Posted by Mark Richter on Wed, Aug 18, 2010 @ 03:18 PM
IT Support for Application Hosting and SAS 70 Type II
Why is IT support change management important and what are the critical elements of IT support change management? How does IT support change management for application hosting fit with SAS 70 Type II? How do these critical elements keep the managed services provider accountable to YOU? Get the iStreet Solutions IT Support Change Management flow tool.
The two components of any iStreet Solutions SLA regarding change are:
- Service Change Requests
- Service Change Orders
What are they and how do they differ?
A Service Change Request is typically characterized by some type of configuration change that requires documenting in the CMDB. This documenting will enable any of iStreet's technical personnel from project managers, OS & NW administrators, Oracle DBAs, to the SAP BASIS team, to know at a glance the current configuration state of an application or device. Simple changes can be handled directly without a multi-functional meeting to document the change. Complex changes require a multi-functional meeting, process documentation, and signature signoff by both customer and managed services provider. Get the iStreet Solutions IT Support Service Change Request tool.
A Service Change Order has the same characteristics of the service change request but has one very important difference. If the change is significant and material, a change in price of the overall agreement is in order. The price change can either be a one-time charge or a recurring charge. Both the customer and managed services provider both sign and agree. Get the iStreet Solutions IT Support Service Change Order tool.
iStreet Solutions has gone to the extra step of having our controls audited inclusive of our processes and change management tools. Our consistent and audited usage has enabled iStreet to achieve SAS 70 Type II certification status for our application hosting business. Having our application hosting business certified in addition to our Sacramento colocation business sets iStreet apart from many organizations calling themselves managed services providers.
Remember to insist on SAS 70 Type II audited processes and
tools when considering application hosting. Compare them to those from iStreet Solutions. We are accountable to you, our customer. You can be sure of our accountability because of our application hosting SAS 70 Type II certification.
Let us know how we can assist in solving your IT support challenges
Mark Richter
President and CEO
iStreet Solutions, LLC
Your Sacramento Data Center
Posted by Mark Richter on Sun, Aug 01, 2010 @ 06:54 PM
I had a spirited discussion about IT support with Chris Lyons from Philadelphia based TrigonIT. So this blog edition compares and contrasts the delivery models of managed services hosting and on premise employee delivered IT support. To compare the models I used the ITIL Service Delivery standards of: Service Level Management, Capacity Management, IT Service Continuity Management, Availability Management, and Financial Management for IT Services.
Taken together these standards help save money and provide a guaranteed level of service.
Service Level Management: To begin, compare and contrast a managed services hosting provider who is SAS 70 Type II Certified for application management services with an on premise delivery team. The hosting provider has well developed controls to maintain service levels for both proactive and reactive situations. On the proactive side, network and server daily, weekly, and monthly maintenance is recorded as a change management control standard in a configuration management database. This allows any IT professional to be able to pick up where another left off. Since coverage is 24 x 7 any on duty IT Professional can perform these tasks on schedule. For the ‘just right’ staffed on-premise team, in addition to these proactive tasks there are vacations and other time off considerations, job training gaps, individual growth plans, management goal achievement, and many other conflicting events to vie for the IT Professionals time. This is all further problematic because these personnel issues take precedence over contracted service levels required of a hosting provider.
Capacity management: tasks of the hosting provider require recording asset utilization statistics, service request statistics, and other reporting metrics required by contracts. On premise shops may do this as well. But without an authoritative contract monthly statistics reporting is rarely done. Not knowing the trends can creep up on the team and before you know it there are issues.
Service continuity: Better known as disaster recovery, service continuity is the daily concern of the hosting provider. With many environments under management the experience with recovery is current. This is rarely the case for even the most well intentioned on-premise staff. The reality is if a disaster strikes recovery is practice. For the hosting provider the SAS 70 audited control processes ensure this capability is in place when the inevitable disaster occurs.
It is important to that disaster recovery can mean both local disaster recovery for system failures, and alternate site recovery for complete site failure. A SAS 70 provider will have both a local and alternate facility solution for service continuity.
