Instant gratification …
July 31, 2007 by Urvish Vashi, Product Management in The Planet
Today, we’re excited about launching The Planet’s Ready-To-Go servers. These are servers that we can provision and activate for customers in under an hour.
We’re able to commit to such fast delivery times in part because we limit the customizations, but mostly because we keep servers pre-provisioned in the HOPPER. Believe it or not, this stands for Hardware Object Pre-ProvisionER. This is a specialized function of our Auto-Provisioning system which essentially matches orders for servers to our available inventory of servers.
Once we’ve picked the configurations for the HOPPER — and for now we’re sticking with just three of our more popular configurations — the HOPPER is kept full. What this essentially boils down to is that the HOPPER takes servers and pre-installs the OS (RedHat) and the control panel (cPanel). Once that’s done, the Web site is ready to start taking customer orders. When the HOPPER runs low, we simply “refill” it. It really is just that simple.
The Planet’s goal is to add additional server configurations into the Ready-To-Go family. Which is why you’ll find that we’re not charging extra for these servers.
However, for now, we just need to figure out how we prioritize which servers should be brought into the Ready-To-Go family next. I’d love to hear your suggestions.
Happy instant gratification …
- Urvish
July 31st, 2007 at 10:14 am
I would just do FIFO for orders. I am sure everyone that needs a server in an hour would all be in a rush.
August 1st, 2007 at 2:28 pm
Gary - Today, all Ready-To-Go orders are processed FIFO, for sure. In general, we do go FIFO for everything, but sometimes orders can be fulfilled faster because we don’t have to crack the box to add RAM or drives or even install special software.
Thanks for the comment.