The Planet Blog

In “The Art of the Start,” Guy Kawasaki references the importance of operating under mantra rather than a mission statement. He argues that there’s no need to loquaciously explain your goals and practices to others (and yourself) if you instead pinpoint the key driving force behind your business and make it self-evident and unifying in everything you do.

Guy cites the Dilbert Mission Statement Generator as one of the best resources in creating a meaningless, buzzword-filled mission statement to rival those created by teams of consultants. The tool (now offline) allowed you to enter a few key phrases and select your favorite fancy words to create a mission statement like one he included in his “The Art of the Start” session at the Houston Technology Center:

We exist to professionally build long-term high-impact sources so that we may endeavor to synergistically leverage existing effective deliverables to stay competitive in tomorrow’s world.

The mission statement medium almost begs for $10 words when you really need to express a simple thought.

Take a look at The Planet’s Mission Statement … Notice anything interesting about it? Take a look at the heading:

Our Mission: Be the Best Host for You.

You don’t have to read beyond the first line of the page to know what we’re about. The sentiment might not be revolutionary, but what it loses in originality, it makes up for in sincerity:

To be the best host for you, we need to keep your business online and your Web sites fast. To be the best host for you, if you ever need to get in touch with us, we need to be available, friendly, honest, open and helpful. To be the best host for you, we need to have affordable prices and flexible solutions to fit your business.

The cynics in the audience are probably waiting for someone to break out a guitar to lead a sing-along at this point, but that’s not where we’re headed.

This post is a challenge to everyone reading it: Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to reach out to us any time that mantra does not permeate your experience as a customer of The Planet.

Will you take us up on the challenge?

-Kevin

Over the past few months, several thousand customers have already started using The Planet’s new customer portal – Orbit 2.0. Orbit 2.0 consolidates and improves upon our legacy ServerCommand and Orbit 1.0 portals by providing a functional superset of features and controls, along with an improved user interface. Thanks to the continued testing and valuable feedback from our Orbit 2.0 beta customers, we are ready to release the new customer portal to our entire user base.

Today, ALL CUSTOMERS have full access to Orbit 2.0.

Because we want to ensure you have plenty of time to get acclimated to the new portal, the transition to Orbit 2.0 will span two months. During this time, you can access both Orbit 2.0 and the legacy portals.

On August 17, 2009, we will terminate access to Orbit 1.0 and ServerCommand.

We are committed to making this transition as painless as possible and to ensuring that it will not impact your servers hosted at The Planet. If you’re interested in learning a little more about the transition to Orbit 2.0, here are the answers to the common questions we expect.

What is Orbit 2.0?

Orbit 2.0 is a new version of our customer portal. Orbit 2.0 features an improved navigation structure and layout, allowing easier access to commonly used features:

• Home Tab: By default, this page contains your current account balance, a view of recently opened tickets and any announcements from The Planet.
• Account Management Tab: Provides detailed views of statements, current billable services and payment methods, along with a full interface for managing users and sub-users within Orbit.
• Hardware Tab: Accesses all of the critical management features for your hosted servers, as well as products and services like load balancers, backup and Storage Cloud.
• Domains Tab: Manages your domains, SSL certificates and DNS.
• Network Tab: Allows you to view the health of our overall network, along with bandwidth utilization graphs for your individual servers.
• Tickets Tab: Provides an interface to manage all of your sales and support tickets.
• Orders Tab: Serves as the launch point for you to order additional products and services

How do I log into Orbit 2.0?

You can access Orbit 2.0 at https://orbit2.theplanet.com with your current username and password.

How long will I be able to access my current portal (Orbit 1 and ServerCommand)?

You will be able to access Orbit 1 and ServerCommand through August 17, 2009. On that date, we will terminate access to the legacy portals.

How do I get support for Orbit 2.0?

Orbit 2.0 is our production portal. Support is available through all standard support channels (phone, ticket and chat).

