“Welcome to Starbucks!” “Uh yea I’ll have a half decaf grande half-soy, half-low fat, iced white chocolate mocha ,double-shot, gingerbread latte, extra dry, light ice, with 3 Splenda’s, one Sweet-n’-Low, and one NutraSweet please!” “…Coming right up, Next!” “Umm, I want a hot tall skinny upside down with a whip caramel macchiato” “Nice Choice! Next!” “I will have a Grande extra shot fresh skim milk latte, extra foam, 2 splenda’s and a dash of cocoa!” I am sure that makes sense to all of you. You can’t discount (and they certainly don’t) Starbucks for letting you have it like you want it.
It’s like the Burger King slogan, “Have it your way” I want a Whopper with cheese, extra cheese, bacon, extra pickles, no onion, light mayo, extra ketchup, a large fry and a chocolate shake with strawberry syrup mixed in. Well that just made me hungry.
SoftLayer isn’t much different than a Starbucks or a Burger King. With our full line of servers, services, network and locations you too can make your order as easy or as complex as you like. And yes you can have it like you like it, need it, or even have it your way! It could look like this:
“uhh, yea I would like a server in Dallas, TX. A Quad Proc Quad Core Intel 7320 2.13 Ghz Tigerton with 8gb of Ram, 3000 GB of public bandwidth, 8 secondary IP’s, redundant power supplies, Four 300gb 15K RPM Scsi Drives configured in a Raid5 array, Windows Server 2008 Standard, Business continuance Insurance, TCP Service monitoring, Automated reboot from monitoring and an ASA 100Mbps Firewall. I would then like a server in Seattle, WA. Make it a Quad Proc Quad Core Intel 7310 1.60 Ghz Tigerton with 16gb of Ram, 6000 GB of public bandwidth,168 secondary IP’s, redundant power supplies, Two 250gb SATA II drives configured in a Raid1 mirror, Debian, TCP Service monitoring, Automated reboot from monitoring and an APF software firewall for Linux. Then I need a Quad Proc Quad Core Opteron 8346 1.80GHz in Washington DC with 32GB ram, 10000GB of public bandwidth, 128 Secondary IP’s, a single 1TB SATA II hard Drive, 1GB Lockbox, 250GB NAS, 80GB of iSCSI SAN Storage, a 500GB Evault backup, Redhat Ent. Linux 5, Plesk 8, Urchin, 24×7x365 NOC Monitoring, notification, and Response, McAfee Virus Scan and McAfee Free PCI Scans for life oh and I almost forgot I would like a CDNLayer Account as well!” “…Coming right up!”
As you can see an order from SoftLayer can be just as fulfilling and just as hard to say in one breath as a special burger from Burger King or even your favorite drink at Starbucks. Don’t let the crazy amount of options we offer make your ordering experience any harder than it should be. If you have any questions at all, one of our fine upstanding Slales folks will be glad to walk you through it from beginning to end. Happy Ordering!
I know what you’re thinking; here I go again talking about why you HAVE to outsource your datacenter and infrastructure. Not this time. In previous blogs I have talked about doctors and baseball players, etc and the ways they outsource. It hit me that everyone most likely does some sort of outsourcing every day and it is just part of our evolving society.
Think about how fast things changed from Y2K until now. So much technology; the way we listen to music, HDTV, BluRay, Hydrogen, Electric, and Hybrid automobiles, the green movement. Change is everywhere. If you look back to 1900 or even the 1950’s changes were much slower and they weren’t nearly as life-changing. A change to someone’s daily routine back then wasn’t a life changing stressful event like it can be now.
So how do we cope with all these fast changes today? Some form of outsourcing. Think about it, even going out to eat is outsourcing. Some of my single friends have never even used the kitchen equipment in their homes. They outsource their kitchens! Most use the fridge to keep the adult beverages cold but that is to drink with the Papa John’s pizza they have delivered.
Ok, so now for the real reason this blog fell out of my head. I was talking to my mom yesterday and she was talking about quilting. She is a quilting nut. My whole house is buried in quilts. My wife loves them. I am pretty sure my brother’s house has quite a few as well. We have a wedding quilt with pics of the wedding and signatures and quotes from people that were at the wedding. We have a “charm” quilt with 1020 or so different fabrics in it including fabric from my favorite shirt (at that time). We have too many quilts to name and I don’t know what about half of them are called really. They all have “quilty” names.
