The Planet Blog

At the 2009 Cloud Computing Conference in Santa Clara, Calif., The Planet Director of Product Management Rob Walters was one of five experts invited to participate in a panel discussion about enterprise-level cloud computing – whether it’s a far-off dream or a present-day reality. Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan covered everything from whether the term “cloud” was too broad to be useful to whether private clouds and public clouds can coexist.

I caught up with Rob in the expo hall to have him weigh in on each of the questions for our loyal blog readers (you!):

I love the analogy he uses to explain why “the cloud” is such a difficult concept to explain. It seems to be a paradigm shift unlike any we’ve seen in recent memory, so the transition from hype and confusion to understanding and adoption should prove to be an interesting adventure over the next few years.

One of the most interesting questions asked of the panel was whether or not we’d be talking about cloud computing in 10 years. The unanimous answer: No. Why? The resounding sentiment is that shift toward “the cloud” will be so pervasive that a given platform’s “cloudiness” will be implied. This opinion is shared by a group of experts at a “cloud computing conference,” so there may be a little bias here … What do you think? Will the cloud take over and become the de facto standard or will demand for traditional IT remain in the midst of the cloud’s surge?

-Kevin

On May 14, 2007, The Planet’s Chairman and CEO Doug Erwin inaugurated the company’s first public blog, and over the past 441 days, we’ve come a long way. Today marks our 100^th blog post, so I thought I’d wax nostalgic about some of the key posts and changes that have kept this blog interesting, informative, entertaining and (sometimes) just plain crazy.

How do our 100 posts break down? I thought you’d never ask: 30 authors, 12 categories, 315 tags, 416 comments, 14 videos, loads of pictures, and according to WordPress 2.6’s “word count” feature, about 46,346 words (including this post). We’ve given technical tips, introduced crazy new team members, led photo tours of our offices and data centers, raced Dodge Vipers, welcomed you to our new HQ, and even launched new planets … all conveniently from one little URL: http://blog.theplanet.com.

What can you Expect in the Next 100 Posts?

We’re lining up several new contributors from all around The Planet who can give you even more insight into the day-to-day operations of our company. We’ve got a few surprises up our sleeves, so keep an eye out and enjoy!

-Kevin

The Planet’s Blog Feed mosaic created at Wordle.net

When Anastasia Tubanos of The WHIR came down to Houston, she had a chance to meet with several people on our team to get a sense of where the company has been, where the company is, and where it is going.

Last week, we posted Anastasia’s interview with Urvish Vashi, which covered the recent launch of Planet Alpha, Planet Northstar and our Advanced Services. In the video below, she speaks with The Planet’s Chairman and CEO Doug Erwin about our company culture, building a solid business foundation through the merging of two successful companies, and his vision for The Planet over the next two years.

And boy do we know how to throw a party! Well, at least our customers do. New Year’s Eve Nation, a new startup company out of New York, plans for one event 364 days out of the year: a national New Year’s Eve party spanning four time zones and eight cities. That’s one hell of a party.

Ex Spin City producer-turned-entrepreneur Jann Yogman has been throwing New Year’s Eve bashes in Manhattan since 1997 and is the genius behind the event. Last year, he decided to go national with his soirée and did just that using live feeds via the internet. Yogman connected five cities and allowed party goers to interact with each other via text messaging and video — all of which is broadcast on plasma screens at each location.

Last year, there were five cities. This year, it was bumped to eight, including New York, Los Angeles, Denver, Dallas, Seattle, Philadelphia, Boston and Detroit. 8,000 people attended the party billed as “8 Cities. 4 Timezones. 1 Outrageous Party.”

So what hosting company with world-class datacenters and the most reliable network powered the event?

That’s right.

Not only did this party welcome in 2008 with a serious bang, it also gives back by donating 10% of the net profits to Micheal J. Fox’s Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.

You can read more about the event and the goals for the future on CNN.com or the New Year’s Eve Nation website.

Happy New Year, Y’all!

-Ali

With the Tier 1 Research Hosting Transformation Summit coming up next week, I thought I’d take a moment to prognosticate some of the topics of conversation that might be overheard during three-day event.

Let me set the stage for you before I amaze you with my (soon-to-be proven accurate) predictions …

The Attendees: Hosting service providers, content delivery networks, independent software vendors, investors, deal-makers and key hosting value chain vendors.

The Goal: Discuss the evolving hosting landscape and how technological innovations will change the industry.

