I realise this is outside the scope of this particular forum ... but where *is* a good place to look for very high end fully managed hosting? Google, as always, comes up with a truly overwhelming amount of information. All I'm looking for at this stage is a quote, and I'm not willing to post details here publically.Honestly I think I need pointers to industry magazines or companies that do large government contracts or something. Most of the names that came up in the other high-end managed hosting thread seem to be companies that do *far* less than what we require ... hostworks.com.au does exactly what we want, but is in the wrong country (that and we know someone that works there and it seems like an understaffed mess). But when you look for similar companies in the US, there is too much choice and too much jargon and sales hype ...What is it you're needing to host? I.e platforms, etc.A lot of companies specialise in small areas ...DanGiraffian,Some of the larger high end managed hosting companies are:www.savvis.netwww.rackspace.comwww.datapipe.comBest of luck to you in your search.Need basically a fairly high-volume website with Oracle database on it hosted, this is by no means a niche app, as I said in the opening post its exactly what Hostworks does, just they are local to us and we don't want a local company. Search overseas and suddenly instead of being only *one* company available, there are dozens. The time difference between Australia and Anywhere That Matters is quite a problem with trying to phone hosting companies and ask them stuff, which is another reason to want a fully managed solution. We sleep in peak time.I've already hit the DataPipe website (among many others, there is *so* much choice). Unfortunately the "Operational Empathy(TM)" had me laughing so hard I couldn't bring myself to contact them, even though they seem to offer the right products. I'm a seasoned cynic, that is probably going to cost me a quote but ... I couldn't help myself. I've got a few email conversations happening with various other companies going now, which are understandably slow since we seem to be emailing each other at mutually inconvenient times 
You might want to talk to ITConvergence, they specialize in hosting/managing Oracle.No offense, but you seem a bit sensitive to so called "marketing hype and jargon" as you call it. Every company in every industry does it to varying degrees; I would venture to guess your own company does as well. Before even getting to the quotation process, get a list together of the tough questions you want answered. Get past the sales rep (who probably can't answer the questions anyways) and get with, at a minimum, the sales engineer, who can hopefully address your questions. The answers to these questions are what should ultimately drive your decision, not some marketing material on a website or a brochure. I wouldn't discount a company because of that.
If you nail your criteria down (application and environment architecture, support levels, etc.), I think you'll find there are a lot less choices than you imagine (and I go through this exact process a lot for our customers so I'm pretty familiar with what's out there). For you, high level 24x7x365 support is critical because of time zone differences, and 24x7x365 support can mean very different things. It might mean dragging an oncall DBA or network engineer out of bed at 3am, it might mean a fully staffed 24x7x365 US-based support center, or it might mean your provider has high level after hour resources in Europe, India, etc. If some of those options are unacceptable than that will whittle the list down. Managed database and/or application service can mean very different things as well. Ask about a simple break/fix case--what if my application can't connect to the database? You'll probably here answers ranging from "the database is up and running and we don't get involved in custom code issues" to "we'll do our best to diagnose the issue but don't guarantee anything" to "we will work to resolve this issue and it's considered downtime and covered under your SLA." Again, questions such as these can further remove options from your short list based on the service level you require. After that, you should solicit quotes from the remaining short list of vendors. And after that, you get to move to the fun part, which is the contract phase where you get to haggle about SLAs, liability limits, etc.; I would highly advise you to get to that phase before deciding on a single vendor, as those issues can play a large role in ultimately who you select.
Without knowing your exact needs, I can recommend a few companies outside of the ones listed here to at least contact.
1) OpSource - focused on SaaS and web-based applications; among the smaller companies (i.e. not the pricey big boys like IBM, EDS, AT&T, etc.), they are probably the best equipped to handle application issues. The also have some virtualized shared assets available that can be cost effective if you don't need your own dedicated assets (mostly in the storage area using 3Par, but also virtual servers using VMware). They can also offer some alternate pricing models if that interests you (per seat, per license, etc. if you're developing end-user SaaS applications).
2) LogicWorks - while they won't get too involved with application issues, they are well equipped on database issues. They have a unique "transaction-based" SLA for database service.
3) Pythian - not a managed hosting company per se, but they offer a high level of remote DBA service for Oracle. They would be a nice complement to a provider that offers only rudimentary managed database service.We've got a few customers hosted with <!-- w --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.rackspace.com">www.rackspace.com</a><!-- w --> and they've been very happy.