So for those of you who don’t know a whole lot about quilting (and I don’t either) there are machine quilted quilts and there are hand quilted quilts. Machine quilted quilts are faster to finish but aren’t worth as much money and can stand the test of time better. Hand quilted quilts take much longer to finish and can’t stand up to as much punishment but are worth more money in the long run.
So, I have always wondered how my mom can bust out all these quilts so fast. The ones that are machine quilted always made sense. She can make them faster and they are tougher. But she gives us several that are handmade and I could never figure out where she got all this free time. I mean she is retired and sleeps till like 11am! Anyway, to make a good quilt you have to go search for all the right fabric, sew the top all together, then the bottom, and then quilt it all up nice and pretty - like toilet paper really. Batting on the inside makes it fluffy.
It takes time to do all those things and she just keeps on making them at blazing speed. So I finally figured it out yesterday when on the phone with her she mentioned she dropped 3 quilts off to be quilted. It didn’t even faze me at first and then it hit me, she is cheating! I said, “You did what with the quilts?” So I learned yesterday that some of my quilts I thought my mom hand quilted, were finished by people I don’t even know! I guess outsourcing is even to the point where grannies can do it to trick their grandkids! Where will it all stop!
In this fast moving age, it probably won’t so don’t miss the outsourcing train; it can save you some time - time you can spend with your family making quilts if you choose.
PS. I wonder if I set the record for using the letter “Q” the most times in a single blog?
Filth flarn foul filth! You all know by now that my brother and I both work at SoftLayer. We are both smart enough to know that it is THE place to work. Ok, well I work and he just sits in his office dreaming of money (He has done that most of his life). I am pretty sure he still has the penny he took from me (forcibly) when I was still his “little” brother. Anyway, I have since outgrown him and he no longer wants to wrestle or play fight. Go figure, I think he got scared. As I have said before he can’t even beat me in racquetball anymore. So what does he do to pay me back? He gets a SAS-70 Type II review (Statements on Auditing Standards) underway and then somehow strategically gets it dumped right in the middle of my desk. Now let’s review, Customer Service = Accounting, NO. Customer Service = Compliance, NO! ☺ Somehow, somewhere I forgot to either skip that meeting or hide accordingly. I think maybe a sick day was in order. I should have been invisible, something, anything. But alas, here I sit reading, writing, editing, and screaming at new better cooler policies and procedures that will make auditors understand that we know what we are doing and we do it well. Now he could have simply selected SAS-70 type I and then we could just “say” we do all this extra stuff and we do it well and whala! SAS-70. But NO! He had to over achieve and pick Type II which says that we have to let someone else inside to make sure we do what we say we do. Not a problem really except that part about it landing in my lap! I’ll get him back, no worries.
In all seriousness (as serious as I can be anyway), this SAS-70 review is a great thing. It is making us look pretty closely at ourselves as a company and as individuals and making us make sure we are the best at what we say we do and making us do it. It will also allow larger enterprise companies to use us as their outsourced IT solution. I keep talking about why companies should outsource and this is one more reason. We are under review currently and should have a decision by the end of the year. Once we get it then you can have the best servers, the best portal, the best network solution, and the best support and have it all outsourced to a “hopefully” SAS-70 certified datacenter.
I am sure my blog-hogging brother will have a rebuttal for this one, and probably Mike Jones as well for using his coined word of blog-hogging again. Blog on!
1800: The U.S. Library of Congress was established.
1898: Spain declared war on the US.
1907: Hershey Park, founded by Milton S. Hershey for the exclusive use of his employees, is opened.
1916: Irish Nationalist declared Ireland an independent republic.
1967: Soviet Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov dies in a space mission.
1970: We were all happily living under President Nixon and the Chinese transmitted its first song over satellite, “East is Red”.
1981: IBM introduces its first PC, the IBM PC! Thanks!!!!
1990: West and East Germany agree to merge their currency.
Famous People Born on this Date: Willem de Kooning, Anthony Trollope, Robert Penn Warren, Edmund Cartwright, Shirley MacLaine.