Availability management: What is the on premise contract for application availability? Is there a guaranteed uptime of critical applications of 99.5% or better? Is there guaranteed uptime at all? A hosting provider who is providing IT support for critical IT services will have offered and is being held to a specific and measureable availability statistic.
Financial management: Typically, a hosted service will provide both assets and manpower at a monthly cost much lower than that of an on premise solution. This is the operating expense vs. capital expense paradigm. The financials certainly look better with the operating expense provided by the hosting provider. And embedded in the hosting expense is the labor required to provide the service.
When considering the hosting vs. on premise delivery of IT support services be sure to consider the service delivery dimensions fully to ensure that the best value is obtained for the money. It is not enough to err on the side of on premise these days. Software and infrastructure as service models enabled by both virtualization and cloud computing make a very compelling case.
For a complete review of your IT support situation be sure to contact either TrigonIT on the East Coast or iStreet Solutions on the West Coast for an IT support assessment of your IT. Contact iStreet Solutions at 877-595-8479 to begin an assessment.
Posted by Mark Richter on Sun, Jul 18, 2010 @ 02:25 PM
The iStreet Solutions brand is synonymous with SAP Hosting. But we do much more. I have been asked to detail the services iStreet offers in addition to the managed services surrounding SAP. This edition of the View from iStreet Solutions Blog will do just that and point the reader to relevant links on our web site.
First we will talk about the iStreet data center. It was built in 2000 by the Kiewit Building Group, the builder of Level3 Communications Telco data centers. There are several benefits a customer of iStreet can realize from this relationship, primarily, the data center was built as a Tier III data center, using the Uptime Institute standards. The standard for Tier III is that the data center be concurrently maintainable. Absolutely no corners were cut in building this first class data center. There are many myths circulating about the standards. Read the “Digital Realty, Uptime Debate Tier System” for information on the Industry debate about the Tier system. A list of organizations that have had their data centers officially certified can be found here. The Uptime Institute also publishes a list of myths about the Tier system that can be found here.
iStreet started business in the facility in August 2005 and has achieved 100% facility availability since that time. Our customers rely on us to keep providing that same availability. The data centers fully isolated and redundant electrical design and implementation is the key to our achievement. The regular maintenance of the system follows the testing protocol set out and controlled by the critical elements of each manufacturer.
Our Sacramento data center is SAS 70 Type II certified. iStreet’s implementation of SAS 70 is sophisticated and includes colocation and additionally our hosting business. This means that we not only have the testing protocol but that we perform the tests and document the results along the way. This link will provide more detailed information on how we use the data center for Sacramento colocation.
Please visit the iStreet Solutions web site often. We are promoting our service catalog for the data center over the next weeks and months. You won’t want to miss out on hearing about our long list of capabilities.
Thank you.Mark Richtermarkr at istreetsolutions.com
Posted by Mark Richter on Fri, Jul 09, 2010 @ 04:08 PM
Today iStreet Solutions was featured in the customer Spotlight section of Appletree. Appletree Answering Services offers 24 hour professional call center service with live call center agents.
Read the customer spotlight feature and see how iStreet, a
managed service provider, manages the secure 24 x 7 monitoring and management of its customers.
Go to this link to read the article: http://appletreeanswers.circleclick.com/About/spotlight/
Thanks.
Mark Richter
iStreet Solutions
Posted by Mark Richter on Sat, Jul 03, 2010 @ 02:54 PM
Is there symmetry between an SAP hosting certification and a SAS70 certification?
Are you outsourcing application hosting to the cloud or to a SaaS model? Then the distinction is important. If you are collocating you computer and networking equipment the answer is less important as you are in charge of all operations and process controls.
