Developing your own in-house software solutions can be a difficult proposition, considering the costs of IT infrastructure and resources involved. More and more organizations are now relying on Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) to provide them with the software solutions they need. But before jumping in and signing up with a SaaS vendor, it is important to have a stringent agreement or contract in place to ensure that the software solution meets your business needs and it offers you maximum uptime. Simply put, uptime is the time during which your software solution is in operation.
What is Uptime and why it is important?
Let us understand the importance of uptime in the case of digital publishing software solutions. Digital publishers, the corporate sector, and educational institutions are increasingly using digital publishing tools and learning management systems to create digital assets and impart digital learning experiences. Now, let us consider the example of a corporate organization using a digital learning tool to deliver live training sessions to a group of employees who have taken out precious time from their hectic schedule to take it. The digital learning tool develops a bug or another issue, leading to downtime. Similarly, your executive team may want access to information on the cloud-based tool for crucial decision-making and finds that it is not working. The last thing you want is your service failing you at your moment of need.
So what is the way forward? While shopping for a SaaS solution, ensure that the Service Level Agreement (SLA) with your service provider guarantees 99.9 or 99.99% uptime. So what does this mean – simply put, your SaaS provider is bound to ensure that there will be no more than 8.7 hours of downtime during the entire year. And this is exactly what the cloud-based digital publishing platform KITABOO provides. KITABOO guarantees 99.9% uptime through automation technology and premium technical support with SLA. Let us now look at how KITABOO offers 99.9% uptime.
How does KITABOO ensure a 99.9% uptime guarantee with automation technology?
Quick and accurate deployment: KITABOO is thoroughly tested for bugs and other issues before it is deployed. However, over the period, as its tools, features, and capabilities evolve, there is a need for a system upgrade to ensure that all KITABOO users benefit from its enhanced capabilities. Rather than deploy the upgrade at all servers at once, KITABOO follows the blue-green policy. This means that the new update is deployed on a few servers at a time, in case of any issues, the other servers automatically continue running the software with no downtime.
Stringent Rollback policy: KITABOO also follows the rollback policy to ensure 99.9% uptime. So it may be that it deploys a new upgrade but if there is a problem in deployment for even five minutes, the company will roll back the new upgrade and immediately switch to the previous version. This ensures the KITABOO service continues uninterrupted with no downtime in the use of the software.
Server infrastructure: Sometimes problems of downtime can also be attributed to server infrastructure. It may be that the service provider has limited servers and deploys the solution or upgrade on all of them together. Now, an issue in the server will lead to downtime. To avoid this situation, KITABOO uses AWS servers in multiple locations. In case, a server in a particular location fails, other servers in multiple locations automatically take up function, thus, eliminating downtime. Servers in multiple locations ensure that if there is downtime in any one server, other servers automatically resume service in other locations.
Server Health Check: KITABOO regularly conducts health checks of its servers in all locations to prevent any breakdown in functioning. This also helps to ensure 99.9% uptime. Such automated health checks monitor if a server is down to immediately switch and then use another server. The automation technology adopted by KITABOO plays a key role in implementing these tasks on a regular basis which aims to prevent any unprecedented server issues.
Related Read: How to Create Online Training Programs for Bank Employees
Back-up policy with data restoration: KITABOO has implemented stringent backup policies to ensure 99.9% uptime for KITABOO and that its clients can continue their work uninterrupted at all times. However, even the best-laid plans can go wrong in the case of unforeseen disasters such as cyber-attacks or server damage due to natural calamities. With a backup in place, KITABOO can use the data and be up and running using its servers in another region in no time. Such policies immediately restore the data and prevent any downtime even during natural calamities.
Automated alert mechanism: KITABOO also has an automated alert mechanism in place to alert the customer service team in case of any issue in the servers. In any such situation, the other servers automatically pick up the operation while the customer service immediately swings into action, 24X7, to correct the faults. The monitoring system provides 24×7 customer service with 700+ support staff teams and the alert systems work round the clock. These teams even have access ensure to call the DevOps team to resolve necessary issues apart from automated phone and email system based on urgency hierarchy and automated alerts to prevent system outage.
Bug issues: As another important aspect of its SLA, KITABOO ensures that all blocker issues that the client may be facing, such as bugs, are resolved within 4 hours of the issue being reported. Depending on the level, the risks are classified as low, mid, and high category risks. This unique feature of KITABOO ensures immediate action is taken within 4 hours to prevent end-users from being affected.
In Conclusion
Poor customer service is one of the biggest threats facing businesses, leading to loss of reputation and revenues to the tune of $75 billion every year. While there are several factors contributing to poor service, one that is frequently overlooked is the downtime caused by a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution. Companies worldwide are increasingly adopting SaaS solutions; however, they stand to face severe losses in case their SaaS solution fails or experiences outages. Studies show that downtime costs the company dear in terms of loss of customers and revenue losses with some even losing about $10,000-$20,000 of revenue per hour due to system failures.
Related Read: 9 Reasons Why Publishers Should Move to Digital eBook Libraries
To protect businesses and profits, KITABOO offers 99.9% uptime through automation technology and premium technical support in its SLA. The remaining 0.1% means that the service can only have 8 hours of unplanned downtime outside the normally scheduled maintenance window.
If you are looking for a digital publishing platform, you will find a perfect partner in KITABOO. Going beyond competition, we offer 99.9% uptime in our SLA, ensuring that there are no unplanned outages and you get the best possible experience from the service. With the 99.9% guarantee, we monitor our systems 24 hours, 7 days a week, 365 days a year allowing a maximum downtime of 8.7 hours in 365 days. Our round-the-clock customer service ensures that our servers and infrastructure are up and running to offer uninterrupted service at all times. We also provide impeccable customer support ensuring that all your issues are addressed within 4 hours of the issue being reported. Our 99.9% uptime guarantee allows you to optimize your business efficiency with complete peace of mind.To know more, please write to us at kitaboo@hurix.com
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