Deaths: Estee Lauder
Astrological Sign: Taurus – They are patient and reliable, Warmhearted and loving, Persistent and determined, placid and security loving. On the darkside they are Jealous and possessive, Resentful and inflexible, Self-indulgent and greedy.
So now that we have determined all of this historical and astrological hoopla you might be wondering what the heck this is all about. So I am going to focus on one year of all of this. 1970. I think the song they sent over the Chinese satellite, “East is Red” should have new words, something like “East is Red and Black!” DC! We are almost there! So here is a recording of the new song. JUST KIDDING! I wouldn’t do that to you twice!
I focus on today because it is our fearless leaders 38th Birthday. Here he is at 1 Day old. His mother was nice enough to send the picture.
Well, I think you all know by now that the greatest CEO in the world is none other than Lance Trevor Crosby of the Stephenville Crosby’s. Its cool working for Lance and for SoftLayer because he makes us all be a team. That is hard trust me! Try having to see your brother everyday and keep up with his bloghogging ways. Just kidding Gary.
Since it IS his birthday
I have to tell this story of yet another trip to work. (I know up until now you think I am just bucking for a promotion or a raise, but you write something like this about your CEO and see where it gets ya). Here goes.
I was crossing the bridge over the lake and this truck right in front of me was hauling snacks to all you hard workers in the world. These snacks fit in vending machines all over the place and you see them all the time. The funny thing is what was written on the back of the truck, and on both sides, and If I had a stinkin camera phone it would have made it even better.
What was written on the truck was, “I got Lance in my pants”! As you can imagine I almost drove into the lake from laughing so hard. When I got to my desk the first thing I had to do was try to find a picture for this blog. Well believe it or not, they sing it to you! “I got Lance in my Pants!” . If that isn’t the funniest slogan that you have ever heard then you don’t know our CEO like we do.
By the way, unlike most CEO’s in the world we all know him and see him every day and he puts in more hours than most of us which is a lot of total hours. So anyway, Happy Birthday to the big guy. Now is the company sponsoring a Happy Hour tonight or what?
6:10am – Alarm clock goes off. No, I don’t have one of the “easy wake light up your room slowly” Hammacher Schlemmer alarm clocks. I have the old school buzzer that bounces you off the ceiling. I suppose this is old technology but no servers needed. No kudos here.
6:11am – After wiping the gritty stuff the sandman left in my eyes away, I reach for my Blackberry. We outsource our Blackberry server to our cell provider but it certainly sends me emails all night long and SMS messages, etc. All of that happens on a server somewhere in a datacenter somewhere. And you know what happens in the news when the Blackberry network is down. PANIC! So, here’s to you, that nerdy IT Sysadmin smart guy that keeps them running!
7:00am – I hit the door and head out to the Echo. There is nothing cool about the Echo, trust me. No XM, Sirius, no Sync just good ole 103.3 sports talk with Mike and Mike. Go Cowboys! From 7am to 8am I am of course only doing two things, watching for the long arm of the law and Dryping. Along the way I pass through 3 tollbooths without even blinking because technology knows that I am there and have driven under it. RF technology is cool and if their servers were down they wouldn’t be able to charge my tolltag. Hmm….nevermind. Again, Here’s to you, that nerdy IT Sysadmin smart guy that keeps me from having to sit in the pay a buck lane.
8:00am – I am at my desk finally! Where I login to my workstation that uses servers in the background to authenticate me. The same servers then run a few scripts and I have all my data and email at my fingertips. Servers keep working in the background to deliver my email to me and allow me to IM my peeps both in and outside of the company and also give me the very needed - internet access. Here’s to you, our internal nerdy IT Sysadmin smart guy!
8:01am – The internet. I feel the need, the need for the internet. In the past I can say I was a junkie. I would just type in http://www.insertacoolwordheretoseeiftheyhaveawebsite.com/ kinda junkie. Sometimes you could find some pretty interesting sites using that trick and others it would just be someone domain parking. Now it is pretty much my bank, which has a ton of servers and technology (they even just rolled out two factor authentication), ESPN.com, our internal portal, webhostingtalk, theinnerlayer, the SoftLayer forums, facebook, and of course our website. Those pages keep me pretty satisfied during the day. So, here’s to you, that nerdy IT Sysadmin smart guy that keeps them running!
