Fortune 500 Hosting

[indypbfreak]

I work for a Fortune 500 company, and what we would like to do is be able to provide support within one of our companies for one of our product lines, but we are not looking for an expensive solution like Lithium, Jive Software, etc.

Obviously, I am looking into vBulletin because it seems to be a great solution. The one big problem that I am running into is that the solution that we choose must be hosted. I know a lot of companies offer Software as a Service (SaaS), but vBulletin does not so that is where my problem arises.

I am looking for a hosting solution with excellent uptime so that customers can consistently access the forum for product support. If we are unable to provide support, it may jeopardize our brand name and affect sales.

If you have any suggestions or you work for a large company that has experience with great hosting providers, please reply back and give me some input.

[misuse]

I have one of the biggest sportfishing communities in the world hosted by Real Web Host http://www.realwebhost.com Thier uptime has been 100% for the last 2 years. I ended up moving all of my websites (over 20) to his servers and have been very happy. Infact Real Web Host did all of the transfers for me when I signed up. Very easy to work with, 24/7 support through AIM and support tickets has made my experiance with them excellent. They are very Vbulletin, web and ecommerce friendly. They have fixed my websites when I break them... The price I pay for their dedicated servers is cheaper than any I could find. Very up front about charges, nothing hidden.
Good luck with your host hunting.

[gigapros]

What kind of hosting solution are you looking for? Shared hosting or Dedicated server?

[royo]

I wouldn't go for a shared hosting solution, either look for a VPS or a dedicated server from a top-notch host with management that can deliver a great service, since the company you work for can obviously afford it, and you can never cut corners when you need to deliver support to your customers.

[Zachery]

You're either looking at top end dedicated servers, or co-located systems. What exactly you'll want will totally depend on the amount of traffic and usage patterns.

[indypbfreak]

Gigapros, I am looking into dedicated server options to answer your question.

In response to our available resources for the hosting, it has actually been somewhat limited. That is why we have not chosen a company such as Lithium to provide a full blown SaaS solution. I would have to say that the hosting options that we are looking for should be under $1000USD/Mo. The closer to the $0, the better.

Taking into consideration stockholders, we obviously want to have the best solution at the lowest costs, and that is what we are aiming to do here. Let me know if there are any more top notch dedicated hosting companies out there.

Thanks for all of your help.

[royo]

It's definitely doable with half of your budget, though it depends how many users you plan to have at the same time on your forums. If you want to go with the enterprise crowd and like yearly contracts you can go with rackspace.com, but if you want something private and more personal, you can try 478east.com.

[indypbfreak]

Thanks for the feedback royo. I'm checking out rackspace right now because I've seen some excellent reviews. I see that they have above 99.99% uptime which is awesome. I am going to check out 478east as well.

Thanks again.

[express]

Rackspace will be high for this. There are many companies out there that can give you the same or better product for alot less cash.
The other company I have never heard of.

Joey

[StevoIBM]

I work for a Fortune 500 company, and what we would like to do is be able to provide support within one of our companies for one of our product lines, but we are not looking for an expensive solution like Lithium, Jive Software, etc.

Obviously, I am looking into vBulletin because it seems to be a great solution. The one big problem that I am running into is that the solution that we choose must be hosted. I know a lot of companies offer Software as a Service (SaaS), but vBulletin does not so that is where my problem arises.

I am looking for a hosting solution with excellent uptime so that customers can consistently access the forum for product support. If we are unable to provide support, it may jeopardize our brand name and affect sales.

If you have any suggestions or you work for a large company that has experience with great hosting providers, please reply back and give me some input.


Hi Indy,

My name is Steve and I work with IBM and we do allot of hosting both within and with our partners. If you would like email me and we can discuss this further and see what your needs may be. I have some great experience with some great vendors. You can email me at sversa@ca.ibm.com

Cheers,
Steven