What do I do if I find an issue or have a suggestion for Orbit 2.0?

If you find a bug or have a suggestion, you can contact support or simply press the “Report Portal Issue” link at the top of every page of Orbit 2.

I am an Orbit 1 user, how will I migrate?

No migration is required. Simply log into Orbit 2.0 and use it. You can use both portals interchangeably through August 17, 2009.

I am a ServerCommand user, how will I migrate?

All features, except DNS management, are available in both portals simultaneously. No migration is required for those features, and you can use both portals interchangeably through August 17, 2009. DNS administration is available either through ServerCommand or Orbit 2.0, but not both. Our support team will help you migrate your DNS zones to Orbit 2.0 to allow for the exclusive use of Orbit 2.0. Migrations are not expected to have any DNS downtime, and access to the portal should not be interrupted.

If you have any more questions about the transition to Orbit 2.0, please visit our Orbit 2 Launch Announcement.

Welcome to Orbit 2.0!

-Urvish

Do you have any plans for Tuesday, June 16, 2009, at 11:00am?

Well … cancel them.

You’re invited to join us as we celebrate the opening of our new 106,000-square-foot colocation data center facility in Plano, Texas!

How often to do you get the chance to witness the ceremonial shearing of a beautiful ribbon by the blades of comically large scissors? Whatever your answer is to that question, I would suggest that’s not often enough, so you should take advantage of this opportunity.

The grand opening event for this data center — our eighth — will feature remarks from The Planet Chairman & CEO Douglas J. Erwin and Plano City Manager Thomas H. Muehlenbeck. A light lunch and refreshments will be served, and you, as our guests, will have the opportunity to tour the ultra-secure, “green” facility.

On the technical front, the new data center uses the latest modular cooling technology from Turbine Air Systems (TAS), with high-efficiency, water-cooled chillers that eliminate the possibility of an interior water leak. The facility meets SAS 70 Type II standards and is protected by biometric security access.

If you’re keeping track at home, the addition of this raised-floor real estate brings The Planet’s footprint up to 224,000 square feet … more than five acres of enterprise-class server space.

For more event information and to register to attend, visit http://www.theplanet.com/New-Data-Center-Grand-Opening/.

If you wait too long to register, your “light lunch” might end up being a package of Ritz crackers and a jar of peanut butter, so sign up today!

-Kevin

Today, we announced the availability of a new report from market research firm Stratecast which supplies conclusive evidence that The Planet’s enterprise-grade hosted IT infrastructure reduces operating costs for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) by 51 percent over a three-year period.

Naturally, this report is monumental for small business owners — especially in a period of economic uncertainty. Understanding that I couldn’t do the significance of the report justice, I decided to get a little help from the United States of America’s forefathers … A Hosting Declaration of Independence for the Small Business Owner:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for small business owners to establish presences online that will connect them with their customers and to assume among the powers of the hosting industry, the separate and equal station to which they are entitled as a competitive company in this day and age, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation from hosting their infrastructure in their closets.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all businesses are created equal, that they are endowed by their owners with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Cost Savings, Infrastructure Flexibility and the pursuit of Competitiveness. —

That to secure these rights, hosting companies are instituted among Men and Women, deriving their powers from the consent of their customers, — That whenever any Form of Hosting becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the Small Business Owners to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Hosting Paradigm, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its business in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their Budget and Peace of Mind.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that In-Home Hosting Models long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while their current environments are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the hosting to which they are accustomed.

But when a long train of paying too much and worrying about downtime, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such a Hosting infrastructure, and to provide a new Platform for their future security. —

Such has been the patient sufferance of many Small Business Owners; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Methods of Hosting their Servers. The history of the present Do It Yourself Hosting Model is a history of repeated delays, overpayments and outages, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these Small Businesses.

To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world:

SMBs can dramatically cut IT costs by more than 51% when comparing a DIY infrastructure with a hosted option.