8:02am – Wife calls me on my IP phone. Just to see if I am at work and what I am doing and to tell me that the dog is running in circles. She is at home with 2 kids (4 and 2) so she needs to talk to someone I guess. And you guessed it, the phone uses technology too. So, here’s to you, that nerdy IT Sysadmin smart guy that keeps it ringing!
8:03am – Coffee, technology - yes – Servers NO! We need some coffee servers here. That is a great idea.
8:04am–11:45am – Open up about 57 different windows on my workstation and simultaneously work on all of them. If a server is down or a link is down somewhere I will know about it because I will not be able to do something…who knows what. So, here’s to you, that nerdy IT Sysadmin smart guy that keeps the network pinging.
11:45am – Hunger pains, it’s time for lunch. Off to play some Racquetball and get a smoothie. I walk in the door and they scan my retina, wait, I mean they scan my key card and I am free to enter. If their servers or workstations were down I am sure that would be a bad day to work the front desk at a gym. Can you imagine all the “roid rage” when they turned people away. So I whip my brother (Gary) at Racquetball but you have read his blogs, did you really think he could beat me? When we were both much younger he did, then he found numbers and equations and forgot how to play. So, here’s to you, that nerdy IT Sysadmin smart guy that make sure I get into the gym semi-daily.
12:30pm – Smoothie Time – Jamba Juice is right around the corner so I grab my smoothie and wheat grass shot and it’s back to the echo. I guess a juicer isn’t really cutting edge technology.
12:45pm – Back at my desk (on time as always … of course) and it is back to the 57 windows I have open and working. I tend to not go home until I have closed every window; that is the only way I can keep up with everything I am supposed to do. I have been officially titled the “heywWouldja guy” around here.
2:45pm – Time to head home. Ha! I’m just joking, gotchya.
6:45pm – I have now had enough technology for one day so it’s back into the echo to head home. The first light I come to, I don’t dare run (speaking of lights, without technology they tend to cause accidents and flash a lot, so there are definitely servers involved with them). It has one of those schnazzy new Red light cameras. That is $75 dollars I don’t want to hand them so they can add even more of those technological light cops to another light. Feel free to let these servers go down anytime guys…We are all on the same technical team here right?
7:45pm – Back at home. I walk in to the kids attempting to beat my scores on Guitar Hero and RockBand or playing on Xbox live, a wife cooking supper and a TV with Dish Network blaring. In the other room the 7 year old is listening to Miley Cyrus ..wait, maybe it is Hannah Montana not sure, on her cheapo wanna be Ipod. I sit down in front of the laptop that is on a wireless network and check my tickets and email one more time. Sometimes Dryping gets tough on the commute home because of all the traffic so I have to catch up. So, here’s to you, that nerdy IT Sysadmin smart guy that keeps the Xbox cool and keep the cool games coming!
9:45pm – Kids are in bed, playing not sleeping, and I settle in to watch an on demand movie instead of having to traverse all the way back to Blockbuster or wait on the next Netflix movie to arrive. They look better in HD anyway. I am assuming that guys that can keep satellites in space are pretty technical. So, here’s to you, that nerdy IT Sysadmin smart guy that keeps them flying!
Midnight – Set the non-technologically advanced alarm and pass out on the pillow.
So how much of that uses technology, servers, Datacenters, power, IP’s, DNS, etc etc. So, here’s to you, that nerdy IT Sysadmin smart guy that keeps that keep all of this stuff up and running with very little downtime. MY hat is off to you (because I look really funny in hats!)
Here is the much anticipated Song of the Year. So to keep up with new DC openings and doing a blog about it, I felt I had to attempt to out do Sleepless in Seattle. I believe with a little help from Dave we have done just that! Enjoy!
Professional athletes have them. Doctors have them. Lawyers have them. Chefs have them. Movie Directors have them. Writers have them. NASCAR drivers have them too.
Are you lost yet? Wondering what this has to do with hosting or small businesses? It’s really very simple. Let’s dig into a few of them.