I'd say they're on the higher-end of the pricing scale, but it's a justified cost if that's what you really need.I has a few servers on rackspace about 1.5 yrs ago and never had any issues.You can always get a unmanaged server and go with a management company like platinumservermanagement. We have a few servers at a couple of datacenters like layeredtech and Theplanet.Lockbull - yes, you're right, you raise some good issues there and I've contacted datapipe now (before you posted, actually) I think I might print off your post and stick it to the wall or something. And cheers for the extra names, btw. Its getting to the point I've talked to enough people now to just give a list, but now I have a secondary problem - without having our application written, we can't wave it at a hosting company and get them to load test it and recommend a solution, so I still haven't got a quote even to within $10,000 (which frankly would be close enough). At least companies are willing to phone *me* internationally, even if they do insist on doing it when I'm asleep and I always miss the calls, and then wind up following it up with email ... I'll take email over a broken night's sleep any day.to jshtoch (and a few others) - Definately not going to get a solution that isn't 100% managed by someone else, right down to the application level. By the time I hire two extra people (maybe more), one to work dayshift and one to work nightshift to maintain a server cluster, and then do the running around with licensing (oracle seems to cost about $AU48,000 per processor from what I can work out from its horribly complicated licensing plans) its going to be cheaper and less painful to just get someone else to manage the whole damn thing for me, and that point is quite hard to get through to anyone who is a DIY fan. I've heard a lot of "why dont you just get a computer at X and install Y on it". Cos, uh, it won't work for us. Planning a large scale project is quite the learning experience. We've got a friend who works for a large managed hosting company who is giving us lots of tips, including an interesting one I didn't know - PHP apparently doesn't scale very well for large solutions, and JSP does. And the quest continues ...edit: I still think Operational Empathy is one of the funniest buzzwords I've heard for a long timePHP apparently doesn't scale very well for large solutions, and JSP does.
lol. That's total BS.
PHP can "scale" just fine. Like any server-side script (including JSP), the application needs to be written correctly.
A poorly written JSP application will behave just as bad as a poorly written PHP application.
To make such a blanket generalization that "PHP doesn't scale well" just shows the ignorance of your friend.<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=150955Yes">http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthr ... =150955Yes</a><!-- m -->, that argument has been done elsewhere and this thread probably isn't the place to go into a big argument - I've also had advice to write this in native code or with an Apache plugin for performance reasons as well as the php vs jsp comment. Their statement was just from experience hosting lots of very large websites scripted in both languages and observing what happened at high volume traffic.Most apps are not coded to work for high volume traffic. The "average" PHP coder is self-taught and has no idea how to optimize their code, etc. Whereas, something like JSP isn't as "easy" to get into, and so it tends to attract more experienced coders.. who thus would know more about how to program correctly and optimize, etc...
My point is that it has nothing to do with the actual language itself, which is what you claimed.
Your friend is incorrectly assuming the only difference between the scripts he's obvserving is the language, when in fact... that's a limited viewpoint. It's the code itself where the differences primarily are located.*makes note to hire a JSP programmer then*I'm still in the research phase, normally mysql and php would work just fine and we'd use that (works for the average phpBB). The site is currently in skeleton form in php because thats what we know and we needed a working prototype quickly. Hell, this whole thing could end up being re-written in .NET!
You might want to talk to ITConvergence, they specialize in hosting/managing Oracle.No offense, but you seem a bit sensitive to so called "marketing hype and jargon" as you call it. Every company in every industry does it to varying degrees; I would venture to guess your own company does as well. Before even getting to the quotation process, get a list together of the tough questions you want answered. Get past the sales rep (who probably can't answer the questions anyways) and get with, at a minimum, the sales engineer, who can hopefully address your questions. The answers to these questions are what should ultimately drive your decision, not some marketing material on a website or a brochure. I wouldn't discount a company because of that.If you nail your criteria down (application and environment architecture, support levels, etc.), I think you'll find there are a lot less choices than you imagine (and I go through this exact process a lot for our customers so I'm pretty familiar with what's out there). For you, high level 24x7x365 support is critical because of time zone differences, and 24x7x365 support can mean very different things. It might mean dragging an oncall DBA or network engineer out of bed at 3am, it might mean a fully staffed 24x7x365 US-based support center, or it might mean your provider has high level after hour resources in Europe, India, etc. If some of those options are unacceptable than that will whittle the list down. Managed database and/or application service can mean very different things as well. Ask about a simple break/fix case--what if my application can't connect to the database? You'll probably here answers ranging from "the database is up and running and we don't get involved in custom code issues" to "we'll do our best to diagnose the issue but don't guarantee anything" to "we will work to resolve this issue and it's considered downtime and covered under your SLA." Again, questions such as these can further remove options from your short list based on the service level you require. After that, you should solicit quotes from the remaining short list of vendors. And after that, you get to move to the fun part, which is the contract phase where you get to haggle about SLAs, liability limits, etc.; I would highly advise you to get to that phase before deciding on a single vendor, as those issues can play a large role in ultimately who you select.
