The Planet Blog

Katie brought up some great points about an IT infrastructure provider checklist in her recent “World News from The Planet” video from ad:tech. Regardless of where you’re planning to host, you should always ask probing questions to determine just what, exactly, your provider brings to the table. Here are some points to consider:

Network

How does the provider’s network compare to the competition? Can it survive multiple bandwidth partner failures? Can it neutralize a multiple-Gbps DDOS attack?

Support

Is support staff available whenever I need it? Can I talk to a human immediately if I have an emergency? Does the provider employ certified staff that can help me with advanced issues?

Facilities

Can the provider host my IT infrastructure in multiple data centers and in more than one city? Does the company own its own facilities (or is it renting)? Is the data center entirely within the hosting provider’s control?

Power

Can the company survive a catastrophic power event such as being cut off from utility power for more than a week? Is the provider on a dedicated power grid within its facility or does it share a power infrastructure with other companies? Is the company’s power generation and distribution infrastructure regional (i.e., one unit per section of a data center) or is it integrated, providing true N+1 or better redundancy?

Vendors

Does the company use high-quality, name-brand vendors with equipment under warranty or does it offer generic, off-brand solutions? Do its vendors consider the company one of their top customers?

Product Portfolio

Does the provider offer a wide range of upgrades and add-ons or am I limited to its predefined packages? If the provider doesn’t have exactly what I need, can I special-order it?

Without definitive answers to questions like these, a price quote alone is pretty meaningless. After all, it’s the total value of the service — and not just the monthly fee — that is the true measure of any service offering.

Hi there, everyone. It’s been awhile, and in fact, this is only my second blog post. A great customer experience over the past few weeks prompted me to post, so I wanted to take a little time to relay it to you.

At The Planet, we’re not just a service provider — we’re also a customer of a several hardware, software and service vendors. Many of my recent projects have centered around our KVM offering, the Lantronix Spider KVM-over-IP unit. We’ve been searching for the best way to highlight the unique features and benefits of the Spider KVM that distinguish it from a standard KVM option.

We had a number of ideas — a demo unit, a demo video, etc. Lantronix really stepped up to the plate with an offer to produce a demo video that was custom-tailored to The Planet’s deployment of their hardware. I also deployed a demo unit that lets you see, first hand, how the Spider KVM unit functions in a real-world scenario.

Please take a moment to view the Lantronix Spider video. The Lantronix team did a really great job on short notice (it was probably seven days from concept to online publication), and it gives you a good feel for what the Spider KVM is all about.

While you’re at it, you can try out my demo KVM unit. By the way, Kevin told me that a few people have already checked out the KVM demo and requested a Windows demo box. I’m working on it. Thanks for the suggestion!

Back to my central thesis … It’s not just the work on the video: We just met with our account team and Lantronix executive management. Their openness to working with us, both to better promote their product and to build some of our user requirements back into their roadmap for future versions, was truly refreshing. More importantly, it reinforced in me the fact that we’re an important partner to all of our customers. We want to do what we can to make your business successful, so that we can grow along with you.

This is especially true within the Product Management team, since we are responsible for taking your needs and building them into our future releases. I look forward to hearing from you how we can improve our portfolio. Comment on the blog and let me know what you think.

-Aaron

I was reading Thanh Tran’s blog post the other night and I realized that I had the other side of that story to tell. I joined Everyone’s Internet in 2001, as the original RAQ 4i servers were just starting to be deployed and most data centers were demanding a huge setup fee to go along with a monthly service charge of $600 or more. At the time, our core business was providing dial-up internet access and this “new hosting thing” was an experiment that the owners had decided to try out.

Our support started out with a focus on control panel guidance (who here remembers the Cobalt web interface?) and reboots (offered within 24 hours, when our sysadmin, Patrick Smith, would drive from the call center to the collocation facility and process a batch of requests). At the time, my primary job responsibility was to visit customer Web sites and make sure they did not contain any adult content, which they often did when you got beyond the home page. How’s that for a job description?

Things went along at a moderate pace until two things changed at roughly the same time. First, Sun purchased Cobalt and stopped playing nice, forcing us to expand our offering to white box dedicated servers. Second, we launched our first $1 setup fee sale. I remember that I had just taken over the Web Sales team, which was then part of our dial-up sales department.

All of a sudden our little six-person team was buried in inquiries, new orders and demands for upgrades. Heady time, especially when you consider how the rest of the “tech bubble” was in the middle of a serious meltdown, and all the economy pundits could talk about was the downturn in business and a growing recession.

Now that I think about it, the ride that started that day has never really ended. 1Ghz servers became 2.0GHz+; white box systems turned into all-Dell data centers; unmanaged dedicated hosting gave way to Custom Self-Managed Servers or Private Racks; and now EV1 has joined with The Planet.

What strikes me most about that last milestone is how we all thought we would be dealing with an alien race, and instead we found we were working with the same people we had always been working with. Sometimes literally, and yes I’m talking about you, Keith.

So here we are, just over a year later, and the company known for having the best data centers has joined forces with the company known for having the best network. We also have several new members of the family on board, determined to make sure we become known for having the best support ever. I only hope the next six years are exciting as the last six were. Then again, with a company like this, how could they be anything else?

- Aaron