Onderwerp: Looking to pass large colo customer to another ISP

Hello, fellow colleagues.

We've been taking care of a larger colocation customer for the last few years and are evaluating whether it makes sense to pass them to another ISP. Why would we do this? Simply because they're operating in the lowest-cost market and are expecting prices we can (or want) no longer offer. And since NL is even worse than DE when it comes to pricing I thought I'd give it a shot. Here are the basics:

- 20 x 1U rackmount servers
- 180 x consumer midi-tower servers (18 cm W), mostly regular Celeron / P4 2-3 GHz systems with 1-2 HDDs including 15 Dual Xeons
- 500 Mbit/s data transfer (flat, capped port)
- Location, also geographically, is irrelevant. I guess even your basement would qualify if it has a decent UPS
- Customer expects remote hands (mostly hardware replacement followed by manual server reboots and troubleshooting (end-customer locked himself out of his server etc.)) to be free of charge or at least to be very low priced
- Customer expects response times in the range of minutes to few hours - you should have your own staff in the DC, everything else will probably not make sense
- All servers are connected to APC reboot switches, so manual reboots are cut down to a minimum
- Customer supplies switching infrastructure. ISP must offer tower shelves and cabling

Expected pricing exclusive of VAT:

- < 10-12 EUR per U / midi-tower incl. power (UPS) and air conditioning
- < 8 EUR per Mbit/s (capped port, customer upgrades 30-50 Mbit/s per month)

The challenge is not to match 10-12 / 8 EUR but to go even below this. Lowest price gets the best chances to win their business.

Customer is willing to commit for 600 Mbit/s right away and offers to commit to 800 Mbit/s until the end of the year. You can expect to get 10 new servers with every 20 Mbit/s they add. Customer uses what he pays for, so don't make offers based on a "mixed calculation". If they commit to 600 Mbit/s, they'll use exactly 600 Mbit/s, not less, not more. They'll take care of traffic shapping (capped port) themselves.

Expect 1-2 hours of remote hands (of which the customer expects you to only charge a very low percentage) per day.

Customer is willing to sign a agreement for 24 months. Customer pays promptly and constantly (via direct bank debit at this time, but this will not work for you Dutch guys since the customer is based in Germany).

What's in for us: we expect a one-time payment for passing the customer in the range of 6-8 months of monthly turnover (i.e. something in the range of 40.000 - 55.000 EUR). Payment can also be split to x EUR one-time and x EUR for the next 6-12 months.

This opportunity is definitely not for everyone, but could be interesting for ISPs looking to fill some capacity quickly.

If interested, reply with your contact data and some basic information about your company / DC here in this thread and I'll get in touch with the people that seem to qualify.

Regards,
Markus

Hi Markus,

I do have a couple of questions for you, the price you've mentioned is around 8 EUR per Mbit of traffic.

As far as I understand the customer we are talking about is German? So most likely the traffic will be aimed towards the German public, am I right?

The entire issue is that a Dutch based ISP will have to transfer the data over the existing transit lines rather than the available IX points within Germany, resulting in even higher costs. This story will not apply when the client is already using 90% Transit.

Also, could you please include the content served on the machines, since not all content is allowed on certain networks. I am willing to sign an NDA whenever required.

Looking forward to recieve your reply.

Regards,

How much space consumes the 180 midi towers?

Hello Rick,

the customer is indeed based in Germany. However, their target audience is not exactly focused on Germany. They are operating internationally and since their pricing virtually beats every US-based offer they have many international customers as well. But in the end you're right, the majority of their end-customers are German residentials. If it helps in your calculations, we can see that we are passing 30% of their traffic via the DE-CIX.

Regards,
Markus

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door veraert

How much space consumes the 180 midi towers?

All midi-towers have the same size: max. 42 cm H, 18-19 cm W. We put 25 servers on a tower shelf (60 cm D x 100 cm W, 5 sections). 60 cm depth is not really needed, there is plenty of space left. Depth of each tower is around 40 cm. The Xeons are larger but still midi-towers.

So you need about 7 breadracks and an half 19" rackspace

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door XF-RICK

Also, could you please include the content served on the machines, since not all content is allowed on certain networks. I am willing to sign an NDA whenever required.

Sorry, must have overlooked this question before. Our customer leases their servers to their end-customers so we do not know what kind of content is being hosted on those machines. However, we have been always working closely with them to avoid illegal use and spamming. They take appropriate measures (blocking servers / cancelling end-customers) quickly and professionally if an abuse report by a third party comes in. DDoS attacks and the like have never been a big problem. In the last 24 months we've had one inquiry by a state authority regarding their servers which involved distribution of illegal content. All other issues were related to spamming and those were always resolved within hours. Not really answered your question but I hope this information helps some.

Based on the given information we (EA) should be able to meet the given requirements. However due to size of this request we think it is wise to discuss this off-board even between closed doors.

Regards,

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door veraert

So you need about 7 breadracks and an half 19" rackspace

That's right. And expect a new shelf (20-25 servers) every month.

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door XF-RICK

Based on the given information we (EA) should be able to meet the given requirements. However due to size of this request we think it is wise to discuss this off-board even between closed doors.

Well, then I shall contact you via eMail tomorrow.

Regards
Markus