What are the differences? SAP Hosting symmetry with SAS 70 Type II for application hosting certification for example is very close. When compared with colocation there is a wide chasm of difference. In the case of the SAP hosting certification SAP examines whether the managed service provider (MSP) has the capabilities in place to effectively deliver the SAP hosting and application management service up to its standards. The list of requirements is long and very specific. SAS 70 Type II on the other hand tests whether the MSP performs the required abilities as a controlled process over a period of time. Usually an audit period is six months. With SAS 70 Type II the auditor goes into the change and configuration management files and verifies the MSP has performed, measured, completed, and effectively documented the changes.
For the reader who is not using SAP the SAP standards are applicable to the management of virtually any ERP, CRM, webhosting or packaged software application. When the SAP standards are used an MSP can confidentially claim high availability at the application level, not only at the facility level. This capability almost always commands a higher premium.
Coupled with the SAS 70 Type II certification for "application hosted solutions" a buyer can be very confident of the MSPs capabilities. Please note iStreet has the SAS 70 Type II certification for the complete application hosting service suite, not just colocation. Ask your prospective MSP to tell you the specific areas of their SAS70 and make sure it matches your needs. I recently had lunch with Charles Weaver, CEO of MSP Alliance, who offered that “only 10% of MSPs have any certification at all”.
A last comment for consideration, with SAS 70 Type II Certification at the application level, a customer is guaranteed the highest standard of managed service. This is important for public companies with Sarbanes-Oxley requirements and privately held companies with a smaller number of shareholders. All companies want to maintain proper controls over business operations and SAS 70 Type II certification helps insure control is extended to technology operations as well.
I am going to conclude the blog by simply saying that if your need is colocation, choose a colocation provider who is SAS70 Type II certified for facility and network security. If your need is managed services choose a provider who is SAS 70 Type II certified for application hosting. Compare the audit criteria in the table and make sure you are getting what you need from your provider. There is a DIFFERENCE!
|
SAP IT Excellence Quality Criteria Area
|
SAS 70 Type II for Application Hosting
|
SAs 70 Type II for Colocation |
| Data Centers |
Facility Operations & Maintenance |
Facility Operations & Maintenance |
| Security |
Physical Security Environmental Security Network Security Information Security
|
Physical Security Environmental Security Network Security
|
| SAP Services Portfolio - SAP Hosting - SAP Application Management |
Solution Design & Development |
Not Applicable |
| NW & Connectivity Managed Backup Administration Skills Project Management |
Computer Operations Human Resources |
Not Applicable |
| IT Service Management Processes |
Customer Support Incident Management Change/Configuration Management |
Not Applicable |
| Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity |
Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity |
Not Applicable |
iStreet Solutions is SAS 70 Type II certified at the application level as well as SAP Hosting and Application Management Services. Contact us for any managed service’s needs.
Posted by Mark Richter on Sat, Jun 12, 2010 @ 12:21 PM
iStreet Solutions is an SAP Partner providing SAP Hosting and SAP Support Services since our beginning in 2004. This post is an update on iStreet Solutions and SAP, our SAP Hosting Services, and our SAP Support Services. The post will finish with a summary of our SAP plan of record for enhancements.
iStreet is the original small to midsized business SAP hosting partner and earned its first SAP hosting certification after an exhaustive audit of iStreet's processes, people, and technology in November of 2005. iStreet rapidly grew through assistance of the certification over the next two years.
Our next re - certification by SAP for SAP hosting was accomplished in 2007. Due to our rapid growth and customer requests we launched a continuous improvement program. This program resulted in significant upgrades to our processes, people, and technology. iStreet formally adopted ITIL/ITSM and a program to successfully complete the disciplines of SAS 70 Type II, which I will talk about in future post. All these improvements led to iStreet quickly completing SAP's 2009 audit where iStreet attained both the SAP Hosting certification as well as the SAP Application Management Services certification.
As iStreet has grown we took on more and more opportunities at the request of our customers in the area of SAP Support. We have become a referral partner for SAP software as well. Our list is long and getting longer and the highlights are listed below:
-
SAP ECC 6.0, ECC 5.0, 4.7x Hosting
-
SAP Business Objects Hosting
-
SAP Netweaver
-
SAP Solution Manager
-
SAP BI / BW
-
SAP PI
-
SAP CRM 7
-
SAP Live Cache
-
SAP SRM
-
SAP SCM
-
and more.
