The Planet Blog

Last week, Bruce Eric Anderson visited our H2 Data Center in Houston with a team of colleagues from Dell to check out the unboxing and installation of a new rack of Dell’s PowerEdge710 servers, which feature Intel’s Nehalem processor. As any great evangelist would do, he posted an article about his visit on Dell’s “Inside Enterprise IT” Blog, including a video from inside H2 with The Planet’s General Manager of Dedicated Hosting Urvish Vashi.

Urvish explains the wide array of product and service options available at The Planet and how our close relationship with Dell helps us meet our customers’ needs. Check out the video below to get a sneak peek of the install of the new Dual Xeon 5530 computing powerhouses.

All of the server geeks in the audience are probably drooling right now.

-Kevin

Drum roll, please … it’s a momentous day for The Planet!

This morning we’ve launched an awesome new Web site that will make it far easier for you – our customer – to learn about and purchase The Planet’s products and services. We’ve made the site easier to navigate, backed by a wealth of new features for visitors who aren’t certain which services are best for their business.

Prominently featured is our messaging based on “The Power to Choose.” We offer the broadest range of options in the industry. Whether you’re looking for dedicated servers, management services, fully managed hosting or colocation, you’ll find a solution that meets your needs.

You may have noticed advertising from The Planet on many new properties, as well as a new campaign that has The Planet ads showing up many places you have never seen us before, based on your having visited our site in the past … and this is just the beginning.

Go ahead and take a test drive through the new site and let us know what you think!

-Steve

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.

Today, we’re excited to announce a few big changes at The Planet!

Planet Northstar Managed Hosting

First, we’d like to tell you about Planet Northstar Managed Hosting, the first and only managed hosting service to leave behind the reactive support attitudes of the past and present a proactive vision of the future.

Our goal with Planet Northstar Managed Hosting is to turn your current perception of reactive support in managed hosting on its head. By introducing you to the Anticipation Advantage — a visionary way to help you grow and leverage technology — that utilizes a proactive, best practices methodology for everything from architecting systems to change management, security by design, to reporting results and more. Executed by a designated team of certified and seasoned professionals who know your name and your business, you’ll always know who you’re working with because they are all personally accountable for your success.

Here’s what Mark Schmulen, co-founder of Nutshell Mail says about our new service: “Our Planet Northstar support team has been incredibly proactive managing our IT systems so we can focus on growing our business. I would recommend Planet Northstar to anyone looking for managed hosting services.”

Planet Alpha Dedicated Servers

Along with the introduction to our managed hosting division, we’ve been working so hard on our dedicated server business that it has become a new entity: Planet Alpha Dedicated Servers.

There’s a powerful force behind the birth of our Planet Alpha Dedicated Servers division: it’s the power to choose. Your dedicated hosting provider fits the needs of your business model instead of the other way around, and we agree. You’ll see that Planet Alpha has added new Ready To Go server choices, Virtual Racks with Gigabit connectivity — and most important — a new set of “a’ la carte” Alpha Advanced Services for monitoring and security that you can use either solo or bundled in any combination.

See for yourself by visiting our transformed Web site and be sure to check out our new shopping cart, along with lots of new dedicated server specials.

Special Launch Promotions

We are celebrating this new era in IT hosting with a constellation of great offers, and it starts with a Big Bang of Savings. Try our new Alpha Advanced Services server monitoring for only $12.50 for your first month or add our server security module for only $20 for your first month. Save 25% off our latest dedicated servers. Get incredible deals on our Data Protection Servers (formerly “Dedicated Backup Servers”). Check out our Planet Alpha Server Specials to see how much you can save.

What About “The Planet”?

Keep in mind that our new stars — Planet Northstar and Planet Alpha — still orbit around The Planet, our corporate core of management and infrastructure that powers and sustains our success as a world leader in IT hosting. Our core infrastructure and processes have been designated as SAS 70 Type II certified: this includes in-depth studies in each of our six data centers, our network, provisioning systems, operations, physical and environmental security, and problem management through our customer portal. Visit the The Planet Corporate section of our Web site to learn more.

Join us on this unique journey through a new universe of IT hosting. Remember that you can contact us at any time through Live Chat on our Web site at www.theplanet.com or call us at 866-325-0045.

Welcome to the new world of IT hosting. It’s made possible by your input, your loyalty and your energy.