The key may be to schedule maintenance time to prevent such problems, Breakaway's Ittycheria says. The trouble is getting customers to agree on a scheduled maintenance time. Likewise, if we need to schedule an upgrade, all the customers need to agree on a time. Many ASPs back up their offerings of both shared and dedicated servers with service-level agreements. While most ASPs haven't commented on the details, users say the agreements provide better service managing the apps than they could on their own.
Many ASPs are so confident they offer money-back guarantees.
If Breakaway Solutions doesn't meet the agreement for that month, a rebate is issued for the length of time the service was down. But critics argue that even if the service is free, the customer has already been damaged by not having the apps available.