A small period of downtime was scheduled to take place on Saturday, when NaviSite, a Web hosting company, attempted to replace a number of servers powered by Alabanza (a recent acquisition).  But the process didn’t go too smoothly, and hours eventually stretched into days due to various issues.  (“If there is one little problem, they multiply because there is a lot of dependencies,” a company spokesperson told Linda Rosencrance.)

NaviSite’s customers became understandably angry, and although many websites were offline, they protested the state of things as best they could.  One individual – Cynthia Brumfeld, the president of Emerging Media Dynamics – even planned a trip to NaviSite’s Andover, Massachusetts headquarters.  And Emerging Media Dynamics appears to be based in Maryland, around 450 miles away.

The trip became unnecessary, however, because of a statement from Mark Clayman, NaviSite’s senior vice president of hosting services.  A snippet of it is what you saw in the first paragraph of this article; in the rest of the 80-word update, he emphasized the word “live” twice more.

Yet while that adjective may finally (re)apply to some NaviSite properties, Clayman and his coworkers are probably hoping that it will also pertain to their company.  NaviSite’s taken quite a PR beating, and its stock appears to be slipping, as well.