Building on our SAP hosting and SAP application management services we will be rolling out new business models in response to market trends. User based pricing models are beginning to make sense for SAP CRM 7. Our experience with CRM 7 over the last year through SAP hosting of CRM 7 Test Drives has led us to conclude that our customers like that approach for CRM. Stay tuned for these new service roll outs by signing up for our email alerts. You can follow iStreet and today we are introducing our Twitter user name of hostingsap.
Thank you.
Mark Richter
Posted by Mark Richter on Tue, Jun 08, 2010 @ 11:52 AM
We have taken ourselves from a self-funded startup to an amazing trajectory of growth in our short 6 year existence.
How our growth occurred is important but first, one thing I have learned along the way is the concept of ‘paying it forward'. The people mentioned in this post never asked for any payback. They all gave a piece of their business wisdom that was and is still key in the building of iStreet's strong foundation. iStreet's foundation helps our customers, partners, and employees achieve their goals. So this post is to communicate with our customers, future customers, and friends about the people who helped me help the iStreet team along the way. This recognition is our small way of saying thanks and big way of making your customer experience the best it can be.
So just a few names to get us off on the right start;
Lew Platt, former Hewlett-Packard CEO, talked about work-life family balance. That had a profound impact on how to care for people in the iStreet organization. This care helps them have that edge that makes them totally passionate to iStreet while enhancing their commitment to their families as well.
Gary Wessely was the most influential manager during my time at HP. He taught that measureable results were the lifeblood of business.
Ken Murray, also of HP and its SAP Hosting business, taught me about the big picture of a business' organization and its role in accomplishing company goals. Brad Closs of HP gave me the authority to run the HP IT Service Management program. Leadership of that program gave me the skills to lead the iStreet team to accomplish our ITIL / ITSM based SAP Hosting and SAP Application Management Services Certifications and more importantly attain our SAS 70 Type II certification. 
Carly Fiorina, former HP CEO, gave me executive insight into completing complex, multi-divisional business development and the importance and magnitude of the CEO to CEO executive conversation.
Steve Gomes recognized my commitment and passion to provide enterprise class service to small and midsized businesses. He provided the final nudge to get me out of the employee world and into the open door of the entrepreneurial world. I want to recognize Lou Kirchener from the Sacramento colocation firm Herakles Data. In iStreet's early days he provided guidance that has served iStreet well as we went through our initial growing pains. Last but not least, Dave Erickson of Sun / Oracle has an unyielding faith in iStreet. He provided the introduction to Sun Microsystems, now Oracle, who has evolved as a valued longtime Partner to iStreet.
Most important of all are our loyal customers. We know that the ‘Customer is King' and we work every day to ensure we deliver the best service and support possible. Our customers benefit from the rigor and discipline demanded of me and my resulting commitment to provide a fantastic customer experience.
Now back to the topic of paying it forward. All the people mentioned have extremely high expectations of iStreet. While we have come far we are not satisfied. That is why you can expect a growing, and evolving organization dedicated to providing world class service at a very affordable price. At iStreet we work until your Customer Experience is Totally Satisfied. Nothing less. This is our way of ‘paying it forward'.
Thank you and stay tuned to The View from iStreet Blog. More coming in the days and weeks ahead.
Best,
Mark Richter
Founder
iStreet Solutions, LLC
www.istreetsolutions.com
916-792-3762
PS: Let me know what you want to hear about. Some ideas for future topics are:
iStreet Solutions: Providers of SAP ERP and Business Objects Hosting, Oracle Hosting, Microsoft infrastructure solutions, Microsoft Dynamics Solutions including Microsoft CRM , Microsoft Exchange 2010 servers, Microsoft Dynamics ERP, SAP Application Management Services, colocation server hosting, Sacramento colocation, Sacramento Data Center, server rental, cabinet and rack rentals.
Let me know your ideas. Contact us at info@istreetsolutions.com
