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Issues in management of ISP and hosting relationships

The primary issue for businesses in managing ISPs and hosting providers is to ensure a satis-

factory service quality at a reasonable price. As the customers and partners of organisations 

become more dependent on their web services, it is important that downtime be minimised. 

But severe problems of downtime can occur, as shown in Box 3.4, and the consequences of 

these need to be avoided or managed.

Speed of access

A site or digital business service fails if it fails to deliver an acceptable download speed for 

users. In the broadband world this is still important as digital business applications become 

more complex and sites integrate rich media. But what is acceptable?

Research supported by Akamai (2006) suggested that content needs to load within 4 sec-

onds, otherwise site experience suffers. The research also showed, however, that high prod-

uct price and shipping costs and problems with shipping were considered more important 

than speed. However, for sites perceived to have poor performance, many shoppers said they 

would not be likely to visit the site again (64%) or buy from the e-retailer (62%).