CRM provider signs utility computing pact with Savvis

If your network infrastructure is not a differentiating factor for your company, consider outsourcing it. That’s the advice of Paul Johnston, CEO of Entellium, which recently signed a three-year, multimillion-dollar utility computing deal with Savvis.

Johnston says he did a careful analysis of Entellium’s strategy and its business requirements before deciding to outsource its data center and network operations to Savvis. Entellium provides a CRM application for small businesses that is sold through carriers including Verizon Wireless and British Telecom.

"We decided that we want to be good at creating a fantastic user experience. That’s what we needed to be good at strategically,’’ Johnston says. "We also looked at our business expectations and the service levels we needed to provide to internal and external customers. We found we could provide that service more robustly and less expensively through an external provider.’’

Entellium is looking to Savvis to help set a new standard in the CRM industry for service-level agreements (SLA). Entellium is guaranteeing 99.99% reliability to its customers, due in part to its confidence in the network infrastructure that Savvis runs.

"We are the only software-on-demand company that offers an SLA to every customer,’’ Johnston says. "It’s a contractually binding SLA. Some companies offer SLAs to only their largest customers. We offer it to everyone.’’

Entellium previously used a Canadian carrier to host its CRM application at a single data center. Entellium held a competitive bid to replace this carrier, and about a dozen Web-hosting companies bid on it.

Johnston says he selected Savvis because they could meet Entellium’s needs for high performance, high reliability and fast scalability.

"There are very few companies that have to work out how to manage over 100,000 concurrent users or transactions at any one time, Only on-demand software vendors and large Internet-based firms are managing anything on that scale,’’ Johnston says. "Savvis has deep technical experience in this kind of scalability planning. So it was our business requirements, their geographic presence and their technical architecture that led us to select them. Price also was a consideration.’’

Savvis’s managed hosting services include computing, storage, network and security services.

With Savvis, Entellium has its CRM application hosted at two data centers on the East Coast. Entellium plans to add a data center in the United Kingdom early next year, followed by one in Singapore. Entellium also is using Savvis’ managed security services, including auditing and testing.

"Our core competency shouldn’t be building an infrastructure and managing the scalability and robustness of that,’’ Johnston says. "What we’re good at is creating unique CRM applications.’’

The Entellium deal is significant for Savvis, which is trying to win more utility computing business from software-as-a-service companies.

"Entellium depicts the sweet spot of what Savvis is all about,’’ says Savvis President Jonathan Crane. "We’re coining the phrase: 'Infrastructure as a service.’ If you look at the pieces of infrastructure - network capability, data centers, security and storage – all of these elements come together to provide an operation platform for companies like Entellium….The solution set that we are offering is allowing companies like Entellium to focus on their client base instead of having to build and operate an infrastructure on their own.’’