A hosted infrastructure offers elements that characterize an enterprise-grade data center, one that meets best-practices criteria for data backup and storage, as well as provides a robust business continuity plan in case of disruption of service. These elements would need to be added to the costs for a DIY data center.

Hosted IT infrastructure places more control into the hands of the SMB. For many businesses, on-site proximity to IT infrastructure and in-house dedicated or contracted personnel provides a comforting sense of control. The truth is the physical location of IT infrastructure is immaterial to users, reputation and credibility are paramount to hosted IT Infrastructure providers, and application control remains in the hands of the business organization.

An IT infrastructure provider brings experienced and trained personnel responsible for choosing infrastructure equipment and suppliers on behalf of all of its subscribers.

Hosted IT infrastructure solutions reduce business risk for the SMB. The hosted provider’s business size, years in the hosted business, and diversity of subscribers that represent multiple vertical industries will, in many instances, exceed similar measurements of its individual subscribers. Also, subscribing to a hosting provider offloads SMB spend and attention to non-core but mission-critical functions.

In every stage of these Oppressions Small Business Owners have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A DIY solution, which is thus marked by every piece of evidence that may define a Poor Business Decision, is unfit to be the hosting infrastructure of a business.

We, therefore, the Representatives of The Planet, in The Planet Blog, Assembled, appealing to the Internet At Large for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good Customers of this Company, solemnly publish and declare, That the Small Business Owners are, and of Right ought to be Free to choose a hosted infrastructure, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to their Legacy DIY Solutions, and that all business connection between them and their server closets, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent Customers, they have full Power to choose their Services, conclude Peace of Mind, contract Alliances with Hosting Partners, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent Customers may of right do. —

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Service Level Agreements, we mutually pledge to give our businesses Enterprise Hosting Environments, to Save Money, and to enjoy the Freedom and Flexibility that hosting provides.

- Kevin Hazard (but mainly these guys)

To download the full Stratecast white paper (sans US History positioning) and to learn more about how hosting can save you money, visit http://www.theplanet.com/Hosting-Reduces-Costs/.

-Kevin

A few weeks ago, Russ Capper, one of the co-hosts of The BusinessMakers Radio Show, interviewed The Planet’s Chairman and CEO Doug Erwin for Episode 197 and for a Web Xtra. Since then, we’ve had several business-focused listeners contact us to ask for a broader explanation of what IT hosting means for them, so we put together a few vignettes covering the basics of hosting.

In Episode 203 on Saturday, The BusinessMakers ran the first of six installments in the series, recorded by our very own Web Hosting Evangelist Kevin Hazard. The topic: What business owners should consider when evaluating IT hosting for their business.

The show airs on Houston’s KPRC-AM 950 every Saturday at 8:00am, and Momentum Broadcasting just announced plans for syndication nationwide! Russ does a great job, so if you haven’t listened in, he conducts some terrific interviews with business thought leaders.

-Yvonne

P.S. Kevin says he is available to sign autographs now that he’s as big as Steve Jobs, Fred Smith and Steve Forbes.

On Monday, Kevin touched on a pretty hot-button topic in our industry when he focused on the hype surrounding “The Cloud.” It reminded me of an interesting chart that plotted where various hosting technologies sit on the “hype cycle.”

Gartner, Inc. is the technology resource and advisory company that created the five-phase hype cycle to track new technologies. Because it’s much easier to understand each of the phases if you hear it straight from the horse’s mouth, take a moment to visit Gartner’s explanation of the five phases. Once you’re done there, come on back and we’ll take a look at a hosting-specific version of their hype cycle:

“The Cloud”

Cloud computing and cloud storage are hot and are getting hotter. With the Utopian promises of the cloud making every other hosting platform obsolete, Gartner places “Cloud” between the technology trigger and peak of inflated expectation phases. In its current incarnation, regardless of what you’ve heard, the cloud is not going to do your taxes, balance your checkbook or give you a massage. I’m pretty sure that you’ll hear that it can change your car’s oil and run a marathon for you before we hit the peak of inflated expectations for the technology, but don’t quote me on that yet.

