Choosing a provider, public or private?

When shopping around for managed dedicated hosting, there are lots of things to consider- platform, plan features, and pricing, just to name a few.  There are also less obvious considerations that can have a major impact on how successful your choice will be, and one of the biggest is also one of the easiest to answer- is the company privately held or publically traded?

We’re not necessarily talking about investment opportunities (although a successful dedicated server host might look good in your portfolio).  As a factor in your decision making process, knowing that a company is public means that a lot of your due diligence has already been done, and done well.  Before a company can be publicly traded, it must be audited from top to bottom.  Not only must the company be financially sound, but everything from personnel to equipment to the overall business plan must undergo a complete evaluation.  All business practices must be fully documented, which might not seem like a big thing, but anyone who has worked in an environment where people make things up as they go along can attest to the benefit of quality documentation.

There’s also the matter of accountability.  Where a privately held company may be accountable to the customers and the business owner, a publically held dedicated server hosting company has another level of accountability to deal with- shareholders and a board of directors.  As a customer, your visibility into what goes on at your managed dedicated hosting provider ends at the website and customer support number.  Shareholders and the board of directors on the other hand have much greater visibility into the operation of the company, and questionable decisions, performance issues, and anything else that impacts the bottom line is subject to scrutiny by the stockholders. 

Need more?  Consider this- a public managed dedicated hosting company is likely to be much larger than privately held competitors, which means as a customer, you enjoy the benefit of enterprise class infrastructure, in terms of hardware and software, as well as better network peering.  A public company is required to make regular financial disclosures, and must comply with a host of government regulations designed to protect shareholders (and which also work in favor of customers).  The company history is a matter of verifiable public record- fly by night doesn’t cut it in this arena.  While there aren’t many publicly traded companies currently competing in the managed dedicated hosting space (a quick search pulled up NaviSite), that’s likely to change as businesses adjust to the changing technology landscape.

In the end, it comes down to trust.  No matter how much research you are able to do on your own, it generally can’t match the ongoing evaluation that a publically held managed dedicated host must pass.  Why not put those watchdogs to work for you?  Not only can it save you a lot of headaches and second guessing, but who knows?  You just might end up with a good performer in your stock portfolio!