WDTalk

I just read a post on Seth’s Blog about embracing lifetime values, and was immediately able to relate this to any number of industries. When I was selling security systems in Miami, my employer had years of data highlighting the lifetime value of every new client. Think about it – who changes alarm vendors once the system is installed? Their monitoring ran $24.95/month, but clients routinely stayed with them from six to seven years. Value adds were additional motion sensors, control panels, remotes and door contacts. 

I wonder how many sales or support reps understand the real value of each shared, dedicated or colo sale, and how that drives the business as a whole? In the post, the lifetime value of new cell phone clients (on two year contracts) was estimated at $2000.00. I’ve been with my cell phone provider since 1997, and have grown from one to four phones.

Is there a lifetime value in web hosting?
What do you estimate the lifetime value is (on average) of a month-to-month dedicated server client? What about the new 2U colo client, who someday grows to a full rack, or a cage?

Could you increase your client’s lifetime value?
The answer is, absolutely – under promise and over deliver. Empower your staff, from sales reps to the billing and support departments, to go that extra one percent in every contact they have with each client. Your goal should be to exceed your client’s expectations. This is the stuff of long term business relationships.

Bottom Line
If one of your clients left in a huff, would you surmise, ‘there goes a $20 client’ or ‘we just let $2000 walk out the door.’

I just read an article this afternoon about the fastest growing security threat in the hosting industry. Apparently this threat has grown over a hundred fold in just the last year alone. What is it?

SQL Injection

Why have SQL injection attempts grown so dramatically? It was pointed out, and I agree, because the bad guys are using (very sophisticated) automated tools. More and more, we’re seeing attempts not only to be disruptive, rather to be focused on identity theft. Anyone remember Heartland Payment Systems and TJX?

Who is Susceptible?

Certainly, if you’re processing lots of credit cards, you need to guard against SQL injection, but even if you aren’t, this exploit needs to be addressed. I did a quick Google search for SQL injection prevention and stumbled upon an SQL Injection Cheat Sheet at http://www.owasp.org/index.php/SQL_Injection_Prevention_Cheat_Sheet. Since most SQL injection exploits are due to lax coding and poor application design practices, prevention measures like those outlined on this site can significantly minimize your risk of being compromised.

From Owasp.org

“SQL Injection flaws are introduced when software developers create dynamic database queries that include user supplied input. To avoid SQL injection flaws is simple. Developers need to either:
a) stop writing dynamic queries; and/or
b) prevent user supplied input which contains malicious SQL from affecting the logic of the executed query.”

First, let me say once again how much I despise rogue programs, and Windows Police Pro is a nasty one. It’s of the same family as Windows Antivirus Pro, which I wrote about around April 1^st.

The first warning that you’re infected is an obnoxious pop up that states your computer is infected, and recommends you purchase their program.

Windows Police Pro also acts as ransomware because it prevents you from accessing websites to download anti-spyware or anti-virus programs like AVG or StopZilla. X’ing out of the pop up is impossible, but all is not lost.

How to remove this nasty beast from your computer

First, open up your Task Manager (control, alt & delete), then end the Windows Police Pro process. Also end the svchast.exe process. Then go to RUN, and type regedit to edit your registry. Do edit find Windows Police Pro and delete those entries. Then you should be able to access the AVG or StopZilla websites, download and install their programs, do a scan and remove the infection.

I used StopZilla on my grandchildren’s laptop and you could actually hear Windows Police Pro groan when StopZilla killed it off. LOL.

You can earn a Doctorate in Conflict Analysis and Resolution, but I think most of us have earned some credits for coping with conflict on the street level, and certainly in the hosting industry.

Managing Conflict

The key is learning how to manage conflict rather than have it manage you. I avoid disputes when possible, but realize they’re inevitable – so instead of reacting on an emotional level, my solution is to manage them proactively. Part of that is being solution focused versus problem focused. It’s all about communications – understanding what your personal triggers are, then mapping out the opposing positions, finding common ground, and then proposing win-win solutions.

Conflict Awareness
First, you have to understand your own conflict patterns, then develop and practice methods to listen more effectively, map out the conflicts, and learn to differentiate difficult people from difficult behavior. We all know the type. Some clients and prospects just instinctively know what hot buttons to press.

Moving Beyond Conflict
What we’re really talking about here is developing professional skill sets to increase the success of your business operations. Customer support is very much about resolving customer conflicts or problems. While the solution could be purely technical, the perception of value rests with your client. How well you communicate relates directly to customer churn. Bad communication skills = high customer churn. Great communication skills = raving fans and a loyal customer base. The key, I think, is to actively listen, showing genuine interest and concern. Clarify the problem; ask questions, then listen – separating emotions from issues. Sometimes, you just have to say NO, it won’t work. And after conflicts are managed, it’s important to solicit feedback.

How Important is Feedback
Feedback is so important that you should reach out to your clients randomly to ascertain their comfort level with your products or services. Perhaps your perception that they’re satisfied clients is completely off tract, and they’re actively searching for a new provider. How would you know until they sent in their cancellation request? At that point, you become reactive instead of proactive.  Again, it’s all about effective communications and productive interactions.

Memory leakage can cause serious problems
While most memory leakage is quite small and doesn’t present any serious problem in and of itself, the accumulated effect of running programs for hours on end can compound problems, sometimes leading to disastrous results.

So what is memory leakage, exactly, and how can we resolve it?
My original understanding was that certain programs, when closed, did not release their allotted space in memory – thus reducing the amount of memory available to other problems. Memory leakage is so much more complex than that. A slight bug in one program might interact with some other program causing increased allocations of memory until some program crashes (not necessarily the program with the leak). As a consumer, how would you know where to begin to isolate the cause? I’m not a developer, as I suspect most of us aren’t. Debugging code is best suited for the programmer geeks. I started my quest for answers with searches on Google, Bing, Yahoo and Wikipedia.

From Wikipedia
In computer science, a memory leak is a particular type of unintentional memory consumption by a computer program where the program fails to release memory when no longer needed.

From Google – over 3.4 million results

From Bing – over 8.1 million results

From Yahoo – over 10.6 million results

I don’t really have time to search through 22 million results, so I’ll highlight a few results here.  

Some contributing causes of serious memory leaks

Leaks inside the operating system itself

Leaks in system critical drivers

Leaks in embedded devices

Leaks in programming languages

Leaks where programs are able to request memory that hasn’t been released, even when the program terminates

Memory Managers
Most memory managers can recover memory that has become unreachable (if it’s unreachable it retains no value), but they normally cannot free memory that remains reachable. And it’s worth noting that there are levels of reach ability – with strong or weak references. Add to that, every system has a finite amount of memory anyway, so if a memory leak is not contained (possibly by a reboot), it will eventually cause problems.

A simple Google search for Memory Management Programs returned over 68 million results. Yipes! A word of caution – many of these programs are outdated and in fact, produce some overhead of their own.

One in particular caught my interest – SpeedUpMyPC by Uniblue. It lets you monitor and control all your PC resources with easy, one click instructions. System settings, internet usage, disk clutter, RAM and CPU are all automatically scanned, cleaned and optimized for peak performance.

If you have a recommended program, please share its strengths and weaknesses with us here.