve recently gone out of their way to stay in touch with us, offer us support and training and are generally pleasant to work with. The periodic (but not overwhelming) updates from them keeps them at the top of our list whenever we have a client in need of facilities in their regions. In essence, they are a great partner. They keep us educated, they don’t overwhelm us and we enjoy working with them

Contrasting this, we had a partner that fit into category C, which is the non-critical datacenter choice. We signed up with this company because we do find this need on occasion. Before we were given the opportunity to partner with these folks on a single deal we received a certified letter in the mail telling us that due to our “low volume” we were officially being removed from the partner program. Never did we get a call asking us if we needed help positioning their offering or any assistance at all. I’d like to say no hard feelings but I am glad that certified mail costs around $5.00 per item these days.