When evaluating an ASP, it’s important to ask
general questions about the ASP’s business background and relationships, as well
as questions covering: data centers and operations, software and hardware,
and service level agreements (SLAs). Each are described
below:
1. Data centers and
operations
ASPs typically host applications at an off-site
data center. It’s important to understand the degree to which you will have
control over your data, as well as to assess issues such as data
security.
Consider asking the following
questions:
- Will you allow us to import our key business
data into the hosted application(s), so that we will have access to it from
the moment we begin working with you?
- How many data centers do you operate and
which partners do you use?
- Once our data is at your data center, do we
still "own" it? What rights do we have to move or copy it?
- How secure is your data center? What
measures are in place to prevent your employees from viewing data they are not
authorized to see, or to prevent outsiders from hacking into the
system?
- What happens in the event of a disaster that
deletes or destroys data? Are there measures to protect against loss? Is data
backed up regularly?
- Are your systems sufficiently scalable to
support our company’s one-, three-and five-year growth plans?
- Will you provide all the services necessary
to deliver our application, or will we have to dedicate staff to supporting
the solution either full-time or part-time?
2. Software and
hardware
When evaluating an ASP, make sure that you
understand its software and hardware capabilities. These questions will help you
obtain information you need to know:
- Will you support any applications we
choose?
- Do you have staff experts in the
applications you provide, or do you obtain this expertise from an external
source?
- Do you have experience installing, managing
and supporting the application we are considering? Are you certified to do so?
Does the software vendor offer certification?
- Will we need to purchase additional software
or hardware?
- Will you integrate the application you
provide with other software that you do not manage, such as our legacy
applications?
- What are the end-user bandwidth requirements
for the applications?
3. Service level
agreement
A service level agreement (SLA) is a contract
that commits an ASP to a specified level and/or quality of service.
Here are some questions to ask an ASP about its
SLA:
“Does
your SLA include”:
- A specified level of customer
support?
- Provisions for system and data
security?
- A guaranteed level of system performance,
such as sub-second response time?
- Continuous system availability – 24 hours a
day, seven days a week?
- Is your SLA a one-size-fits-all document, or
are there different service tiers –such as gold, silver or bronze – that will
allow us to tailor the SLA to our needs?
- If you fail to deliver on any service point
covered in the SLA, do we have a designated contact person who can address the
issue?
- What kinds of enforcement provisions are in
place in the event that you do not deliver on the SLA? Will we receive a
refund? Can we terminate the relationship and choose another ASP without
penalty?
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