What a bunch of geeks …

Before I started writing this blog post, I re-read the previous entries. Just for the record, I work with a bunch of geeks. But that’s ok, because I’m a geek myself.

I’ve invested 32 percent of my life at The Planet. Nine out of my 28 years for those who prefer hard numbers.

Having been at The Planet since day one, I often refer to myself as The Planet’s official historian. I’ve been here to experience the great success and witnessed our tremendous progress.

Back in 1998, we were seven employees strong trying to figure out a business plan and method of execution from within the confines of our 1,500 square foot office. At the time we were known as NT Access. Microsoft later gave us a gentle nudge to show their disapproval of our NT reference. Apparently they didn’t believe our story that NT referred to North Texas at an all Windows (at the time) hosting facility in Dallas.

So we became Sector 12, a reference to Toy Story, since Buzz Lightyear’s destination was Sector 12.

We kept a Buzz Lightyear action figure at the front desk as a conversation piece. Nine years later, I guess it’s still effective if I’m bringing it up. I have always liked the Sector 12 logo. Here’s a sneak peak. I’d venture to guess that only 10 of the current 500 employees have ever seen or even remember this logo.

When we first started out, I’ll be the first to admit that we didn’t have formal policies and rules in place. In fact, I still remember when we had to tell employees, “Don’t break rule #1.” I guess it didn’t matter that rule #2 and beyond didn’t exist at the time.

Thinking back through the years, it’s amazing how far the dedicated server hosting industry has come. In writing this entry, I looked in my archives for a copy of our original business plan from 1998. The biggest bandwidth option at the time was 2,500 GB/month at a rate of $12,995. The same option goes for $175 now. Just for the record, that’s 1.3% of our asking price. Wow. It’ll be interesting to see where things go from here.

In re-reading this entry, I realize it’s unfair for me to call myself The Planet’s historian. I only know half of the story. Because of our merger with EV1Servers last year, we can’t ignore the rich history of my fellow colleagues. I’ve relocated to Houston since the merger, so it sounds like I need to go in search of a fellow geek/storyteller to fill me in on the rest of the story.

-Thanh

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 5th, 2007 at 5:00 am and is filed under The Planet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.