Seek a strong SLA from provider.

An e-business outsourcing provider promotes a blossoming business.

OnlineChoice.com and FTD.com needed to outsource the services required to run their business to-consumer e-businesses, while also supporting growth. OnlineChoice.com allows consumers nationwide to maximize their buying power by joining free, no-obligation buying pools to get lower rates on vital services, such as electricity, natural gas, and long-distance telephone service. FTD.com is the online floral and specialty gifts operation of FTD, the world's largest floral services organization.

When OnlineChoice.com launched the first of its group-buying services last year, the company was outsourcing its Web-hosting needs to a local, regional provider. OnlineChoice.com already has 110,000 buying-pool members across the United States. The company expects a significant increase in Web site traffic, resulting from aggressive nationwide advertising and marketing and the launch of new group-buying services, such as InsuranceChoice and InternetChoice.

FTD.com's online site was originally deployed with the help of a Web-hosting firm, which had managed the Web site at a data center operated by a co-location provider. FTD is relaunching FTD.com with the aggressive goal of boosting online sales from $50 million to $90 million within one year, while continuing the online service's reputation for high-quality floral and gift orders with same-day turnaround.

Both dot-com companies had the same need--to find an outsourcing provider who could quickly deliver and, over time, scale for growth the networking and IT infrastructure and resources required to run their e-business applications with maximum uptime availability. After evaluating a number of high-profile outsourcing vendors, both companies chose Intira Corp.

Both companies also were aware that when their mission-critical e-business applications were not available to their online customers during that application downtime, they were essentially out of business. The right service-level agreement (SLA) from the right outsourcing infrastructure provider was an essential requirement, letting them know their e-business applications were up and running when their customers wanted to do business.

The right SLA can also offer a means for the service provider to "share the pain" of application downtime. If it does not, chances are it will not be an effective SLA. While an SLA is not intended to be a "money-back guarantee," it should impose enough pain to motivate the outsourcing infrastructure provider to quickly address any problems that arise.