Athletes - most are very good at what they do, hit the ball, kick the ball, throw the ball, shoot the ball, swing the club, etc. They are so busy learning to be the best at their trade that they don’t have time for the business side of their business. What do they do? They outsource that to an agent. Jerry Maguire might be the SoftLayer of agents. The best, the top of the line, the cutting edge, like us. He gets what the players want and more and was a master at customer service. The players don’t mind giving part of their hard earned cash to him because of the benefit they get from him. It is a very symbiotic relationship.
Doctors - they are paid to fix people. They have to keep up with the latest threats to our health and the ways to fix us. They have almost continuous education to worry about and don’t have time to worry about the office, and the bills, and whether they are getting timely insurance payments, etc. They are there to do whatever they can to help their patients. What do they do? They outsource to an office manager who takes care of the day-to-day tasks that a doctor just doesn’t have time for and frankly shouldn’t have to worry about. It’s really just another form of outsourcing.
Chefs - this one is interesting because I am going to make the assumption that the chef owns the restaurant. I agree that many times there are restaurants that hire chefs, but the argument goes both ways. Let’s say you want to open a restaurant but you can’t cook. You outsource to a chef. To turn it around, a chef can cook but wants his own restaurant. He is a master at cooking and has studied in culinary schools for years to become a great chef. What does he do about running the place? He outsources to a restaurant manager. The manager takes care of HR, and guest services, and the chef does what he loves - cooks.
So where does this leave you? Are you an individual who knows (insert what you know here) and have studied it for years and you are the worlds expert on it? Are you a small business owner who is looking for ways to make the hours of the day last longer and find that competitive edge? Are you that IT manager who has hit the technology roadblock and your company doesn’t have the large capital for the things you need to continue to scale your infrastructure? If you are then you need to consider hiring an agent of your very own. SoftLayer can be your technology agent and allow you to focus on what you do best!
p.s. Lance is the greatest CEO EVER! Now pay up! (Worth a shot, right?)
Outsource IT – Part III
Third in a series of three! In other words you won’t have to read this stuff anymore after this one. I will get back to the fun ones. I might try to make this one fun along the way. So I left off on the last one discussing some of the financial reasons and technical reasons to outsource your servers. This blog will be geared towards some ideas floating around in my head on what would be some good examples of outsourcing.
You have to step back and look at it from a different angle. If you aren’t ready to outsource the whole farm just yet, then you can go about it in a couple of different ways. One, you can outsource your sandbox, development, and/or test environment. We all know that with SAS 70 and SOX you have to have all of these (or most of them anyway). And outsourcing might be a good way of getting them in place. The cool thing about outsourcing any or all of those are you have a pristine environment and if it does get polluted somehow you can just reload the OS quickly and painlessly and try to tear it up again. Outsourced servers are great for this type of scenario. You can even get a few servers and carve them up virtually and have even more toys to play with. Now, you can just go buy new servers and have this in house but when they break or they are obsolete then you get to buy more. With an outsource model you can buy 1 or 100 and have them for 1 month or 2 years, it’s up to you, your needs, and your budget. You can add hardware, memory, change the OS daily, and only buy the License for a month instead of having to buy it outright when you buy your own servers. I personally believe this is a really good way to get acclimated to outsourcing and test the waters both with yourself and your boss. You always have to make sure they are ok with the way you are doing things. Well, sometimes anyway.
Another option with outsourcing is outsourcing production. Some bosses out in the world aren’t ready for this yet, but they will be. They like keeping their data close by and having multiple copies and instances and USB keys with copies on it, etc. That’s just the nature of data. Now we all know that you can have the same if not more redundancy in the outsourced model too, it is just hard to explain to them sometimes. I have to give them credit. Think about all the data in the world and how much of it we need to use every day. If folks like them didn’t demand that we techies keep it safe the world might have a bad day, I know I would. I use tons of data everyday (might be a fun blog).
If you decide to outsource dev/test or production you have the ability to scale quickly and accordingly when dealing with technology. Not having to be bogged down by worrying about hardware lead times, dealing with accounts payable, the receiving dock, and all the other worries you have when buying hardware is a liberating feeling. I know what you are thinking; I have been over this side of it a few times so I will just leave it at that but the numbers and today’s technology make it all come together and make good business sense.
Wow, I like all of this feedback guys! Really! I had been chewing on that blog for a while. I was basically trying to decide how to write it and apparently the format worked and got some juices flowing on our forums. I was going to post this on the Forums but I think it is a bit too long and isn’t using the forums standards. So here is my follow up to TheRabbit in Blog format.