The Setting: A little town in Nevada …

The Conversations That Will Be Overheard at The Summit

I think this whole “Internet” thing is a fluke, and it’s on its last leg. We’re reinvesting in parchment paper and homing pigeons. It’s retro. It’s the past AND the future.

We’re developing underwater data centers. Seventy percent of the Earth’s surface is covered by water, and we’re going to capitalize on that potential data center space.

We’re replacing all of our servers with iPhones. We don’t know how that will affect service levels, but it’ll make all of our data center pictures look very cool. Additionally, we’re setting every iPhone’s homepage to http://iphone.facebook.com to become the Facebook-est host in the industry.

I’m very interested in Utility Computing, but I’m still not clear as to how the servers will connect to my hot water heater and/or clothes dryer.

We’re in the alpha phase of “smell-o-hosting” development. We plan on rolling into the beta phase as soon as the smells we transmit deviate from “burnt silicon.”

Wait … So you’re saying that the NOC projectors can display data center monitoring statistics? We just use ours to play life-sized games of Tetris.

We’ve cut support calls down to zero! Instead of having normal “classical” hold music, we are looping David Hasselhoff singing Hooked on a Feeling. In fact, we haven’t had anyone stay on the line beyond the first line of the song.

As you can see, I’m not breaking any ground with those guesses. Who doesn’t want underwater servers? What about the data center full of iPhones? Yeah, that’s what I thought. I’ve warned you, so don’t be surprised when you try to call your data center and you hear “Ooga Chakka…” Wait. No. I won’t subject you to reading the lyrics.

I’ll report back next to let you know how well I did with my forecast.

-Kevin

a night doesn’t go by that I don’t find myself thinking about the planet’s current and future customers … about their business needs … their suggestions and comments … and how they rely on the planet to supply their IT solutions … it’s one of the things that keeps me up at night … i’ve spent a lot of time in the past few months … talking to lots of folks and asking questions … anytime I could corner some of our employees, customers or industry folks … picking up bits and pieces on what we can do better …

i’m very lucky to have a great group of folks at the planet and incredible customers … all willing to talk to us … in fact, we feature a number of our customer success stories on our web site … dickson supply, bigstockphoto.com and auto lead exchange to name just a few … these companies come to the planet for help in managing their hosting operations … they don’t want to manage server farms or internet providers … and don’t want to run their own data centers and man them 24×7x365 or worry about negotiating the best hardware deal … they’ve asked the planet to take on that responsibility …

no matter what business you’re in … to serve your customers you need to talk to them and really understand their business needs … there’s an old, old, old sales saying, “to sell john brown what john brown buys, you must learn to see through john brown’s eyes,” … don’t remember the author but I picked it up during ibm sales training … a couple of weeks ago we had a company meeting and talked about some of our customers … I talked with employees about customer success stories … about how companies rely on us to run their business … which is why we’ve got to be at the top of our game … i talked about ownership and follow through … about customer satisfaction and how we all work to support their needs …

i wanted all my employees to hear from a customer first-hand so they can continue to learn what “johnny” needs … so i invited a customer to come and speak to the company and tell them first-hand about why they picked us and what they expect from the planet in regards to support and service … this customer also happened to be one of our newer accounts that’s moving their entire server inventory to the planet from two other providers … the speaker did a super job … at the end of the meeting I heard several folks talking about the impact he made and how it really crystallized our responsibility to customers … we’re going to do more talking and listening to our customers … I know we can never talk to all 22,000 of you, but we can try … over the next quarter we’ll be launching several programs toward this end …

we have a great group of employees at the planet … and we’re continuing to invest in them with training and tools … and along the way we’ll bring talent in to fill certain needs … speaking of which … the latest addition to the senior management team is steve reichert … steve joins us as vice president of information technology and operations … he’ll be running the IT organization, software development and operations of our data centers in both cities …

steve comes to the planet with more than 27 years of experience in running IT organizations and data centers … most recently from infocrossing in omaha … in college he did his fortran and cobol programming on a 029 key punch that he lugged around in his backpack … just kidding … he’s trading in the corn fields and moving to dallas, where he lived for more than 16 years earlier in his career … you can read more about him on our web site … we’re thrilled to have him join the team … we’re working really hard to supply you with great products, excellent service and great results … we know we have more to do … in fact we’ll never totally be satisfied because excellence in never truly achieved … the yard sticks keeps moving …

thanks for your notes … all the input helps me learn … and even sleep better at night … be careful … it’s a jungle out there.

- Doug