| What's your uptime? | | | | telecom industry standard, hosted VoIP providers |
| This is a question I often hear from clients when | | | | who truly value their clients typically measure all |
| they're evaluating hosted VoIP providers. The | | | | aspects of uptime and make that information readily |
| question sounds simple enough, but I like to pay close | | | | available. Any successful business relationship must be |
| attention to how a vendor answers. Uptime is loosely | | | | built on trust, and trust begins with transparency. |
| defined as a measure of the time a particular system | | | | Before getting into bed with a provider ask to see |
| has been "up" and running. Most providers boast the | | | | the following information to get a sense of how |
| famous "Five 9's" (99.999% uptime) as the gold | | | | they'll treat you once you become a client: |
| standard for reliability-but what does that really | | | | - Live and historical system performance data-you |
| mean? | | | | not only want to see the last 90 days, but also how |
| After doing a little digging, I discovered three ways | | | | their system has performed over time (at least 1-2 |
| of measuring uptime: | | | | years). |
| | | | - Planned maintenance schedule-first off, you want to |
| 1. When the system is running, | | | | see that they've planned ahead and actually have a |
| 2. When the system and network are running, or | | | | schedule. Secondly, you want to see what systems |
| 3. When the system, network and applications are | | | | they have in place for you to access real-time |
| running. | | | | information. |
| In most cases, the five-nines a hosted VoIP provider | | | | - Information on how your data is safeguarded-since |
| refers to only deals with the first | | | | you will be relinquishing a fair amount of control with |
| measurement-system uptime at their data center. | | | | a hosted solution, you should be clear on security |
| Regardless of what their standard measurement is, | | | | practices. |
| your main concern is #3. At a minimum, a provider | | | | - Customer support metrics-average hold time for |
| should be able to provide metrics for both #1 & | | | | support calls, % of service tickets resolved the same |
| #2. Here's an example of why the answer is so | | | | days, availability and metrics for weekend and |
| important: Let's say you connect to your provider via | | | | off-hours support. |
| a point-to-point Internet connection, and your line | | | | So, the next time a vendor proudly declares Five-9s |
| gets cut because someone's doing construction | | | | of reliability, remember to dig a little bit deeper using |
| across the street. Is this an outage? Not so from the | | | | the points in this article. The process will give you |
| service provider's perspective, if they're using the | | | | greater confidence during your selection process and |
| first definition. But what does it mean for you? | | | | hopefully lead you to a vendor you can trust. |
| While system uptime seems to be the universal | | | | |