Without knowing your exact needs, I can recommend a few companies outside of the ones listed here to at least contact.
1) OpSource - focused on SaaS and web-based applications; among the smaller companies (i.e. not the pricey big boys like IBM, EDS, AT&T, etc.), they are probably the best equipped to handle application issues. The also have some virtualized shared assets available that can be cost effective if you don't need your own dedicated assets (mostly in the storage area using 3Par, but also virtual servers using VMware). They can also offer some alternate pricing models if that interests you (per seat, per license, etc. if you're developing end-user SaaS applications).
2) LogicWorks - while they won't get too involved with application issues, they are well equipped on database issues. They have a unique "transaction-based" SLA for database service.
3) Pythian - not a managed hosting company per se, but they offer a high level of remote DBA service for Oracle. They would be a nice complement to a provider that offers only rudimentary managed database service.We've got a few customers hosted with <!-- w --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.rackspace.com">www.rackspace.com</a><!-- w --> and they've been very happy.
I'd say they're on the higher-end of the pricing scale, but it's a justified cost if that's what you really need.I has a few servers on rackspace about 1.5 yrs ago and never had any issues.You can always get a unmanaged server and go with a management company like platinumservermanagement. We have a few servers at a couple of datacenters like layeredtech and Theplanet.Lockbull - yes, you're right, you raise some good issues there and I've contacted datapipe now (before you posted, actually) I think I might print off your post and stick it to the wall or something. And cheers for the extra names, btw. Its getting to the point I've talked to enough people now to just give a list, but now I have a secondary problem - without having our application written, we can't wave it at a hosting company and get them to load test it and recommend a solution, so I still haven't got a quote even to within $10,000 (which frankly would be close enough). At least companies are willing to phone *me* internationally, even if they do insist on doing it when I'm asleep and I always miss the calls, and then wind up following it up with email ... I'll take email over a broken night's sleep any day.to jshtoch (and a few others) - Definately not going to get a solution that isn't 100% managed by someone else, right down to the application level. By the time I hire two extra people (maybe more), one to work dayshift and one to work nightshift to maintain a server cluster, and then do the running around with licensing (oracle seems to cost about $AU48,000 per processor from what I can work out from its horribly complicated licensing plans) its going to be cheaper and less painful to just get someone else to manage the whole damn thing for me, and that point is quite hard to get through to anyone who is a DIY fan. I've heard a lot of "why dont you just get a computer at X and install Y on it". Cos, uh, it won't work for us. Planning a large scale project is quite the learning experience. We've got a friend who works for a large managed hosting company who is giving us lots of tips, including an interesting one I didn't know - PHP apparently doesn't scale very well for large solutions, and JSP does. And the quest continues ...edit: I still think Operational Empathy is one of the funniest buzzwords I've heard for a long time
PHP apparently doesn't scale very well for large solutions, and JSP does. lol. That's total BS.
PHP can "scale" just fine. Like any server-side script (including JSP), the application needs to be written correctly.
A poorly written JSP application will behave just as bad as a poorly written PHP application.
To make such a blanket generalization that "PHP doesn't scale well" just shows the ignorance of your friend.<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=150955Yes">http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthr ... =150955Yes</a><!-- m -->, that argument has been done elsewhere and this thread probably isn't the place to go into a big argument - I've also had advice to write this in native code or with an Apache plugin for performance reasons as well as the php vs jsp comment. Their statement was just from experience hosting lots of very large websites scripted in both languages and observing what happened at high volume traffic.Most apps are not coded to work for high volume traffic. The "average" PHP coder is self-taught and has no idea how to optimize their code, etc. Whereas, something like JSP isn't as "easy" to get into, and so it tends to attract more experienced coders.. who thus would know more about how to program correctly and optimize, etc...
My point is that it has nothing to do with the actual language itself, which is what you claimed.
Your friend is incorrectly assuming the only difference between the scripts he's obvserving is the language, when in fact... that's a limited viewpoint. It's the code itself where the differences primarily are located.*makes note to hire a JSP programmer then*
I'm still in the research phase, normally mysql and php would work just fine and we'd use that (works for the average phpBB). The site is currently in skeleton form in php because thats what we know and we needed a working prototype quickly. Hell, this whole thing could end up being re-written in .NET!