SRT

Hosted Services

Employees

Who Should Buy Hosted Services

Small and large organizations both have good reason to consider the use of hosted services. Small organizations may find it more cost effective while large organizations may find that the services of a professional data center, managed by our professionals exceeds their ability to react to the growth and surge demands of the organization.

Benefits

Organizations may benefit from hosted services in many ways. For example:

Professional hosting services
There are a number of options for professional hosting including American Digital Networks’ Internet Services, ServerPoint, etc. We can assist you with the selection of a shared or dedicated service, MySQL or Oracle, etc. as best serves your needs.
Additional professional staff
Allowing us to host your services makes our staff available to your services 7x24x365. Our professionals are top notch and work hard to remain on the cutting edge.
Ease of updates
We’ll keep you informed and keep your instance up-to-date with the latest code base. There’s no need for your staff to put in additional hours to find time slots of inactivity, no need to worry about bringing all the components forward (e.g. web server, database patches). We’ll handle it all for you!

What to Expect

Hosted services are tailored to your unique needs. We’ll sit down with you to determine what it is you expect and then develop a quote that delivers your needs. There are many options available, such as MySQL or Oracle for a database repository, number of servers required due to size and load, etc. We’ll help you sort through all the options to tailor a plan that’s right for you. It’s important to note that the Hosted Services are in addition to a license to use the Status Reporting Tool. As port of the options to be considered, we’ll work with you to determine whether a Named User License is right for you or the Unlimited Named Users license is a better option.

Once your plan is approved and funded, we’ll gather the necessary information to initialize your database (e.g. user names, groups, templates, and schedules). We will then populate your database, and notify you of the availability. You’ll want to run a few simple tests to validate the configuration and then we’ll clear the test data and provide you with the ability to announce its availability. We’ll provide a uniform resource locator (URL) which your employees can use to access their status reports.

What You Need

You will need to spend some time thinking through what your expectations are. How many individuals will use the system? How frequently will they access it? How many may access it at any given moment? What are your peak times for access? How much data do you anticipate retaining in the active database? (Note: you may wish to archive prior years.) You should also have a budget in mind. Hosted Services involves third-party commitments to companies such as American Digital Networks and Oracle. However, we can often times share data repositories to reduce cost. The Status Reporting Tool was built to allow multiple companies to share the same data repository without divulging information from one company to the others. This is one way to reduce the cost, but all factors must be weighed before making a decision. For example, splitting the data out into it’s own data repository at a later date comes with it’s own cost and it’s own set of issues to manage.

Recommendations

Hosted Services come with Level of Service Agreements that specify the expectations for ongoing support and maintenance. However, many organizations fail to contemplate the need for onsite consulting with a Hosted Service.

The fact that the physical files and services are hosted does not obviate the need for consulting services. Organizations are still faced with the need to determine the best information to collect, the frequency within which it should be collected and the best way to report out on it.

Request for Quote for Hosted Services

Handshake

Introduction

So that we may provide you with the best service and obtain the best Agreement with our third-party data center, we must know more about your needs. We look forward to a great relationship and promise to tailor solutions to your needs and not “shoe horn” your organization’s needs into a “one-size-fits-all”.

Contact Information

Let’s begin with how to contact each other as we define our relationship. To contact us, use one of the following:

InfoStatus Corporation
402 West Broadway, 27th Floor
San Diego, CA 92101
(P) 619-368-6920
(F) 619-330-4670
(E) sales@infostatusbiz.com

How should we contact you? Note that we will deliver a copy of this information to the e-mail address you supply for your records.

Name:		Preferred Method of Contact
Title:
Address:
Address:
City:
State:
Zip Code:
Email:
Phone:
Fax:

Expectations

It’s important that we have an idea of the number of users you expect to use the system. This may not be the same as total number of employees in your organization, but looking at both numbers helps us get an idea of the scope and expectations for the system. If possible, we’d like an estimate of how many users will use the system concurrently (that is, press a submit button or click a hyperlink at the same time as others). It may be too early to predict that so we can work together later to understand the impact if necessary. Later, we will need to work together to understand your bandwidth and disk space requirements so that the expectations at our third-party data center are properly set. This will come after we have a period of time to evaluate your volume and will scale up as your rollout moves forward. We’ll tailor a plan you can grow into!

Total number of employees:
Total number of users with access:
Estimated number of concurrent users:

Database

You have a choice of database management systems and how you wish to see them managed. We don’t expect you to understand the nuances of each unless you have an IT professional on your staff, but we’ll be glad to explain them to you. If you have fewer than 1,000 users you may consider MySQL. Larger organizations require the robustness of Oracle

As well as the database management system, you have a choice of a shared environment or a private environment. Again, we’re happy to discuss the nuances, but the essence is that in a shared environment, your data resides in the same database management system as other organizations. It’s “walled off” through the application (all queries return only the data of the company you logged in under). In a private environment, you are the sole user of that database. As you can well understand just from that simple explanation, a private environment is more expensive to license.

Please tell us what you would prefer:

Database:	MySQL
	Oracle
Environment:	Private
	Shared

Consulting

So that we may provide you with a complete picture, we need to discuss the possible need for staff augmentation as you implement the system with specialists trained in maximizing your experience while minimizing disruptions to your business. While you won’t need onsite IT Support for a hosted service, we have included it here so that you are aware of what you’re receiving at the hosting site.

Hosting your service means that we manage the physical aspects of implementing the system. There’s still the need to train your staff, monitor the reports for a period of time, and work with management to ensure their expectations are met. Our professionals can greatly assist your professionals!

We offer the following services:

IT Support	Database Engineer	Installs, configures, and tunes the MySQL, Oracle or Relational Database Management System of your choice.
	Web Master	Installs, configures, and tunes the front-end web servers (e.g. Apache and/or Tomcat) of your choice.
Project Management	Project Manager	Works closely with your organization to plan, track and report on the progress of implementing and effectively utilizing the system.
	Technical Assistant	In very large organizations or geographically dispersed organizations, the Technical Assistant works closely with the Project Manager to ensure smooth implementation and operation.
Quality Assurance	QA Engineer	Reviews reports on an ongoing basis for accuracy, quality and integrity. Works with staff members to elevate their awareness of their responsibilities and reporting habits.
Training	Executive Trainers	Works with Executives and Senior Management to organize and communicate expectations.
	Trainers	Works directly with your staff to ensure an understanding and appreciation for what the system can do for them and the organization.

Now that you know more about our consulting services, please indicate which you would like a quote for:

	Onsite	Offsite	N/A
Database Engineer
Web Master
Project Manager
Technical Assistant
QA Engineer
Executive Trainer
Trainer

Support

Ongoing support is included with every hosting plan. We would like to mention that you can expect us to notify you before each update so that you have the opportunity to plan appropriately. For example, you’ll want to be sure all reports have been updated prior to the application of new software as we first perform a backup of your data. This acts as a good opportunity for your organization to ensure everyone is diligent in their reporting habits.

Future Considerations

Once we have a chance to understand your expectations, we can discuss the particulars of server size, bandwidth, fail-over, redundancy, etc. that are necessary for our Agreements with the third-party data center(s).