As part of that reseller contract, Cobweb is effectively selling the service to the reseller. Adams told us that the commercial contract runs to 15 pages and all resellers of a white label service must agree to everything in it and that includes understanding the issues over security, confidentiality and responsibilities. Adams was also clear that whatever the reseller offers forward to their customer is up to them. This is where the problem of terms and conditions (T&C) raises its head.
Adams reasonably points out "it is up to the reseller to decide what T&C to offer their customer. We cannot tell them what these should be but we do insist that they pass through certain things based on the contract between us and the reseller." To ensure that the HP channel understands what is available, HP is going through a channel readiness programme for its VARs. However, HP will not be getting involved in any of the commercial decisions between Cobweb and its channel.
Support
One problem that is endemic in the white label market is customer support. Who is responsible, for what are they responsible and what does the customer actually get for their money? Adams believes that in any SaaS model the first line support starts with customer self help through the Self Care Panel. This is no different to most online offerings but things are not always so easy.
When self help doesn't work Adams believes that customers should still go through the reseller when the problems are user and not service related. "Service enquiries are backed off onto our support desk" said Adams. But that raises the question of customer confusion as to who provides their service. "Not so" according to Adams. "In more cases than not the customer is ultimately aware of where the service is coming from so there are no issues with them talking to our help desk."
SLA and compensation
As soon as you move to a hosted service you lose the close control you would otherwise have over any failure. Dan Germain, CTO, Cobweb says "we have set our SLA as 3 x 9's for the core service. This is not just based on the network performance or a single server but across the service as a whole."
If Cobweb is setting the service at 3 x 9's what does it expect the reseller to offer? Adams says "the reseller might want to pass that on as 100% and charge their customers for a premium service." Adams was careful not to be seen as being too critical of the resellers saying "this is beyond the scope of what Cobweb would want to control".
What this should do is raise a red flag to anyone buying a hosted service. Best practice should always be to find out who is providing the actual service and see what their level of SLA is for direct customers. If you are then offered a higher level of SLA, you need to read through what is being added in great detail.
No matter what level of SLA is in place, there will always be downtime. When that does happen and your business is reliant on a hosted service the business interruption can be significant. This is where you need to see what level of compensation you will receive and the issue of consequential losses is, as Adams admits, a contentious one. If we take the Microsoft offering, you will get no more than £5 per user per month even if the service is down for several days.
Is this unreasonable? "If you pay £5 per user per month, you get what you deserve" Adams says. "From our experience of several years running this sort of solution, just ensuring that you have the hardware, software, people and experience costs us that amount just to maintain it. What you need to do is choose your partner carefully and properly."
Adams believes that hosting vendors should be focused on delivering the SLA rather than the contractual arrangements. "Customers walk when you have problems and there are lot of entrants into this market who don't understand the service bit of this industry.
We've worked extremely hard to build a platform and an infrastructure to deliver those numbers.
When asked if 3 x 9's is still fairly low. Adams was keen to point out that "customers see 3 x 9's as better than in house."