In reality, cloud-based solutions are good for delivering on-demand services with utility-based billing. This is often misrepresented as being cheaper than dedicated alternatives, but the flexibility — of being able to use as much as you need one day and then dropping to zero the next — comes at a price. Your overall spend at the end of the month may well be less than a dedicated alternative, but your $/resource used may be more. If you have a relatively constant computing workload or storage needs, you will be better off with a dedicated device or a cloud product that offers discounts for commitments on usage.

Other important tenets of cloud services are scalability and elasticity. This means the ability to get as much as you need of a certain resource – whenever you need it – and then the ability to revert to your previous usage when the demand spike drops off. Elasticity – the ability to grow and shrink provisioned resources on the fly – is probably more important than scalability for most customers. Every cloud customer benefits from the on-demand management of provisioning additional resources to accommodate unanticipated traffic spikes, and very few will ever push the limits of the system.

Virtualization

Virtualization – the use of software to create independent virtual environments on a single server – is quietly falling from the peak of over-inflated expectations. We’ve realized that the virtualization model isn’t necessarily a complete game changer, but as we head toward the trough of disillusionment, we’re starting to see the real value it can bring.

Virtualization is a great enablement technology in achieving specific business goals: cost savings through higher utilization rates and resource consolidation – plus power and space savings – are achievable, as are cost-effective disaster recovery solutions. Not everyone can save money with virtualization. To begin, you need enough servers so when they’re consolidated, the virtualization technology spend is less than the cost of the decommissioned servers. In fact, a typical outcome is the infrastructure is made far more resilient because of the inherent values of virtualization – and costs don’t drop significantly … A good outcome overall, but not the panacea that was promised a few years back.

Hosting

While the dedicated hosting model has been around for a while, it’s still growing and evolving. As an offshoot of colocation, the model seemed pretty straightforward. One might assume that the hype has plateaued, but we’re still seeing flashes of enlightenment.

We’ve realized that hosting doesn’t just apply to Web servers, but is relevant to the rest of the back office. Multiple service levels have evolved in the hosted environment, so customers can choose exactly what they need – from completely self-managed dedicated servers to fully managed hosting solutions. Many who have long outsourced their Web hosting needs are starting to push email and collaboration applications to hosting providers. Email is a great example of an application well suited to hosting– while everybody needs email, does everybody need an email server or email administrator? Many hosting companies offer email as a service too, removing the need to even plan capacity on a single dedicated server.

Colocation

Colocation has found its groove, and we can safely say it’s on the plateau of productivity. It’s tough to misrepresent the expectations and the utility of the agreement: space, bandwidth and power to your server.

One sign that colo has found its place in the market is that we can easily define who it does suit: larger customers who own their equipment and have permanent IT staffs. It allows them to save money on data center acquisition and maintenance costs, while still allowing them to control over the infrastructure they desire. On the flip side, colocation is not necessarily suitable for a small shop with zero IT resources looking for regular maintenance assistance on a couple of Linux servers.

Caveat

Just because technologies like cloud and virtualization are apparently on their way to the trough of disillusionment doesn’t mean they are of any less utility than hosting or colocation … it’s just important to understand their popularity in the context of something like a hype cycle. Heck, we just released a storage cloud platform that is going to make hard drives obsolete.

Oh … did I just inflate expectations a little more?

-Rob

Given the results of the poll we included in our previous blog post, I started looking for a good opportunity to meet the demand for more “Pictures from The Planet’s Offices.”

As I came back from lunch, I noticed a peculiar sign in the basement level of our Houston HQ that was worthy of much more than just a picture, so I recruited Ali Lastrapes to shoot a quick video as a non-alcoholic St. Patrick’s Day treat for the blog.

Be sure you watch all the way to the end … though you’ll probably know what’s coming by the time you get there.