Take a good look at your ISP. If it rents Internet backbone from a
bigger player, chances are that its service isn't as good as you
could get elsewhere. Danny Bradbury offers a guide to choosing an
ISP
You wouldn't choose a Reliant Robin to get round the M25, yet
when it comes to motoring up and down the information superhighway
many people take the first vehicle that comes along. Choosing an
Internet service provider (ISP) to give your company Internet
access and host its Web site carries the same connotations as
choosing a car. Speed, reliability and safety are the important
issues, not the fluffy dice in the windscreen.
ISPs became commercially significant about five years ago. Since
then, the market has split into two main parts. Although there were
big profits in being an ISP at the start of the boom, service
providers are now 10 a penny and free Internet access is
commonplace. At the other end of the spectrum, value-added ISPs are
offering reliability guarantees and focusing on services that will
differentiate them from other players. For businesses, reliability
and performance are clearly the key requirements of an ISP.
The business angle
Depending on the size of your business, you may have different
people managing the relationships between your company and its ISP.
In smaller companies one technical person might manage the
relationship (along with the rest of the company's IT)
single-handedly. Others may have different managers for different
divisions.
Kevin Leighton, NT server manager for the supermarket chain
Somerfield, says that the job of managing relations with the
company's ISP simply fell into his lap. He was involved in the
implementation of Somerfield's first X.400 email system, which he
says turned out to be expensive and unmanageable. He therefore
decided to rip out X.400 and put in another mail system, which led
to the development of Somerfield's first corporate intranet. From
then on, his fate as the company's cable guy was sealed.
Generally, the rest of the business leaves the company liaison
to get on with managing the relationship with the ISP. When
Somerfield first hooked up to the Net, it gave all employees access
to email, but Internet access only to members of staff who could
make a case for having it. Now, the company is beginning to see
applications that could run on a distributed basis between itself
and, say, its suppliers, and Internet access is becoming more
integral to the business, stimulating awareness among business
managers.
"When I first put it in, no-one had a clue about intranets and
there was a total lack of interest," says Leighton. "People have
seen the benefits now and we have a project in place to go out to
the business and ask managers what they want to do with it." ISPs
also have important lessons to learn in dealing with customers,
says Denis Mulhall, director of hosting at PSINet, a first-tier
provider. ISPs can oversimplify the service they offer, he warns,
trying to make their task look easy so they can capture a sale.
They need to strike a balance between impressing potential
customers and then living up to their expectations. "Customers have
the expectation that there's a rack full of equipment waiting for
them at the end of the day," he says. "ISPs must present customers
with a realistic scenario."
The technology angle
One of the most important things to remember when choosing an
ISP is that the closer you are to the main Internet backbone, the
better. Be careful of engaging with a second-tier ISP, which rents
backbone from a larger player, such as PSINet or UUNet.
Although small ISPs can offer a more personal service, you must
make sure they also have well-defined escalation procedures in the
event of breaching their service level agreement with you.
While customers work out how to build productive relationships
with their ISP, they also need to keep one eye on the future. ISPs
are becoming more specialised and offering services designed to
differentiate them from other players. In the first instance, you
should focus on performance guarantees. While ISPs have
traditionally offered service level agreements covering
reliability, they have been loath to give end-to-end performance
guarantees. Customers, on the other hand, want to know how quickly
packets will be moved through the system.
One of the biggest problems here is that because no single party
owns the Internet, it is impossible to guarantee how quickly
packets will pass across it. A spokesperson for application service
provider DCS Industry Solutions says, "If you're living in the real
world, most service providers would prefer there to be as little in
the contract as possible about end-to-end performance."
Leo McCloskey, senior vice-president of marketing at ISP GTS
Netcom, is more optimistic. ISPs are starting to provide guarantees
on packet loss and latency, he says, adding that he would be
surprised if end-to-end performance guarantees are not more
commonplace by the end of this year.
Such performance guarantees will be driven by the consolidation
of the ISP market in Europe. One problem facing the industry is the
fragmentation of the ISP market on this side of the pond, says Eric
Nataf, director of European product marketing at Keynote. His
company measures customers' Web site performance from remote
locations to give them an idea of how well their servers are
performing. Nataf says many small players had to enter into peering
agreements to exchange data across the backbone, but are gradually
being bought up by larger ISPs. "Now, the issue for these guys is
to merge the heterogeneous networks they have as a result of these
acquisitions," he says.
Once ISPs control more of the backbone, it will be easier to
offer a quality-of-service guarantee, leading to the development of
a two-tier Internet, which has already begun to appear. Companies
that control large sections of the Internet backbone in Europe will
be able to offer guaranteed data throughput rates for low latency
data such as voice over IP and video.
Such offerings will be made even more feasible by the
introduction of quality-of-service standards such as DiffServ and
MPLS (MultiProtocol Label Switching), although there's little
evidence of this right now. Expect to see end-to-end latency
guarantees on the same backbone among larger providers, with
quality-of-service guarantees across peered relationships reaching
early adoption stage in the next 18 months to two years.
The provision of services is very trendy among ISPs at present.
Cable & Wireless, for example, offers online access to
Microsoft Office products. As the still immature ASP marketplace
catches on, customers can expect ISPs to expand their offerings in
this area. More ISPs will begin to offer such services, and those
that have already jumped on the bandwagon will begin to offer more
complex applications for customers.
ISPs are still struggling hard to differentiate themselves in
the market, but as new sectors such as online software rental come
into play, they will have more opportunity to stand out from the
crowd.
In the meantime, you should consider your own user profile
before choosing an ISP. Issues such as the size of your company,
its e-commerce goals, multinational expansion plans and quality of
service will all play a part in your decision, as will the need for
hosting services and reliability guarantees.
My Five Lessons in ISP Management
Alec Beck, IT director at pharmaceutical company MSD
1998 Small isn't necessarily the best. Beck came across a
local company that talked the talk but couldn't handle his Internet
needs as they became more sophisticated
End 1998 Service levels are important, especially when
running online
2000 You have to shop around for price
Mid-2000 ISPs aren't all the same - you need to do a full
evaluation
2000 Control of the backbone is vital. Although Beck had few
problems with his previous ISP, it was a second-tier player that
needed to go to PSINet for help with technical problems