A bit about me; I am an old guy (shh don’t tell the guys I play Racquetball with) and I have been in LOTS of different companies of various sizes and types of business. Back when the internet was young and dial-up was the name of the game, I played in that field. In fact, I see a lot of familiar faces here every day. They all stayed in that field and honed their skills and are the guts behind SoftLayer today.
I went out into the world to see what it was all about. I decided I wanted to be technical and since I was a Windows guy it would have to be Microsoft. So I took the tests and got my MCSE and then worked for Alliance Data Systems, a Cargo Airline, A college in Dallas, Cement Company, and a small Outsourced IT company, then I met back up with these guys and here I sit.
So I used some of my experiences with all of those places to write the last blog. Here are a few of those experiences so you can see where it came from.
Alliance Data Systems had great DC’s and lots of cash, they didn’t need to outsource because they spent the money to do things correctly and had their own raised floor DC’s and connectivity, etc. It was a cool place to work and I learned quite a bit. They did things right.
Cargo Airline - Well they tried. We built out a new office building at the airport and we had an office with no carpet, and extra cooling for our server “room”. We had some old boat anchor HP equipment and a single IBM server for the JD Edwards accounting box and boy was it slow. We were using Windows 2000 with AD and DHCP to hand out IP’s. Funny story, we merged with a really “smart” software company and part of the merger was that the powers from that company got the reigns and could run our IS department. Maybe they are reading this… (evil grin) - So the first thing they did was pulled DHCP out of the mix and went all static IP’s because they were easier to track. “You can just enter them in a spreadsheet!” I was told. “Then you know that a 10.x.1.x is accounting, and a 10.x.2.x is sales, etc, etc.” I still laugh about that decision today. Ok, back to the real subject. This company didn’t spend the kind of money needed to have a good core of systems, and network and therefore the applications suffered. Most of the apps they wrote or used were Web apps and could have been housed in an outsourced facility.
College in Dallas - Believe it or not, the college had some pretty cool DC’s on the Campus. They were secure and if I forgot my jacket I froze my butt off. They used Compaq 1u’s like sliced bread. Server after server for student access, student records and it was all Citrix apps that students and faculty could connect to. To me it SCREAMED outsource. Think of the electric bills they paid to freeze my butt off, think of the purchasing department that had to buy all those machines. Think of how much they paid me to un-box those servers and rack them, and cable them, and install the OS from CD, and install Citrix and the apps. Then the accounting department had to track them and make sure they were paid for and depreciate them. Granted, even if they outsourced them the purchasing group still has to order them online and the accounting department has to give us a Visa but that is the extent of it. We have Truck days of joy and do all the manual labor for you and we automate the OS install. Then it is just down to the Tech installing Citrix and the apps from the comfort of his desk remotely.
Cement Company, one of my favorite places to work. I was in charge of the Citrix farm, Exchange and RightFax. Oh what fun. They had over 40 home built apps that ran on Citrix. We had 3 DC’s, Dallas, Midlothian, and Virginia. They were Top of the line! If you were a rat and liked chewing through cables and you are into Liebert cooling systems from the early 60’s! Ok, it might not have been the 60’s but they were old. The DC in Midlothian was the best. We finally boarded up the windows facing west because we figured a lot of the extra heat was due to the Texas sun baking them. Ok, funny story #2. While un-boxing and racking a few Dell 1U servers (again they paid me a pretty good salary for my Citrix and Exchange skills, and here I am un-boxing and racking again) my helper decided that it was time to drop test a Dell. I was behind the rack and there was really nothing I could do except watch this brand new Dell server go crashing to the floor from above his head. After reseeding all the cards, CPU, and memory, we crossed our fingers and it fired up. It was a bit warped and bent but we strategically jammed it in between 2 straight servers and it took some of the flex out of the bent box and it worked great, might even still be working today. As you can tell some outsourcing by them would be good as well; Even if it is just the Development and test systems. We lined up like ants at a sugar sack begging for servers for Dev and Test but they were NEVER in the budget. Another great point I think, Capital Expense vs Monthly Expense. For a huge company it is MUCH easier to get them to sign off on a monthly expense.
