CrystalTech Web Hosting
For many web hosting companies, it is not a matter of "how" to offer web site statistics
for their customers, but "why" offer web site statistics to customers. Several enterprise-level
log analysis packages come with a variety of additional costs, apart from the licensing
of the package itself, that make it difficult for web hosts to justified providing
web site statistics for customers. For example, there is the additional hardware
and software costs for the number of reporting servers the stats package requires,
not to mention the additional support costs for the servers added to a network,
and additional database licensing (SQL, Oracle, MySQL, etc.) the stats package requires.
Factor in difficulties transitioning a package into an existing network infrastructure,
coordination and integration with a Control Panel application, and the problems
that can arise once the statistical package is made available to customers, and
it is easy to see why many web hosts offer website statistics as a value-added service,
and charge extra for it, or choose not to offer statistics to their customers at
all.
CrystalTech Web Hosting Inc., based in Phoenix, Arizona, has never thought twice
about offering statistics to their customers. CrystalTech feels that providing clients
with their website statistics is an integral part of any web hosting package, a
part that customers both require and deserve. However, when recently faced with
the prospect of transitioning from one statistical package to another, CrystalTech
did have concerns about how the new package would integrate with their Control Center,
how seamless the transition and introduction of the new package would be to their
customers as well as to their network infrastructure, and they were looking for
a package that would help reduce their overall costs. SmarterTools was able to meet
with CrystalTech and provided them with a log file analysis package, SmarterStats
Enterprise Edition , which met, or surpassed, these three requirements.
The Control Center CrystalTech makes available to their customers is truly impressive.
A .NET web application, built entirely in-house, their Control Center gives customers
the ability to manage over 90% of their websites themselves, limiting their contact
with CrystalTech support to only mission-critical issues. As one can imagine, integrating
any third-party product into this application was an extremely important consideration
for CrystalTech.
SmarterTools was able to meet this challenge with SmarterStats Enterprise Edition.
Because it is built using the .NET framework, SmarterTools was able to make several
web services available to CrystalTech, web services that allowed for automating
the addition of websites directly into the CrystalTech Control Center, as well as
adding sites into the SmarterStats Enterprise Edition application, for automating
moves of sites from one CrystalTech server to another, and for automating site deletions.
As an added bonus, since SmarterStats Enterprise Edition is built using a template
structure, CrystalTech was able to incorporate their own design elements into the
application, so the transition from CrystalTech's Control Center to the SmarterStats
application is as seamless as possible.
CrystalTech has been in the web hosting business for over six years. As such, their
network infrastructure is fairly well established and set, with a separate segment
for each scripting environment they support, as well as segments based on server
responsibility (database, mail, backup, etc.). Therefore, CrystalTech was not in
the market for a statistical package that would disrupt, or add significantly to,
their existing network architecture.
SmarterTools was able to address this concern with SmarterStats Enterprise Edition.
The only infrastructure change that occurred as a result of the transitioning was
the removal of several servers CrystalTech was using as reporting servers for their
previous website analysis package. The flexibility of SmarterStats Enterprise Edition
allows for the Web Interface (Web Interface) and the Remote Service (SSSVC) to reside
on the same server, or on separate servers, depending on how you set up your network.
Therefore, CrystalTech was able to roll the work of the twelve reporting servers
their previous analysis package required into a single SmarterStats Enterprise Edition
Web Interface, with the SmarterStats Enterprise Edition Remote Service installed
on each of their web servers. As the Remote Service has an extremely small footprint,
the impact it had on the individual web servers was negligible. Factor in the ability
for System Administrators to manage how the Remote Service performs on each server
it is installed on, and the already negligible impact the Remote Service has can
be watched and adjusted as necessary.
Finally, CrystalTech found that the money they were spending providing web site
statistics for customers far outweighed the returns they were seeing from the statistical
package they were using. As it was not just a matter of licensing the package, but
the investment in hardware and software to support the package, as well as the manpower
needed to account for shortcomings in the product itself, CrystalTech did not want
to be hindered with an alternate solution that came with as many additional costs.
SmarterTools was able to address this concern with SmarterStats Enterprise Edition.
In fact, SmarterStats Enterprise Edition was able to save CrystalTech money in a
number of ways:
- reduction in the hardware needed to run SmarterStats, as the Web Interface can reside
on a single server and can accommodate up to 30,000 websites, versus one Reporting
Server per 1500 sites required by other packages.
- reduction in server load as the Web Interface and each Remote Service can be configured
to match server hardware, versus having to have hardware to match the Web Interface
and Remote Service. This limits the investment in server hardware, or hardware upgrades,
that other packages may require.
- reduction in man hours needed for re-configuring and re-processing statistics their
other package required.
- no database backend required. Eliminates additional licensing of software other
packages may require.
- reduction in log file space by 90%, saving thousands of dollars in disk space and
tape backup space.
CrystalTech Web Hosting Inc. was looking for a website analysis package that would
integrate well into their existing network infrastructure, that would meld with
their proprietary Control Center, and that would end up saving them money when compared
to their current website analysis package. They met these requirements, and gained
much more, with SmarterTools' SmarterStats Enterprise Edition.
SmarterStats Enterprise Edition, with its flexibility and component-based design,
was able to integrate seamlessly into the existing CrystalTech network architecture,
and actually helped eliminate unnecessary hardware that was required by the previous
website analysis package CrystalTech was using.
SmarterStats Enterprise Edition, with the availability of crucial web services and
a template-based design, was able to become incorporated with CrystalTech's Control
Center quickly and easily.
Finally, the reduction of hardware requirements and a logical licensing model actually
saved CrystalTech money versus the website analysis package they were using prior
to their transition.
Overall, SmarterTools has proven that SmarterStats Enterprise Edition is an extremely
viable website log file analysis package, one that can provide greater gains and
enhancements than the majority of comparable products.