On Thu, 06 January 2000, Dave Crocker wrote:

So the alternative is much more effort and much more difficult, but absolutely essential: The customer must have their own, independent access to high-quality technical and operations expertise and the due diligence must be detailed and in-person (such as the noted visual inspection of the generatorS.)

I would agree, except the most important parts in a colocation facility can't be checked with a quick visual inspection. If you see problems during your walkthrough, they are most likely serious problems. But a lot of stuff will be undetected just by the nature of facilities. Do you take air samples, collect a month of environmental data, plug in a power quality analyzer, take concrete samples? I've been in very chic data centers with very serious problems under the surface (or in the roof :-). A top quality audit of a data center is very time and money consuming. Doing one for every potential customer is a waste of a lot of money. Yes, I know, what company would risk its business without doing its own audit? But not every company has the expertise to know what is good, bad, and just a frill.

ps. The other burden this places on the customer is carefully and reasonably formulating their REAL requirement. Demanding the best of everything is entirely inappropriate for most businesses. You won't be able to afford it and you don't need it.

True, and one of the biggest problems I see with any ranking of the "best." You end up with things like the Forrester report which says Qwest is the "best" and Exodus will dissappear soon. I was thinking of more a Board of Health rating instead of a ranking. McDonalds and a five-star resturant both receive a Grade A. But there is still plenty of room for puffery and service competition. And perhaps breaking it up into classes, carrier-grade, data-grade, financial-grade, etc.