Outsourced IT - Here is the one that wins it all. My job was to go around Dallas to small and medium sized businesses and be their IT guy. My main focus of course was Citrix and Exchange but you just never knew what you were going to walk in on. One plumbing company had their servers in a barn. An auto parts supplier had theirs in the back of a storage building behind the restroom. Use your imagination. But the ones that got me the most were Doctors offices. Broom Closets, Office Managers offices, just in the hall out in the open, you name it and I saw servers there. Most of the offices already had a T1 in place so connectivity wasn’t the real issue. An interesting point is that I always had to sign a Hipaa form to be legal to work on the systems. It amazed me that these systems were so accessible to anyone that might have had access to the office. I wonder if the maid service had to sign Hipaa forms since the servers were right in the open. Sometimes right behind the trash cans. 90% of the medical software I came in contact with was WEB software which is easily outsourceable. And the number 1 complaint I heard from office managers and Doctors was, “I want to connect from home. Can you help me?” So of course we would setup remote access. But it never failed. During Storms they would lose power or connectivity. Or the building power would drop for construction, or a car would hit a pole. There were always issues. I swayed a few high tech Docs to finally consider and try outsourcing and they loved it. A few even use thin clients in the office now and everything happens in a DC. They love it.
I still say that no matter what size business you have OUTSOURCE IT! Maybe not all of it, but for DEV and Test, a hot site AD controller, Web App Servers, Giant DB Servers that live behind those web app servers, Web Farms…etc be the ball and give it a try. We won’t argue!
Have you ever wanted to tell your CIO that? His response might be, “you outsourced what?? You respond, “it!” With a perplexed look he asks again, “You outsourced what, it?” Again you respond with, “All of it.” His reaction at that point could go either way. In most CIO type heads today, they can’t grasp the savings associated with outsourcing and even the ones that DO understand would then have to go to the CEOs office and inform him or her that all of the company’s valuable data will now be housed in a safe and secure facility off-site on dedicated servers… or “Hosted IT” even. Stop reading and go tell your CEO that right now. I’ll wait…go ahead.
Ok, I see that you are back, are you still employed? We are hiring if you need a new job resumes@softlayer.com
Ok, really, how do you think that conversation would go? I have had that same conversation with ex-bosses and owners of small and medium sized businesses in the past and most of the time they don’t go very well. Granted they were a few years ago so hopefully times are changing.
I have been told a few times, “no, I don’t want to pay $300 per month for a server we don’t own and put my data on it! That is ridiculous, just go buy me a new $3,500 server and we will put it in our local Datacenter, Server Room, Broom Closet, Bathroom, Office Managers office…” well you get my drift.
“But Sir, with this outsourced server we could easily have off-site backups, more processing power, some cool redundancy and it will not annoy everyone in the office with the loud fans and heat generation. And when we have a power outage in the office and everyone goes home for the day, they will be able to work from home because the server will still be online. Oh yeah, and our company website and email will still be functioning as well.”
“Are you insane? Those challenges are so easy to overcome. We will simply add a small air conditioner to the broom closet and buy a big UPS system that will keep the server alive in the event of another power outage, and we can hire a service to come by every morning to pick up tapes and deliver them to an offsite bunker. Instead of a single connection to the internet we can buy two and have redundant connections also.”
“Sir, I am no accountant, but by the time you pay someone to keep up with the depreciation of a new server, buy and install a small A/C unit and UPS unit, pay for a 2nd internet connection that will sit idle and pay a service to DRIVE here daily I really think the outsourced server would be cheaper. Not to mention in the event of data loss we could get the data restored to the server much quicker than waiting on a service to physically bring it to us.” An interesting note here is, I don’t care what kind of offsite data bunker you have, the Monster in Cloverfield IS going to destroy it so think multiple copies of data in multiple cities!
“Well I have made my decision; we will not be outsourcing my very valuable data - Hackers might get it, it is more secure here, so leave my office. Before you go could you please try to get my printer working again, and I am getting this annoying pop-up about spyware and it seems that my ITunes files have lost their license and I used to have a folder called Docs on my desktop with everyone’s salary in it that is missing and my PDA will not sync…(zzzzzzz) — OUTSOURCE IT!
