The Planet Blog

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

I’m Kevin, and I’m the “new guy” at The Planet with the peculiar “Web Hosting Evangelist” job title. This customer evangelist role is a new one at our company, so it’s likely to change a bit as I jump into the job. I can give you a quick run-down of what I’ll be doing, and you can decide if you want to create a “Kevin Hazard Is Amazing Fan Club” or just not read my blog posts. As Chevy Chase explains in Caddyshack, “In one physical model of the universe, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line … in the opposite direction,” so the best way to approach “what” I will be doing is to back into it from the other direction: Why am I doing it?

The “Why”

As you probably know if you have read any press releases, articles, or interviews about/by anyone The Planet,

“The Planet is the leading provider of On Demand IT Infrastructure solutions, hosting more than 22,000 small- and medium-size businesses and 2.8 million Web sites worldwide. By offering the best choice of servers, software tools and world-class support, backed by state-of-the-art facilities and unmatched network connectivity, The Planet helps turn information technology into a powerful competitive advantage that enables customers to successfully grow their businesses.”

While that description accurately and succinctly summarizes a great deal of information about our company, it doesn’t tell much about “who” the company is, and it is certainly not blog fodder. I was hired by The Planet to use a bit of my uncanny wit and debonair charm to provide a little more “corporate transparency” for you. We are not reinventing the wheel by having a blog, but it is one of the “best practices” for beginning the move toward transparency on the large scale.

My goal is to provide a bit more insight into The Planet’s day-to-day business. I may snap some pictures of day-to-day life around the office or interview (read: question mercilessly) some unknowing Planet employee. Do a quick search for “company evangelist” or “corporate evangelist,” and more often than not, you’ll see the word “listen” at least a dozen times. In a word, I’ll be a “listener,” proactively maintaining great communication in the provider-customer relationship.

The “What”

1. Improve the User Experience.
2. Refer to Responsibility #1
3. Refer to Responsibility #1

Those extensive responsibilities are fairly broad and quite general, but entirely accurate. In addition to making some magic happen here through our blog, I will work with our Web development team to improve the user experience on our corporate site and in our order process, from your first click to your server’s provisioning … and even through the “eternal life” of your account (sorry, a little “evangelist” humor). We’ve already got a solid plan of attack to begin some of these experience improvements, and we will tap the advice of you, our customer (or prospective customer, wink-wink) to ensure we continue on the right track to provide the best hosting experience in the industry.

I have already seen a few blog content suggestions in the comment sections of other posts, but if you have any other content requests, drop them in a comment on this post or send me an email at khazard (at) theplanet (dot) com.

- Kevin