Warning - Never Accept Five 9s As a Reliability Standard From a Hosted VoIP Provider Again!

This is a question I often hear from clients when they're evaluating hosted VoIP providers. The question sounds simple enough, but I like to pay close attention to how a vendor answers. Uptime is loosely defined as a measure of the time a particular system has been "up" and running. Most providers boast the famous "Five 9's" (99.999% uptime) as the gold standard for reliability-but what does that really mean?

After doing a little digging, I discovered three ways of measuring uptime:

1. When the system is running,
2. When the system and network are running, or
3. When the system, network and applications are running.

In most cases, the five-nines a hosted VoIP provider refers to only deals with the first measurement-system uptime at their data center. Regardless of what their standard measurement is, your main concern is #3. At a minimum, a provider should be able to provide metrics for both #1 & #2. Here's an example of why the answer is so important: Let's say you connect to your provider via a point-to-point Internet connection, and your line gets cut because someone's doing construction across the street. Is this an outage? Not so from the service provider's perspective, if they're using the first definition. But what does it mean for you?

While system uptime seems to be the universal telecom industry standard, hosted VoIP providers who truly value their clients typically measure all aspects of uptime and make that information readily available. Any successful business relationship must be built on trust, and trust begins with transparency. Before getting into bed with a provider ask to see the following information to get a sense of how they'll treat you once you become a client:

• Live and historical system performance data-you not only want to see the last 90 days, but also how their system has performed over time (at least 1-2 years).
• Planned maintenance schedule-first off, you want to see that they've planned ahead and actually have a schedule. Secondly, you want to see what systems they have in place for you to access real-time information.
• Information on how your data is safeguarded-since you will be relinquishing a fair amount of control with a hosted solution, you should be clear on security practices.
• Customer support metrics-average hold time for support calls, % of service tickets resolved the same days, availability and metrics for weekend and off-hours support.

So, the next time a vendor proudly declares Five-9s of reliability, remember to dig a little bit deeper using the points in this article. The process will give you greater confidence during your selection process and hopefully lead you to a vendor you can trust.