WDTalk

If you’re the owner or CEO of your organization, how do you transition from good to great in terms of implementing planned actions that add value to your organization – moving forward to capture the opportunities of tomorrow?

Ingredients for creating a strategic framework
Some essential ingredients will be innovation, persuasiveness and a thirst for strategic change. You have to balance existing operations against the key attributes of your organization’s strategic thinkers (including yours). You have to encourage innovation and risk taking. I’ve always heard that if you want to be big, you have to think big. The same applies to transitioning from being buried in your ongoing activities, to being proactive – becoming a champion for strategic change.

What happens when you start thinking strategically as an organization?

• You begin to understand the needs and expectations of your customers
• Your internal departments rise  to greater readiness and competitiveness
• You anticipate and innovate strategies to link vision to core capabilities
• You recognize opportunities to influence and create alliances
• You develop persuasive skills

For example:

One of the key themes in today’s market is the “Green” economy.
Would tapping into “Green” be strategically sound? Is there a fit for your organization? Be proactive – make business connections to identify lucrative new ideas and markets within this emerging sector. Learn how other businesses in your industry are capitalizing on success in the green economy.

Have you tapped into your local community?
In cities all over the USA (and internationally), every month hundreds of entrepreneurs take on the risk of starting new businesses – everything from cleaning services to concrete manufacturers. Many of them will need the services you sell, but will they buy from you? Not if you don’t have a strategic marketing plan to offer solutions that reach up, down and across your organization.

In today’s competitive global marketplace, it is essential to ensure that your customers can see you at any time, day or night. Even short outages impact your business. In the past couple of months, I’ve followed a number of tragic stories on web hosting forums where literally hundreds of sites were compromised and data lost, some forever. Is uptime important to your business?

About Monitoring Services
System monitoring services provide everything from simple to very advanced server, network and website monitoring and reporting services with a fast, effective and automated method for checking a variety of services. Whether you are monitoring a single server or hundreds of servers distributed around the world, these packages make it easy to manage your monitoring configuration and view real-time monitoring data.

The number and types of services that monitoring packages track varies, but most offer at least three monitors that are checked in varying intervals (generally one to fifteen minutes).

These services and others should be a part of your disaster recovery and business continuity plan.

Advanced Solutions
If your business depends on your online presence, you need an advanced solution that monitors your entire online infrastructure. Today’s websites are becoming increasingly complex, incorporating dynamic content derived from multiple sources, backend web services, email, chat and other communication mechanisms.

There are lower end packages offered FREE, as well as advanced options that track your entire infrastructure.  Some of the services most commercial packages track are HTTP and HTTPS, POP and Secure POP, IMAP and Secure IMAP, SMTP and Secure SMTP, DNS, FTP, SSH, MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server databases, RTSP streaming media, ICMP ping, and arbitrary TCP/IP ports.

Options
The types of options offered are generally shorter intervals between monitoring, the number of monitoring locations, alerts by email, additional monitors, web page content filtering, HTTP password protection monitoring, monthly reports, online statistics, a control panel, DNS monitoring, public statistics, ping monitoring, alert failure limit, custom time zones, error details, web server monitoring, POP3 and SMTP email server monitoring, FTP server monitoring, multiple alert contacts, XML/RSS statistics and a statistics download.

With some you can create user accounts with restricted access. With others you can follow 301 or 302 redirects and monitor the resulting web page.

How far back can monitoring statistics and reports be archived?
Free plans are typically only archived for a few months, but with most packages, detailed statistics can be archived forever.

What about failover?
With many packages, their monitoring infrastructure is architected to withstand failure of any component. If one monitoring node is inaccessible, checks begin immediately from a alternate node and continue until the original node returns to service so that your servers never go unmonitored.

Intelligent Services
Some packages can actually analyze your online presence and intelligently determine the services that need to be monitored. Even with the most basic of online businesses, there can be 15 or more critical services that can impact your business.

What is it you need to know and why?
You need to know the status of your network (network performance) and availability every single minute so you can react immediately to any service disruption. It’ s always better to know first before your clients starting calling with issues. Monitoring packages also help determine hosting company’s compliance with their Service Level Agreements.  (SLA)

False Positives
Are these packages failsafe? False positives have been a problem with some packages, but as global resources become more affordable, confirmation of service outages has become more reliable.

Other uses for monitoring packages

You can extract sales and marketing data about the quality of your infrastructure

Use the same tools to gain more knowledge about the infrastructure of your competitors.

Use as evidence with suppliers of your infrastructure.

As a manager
As a manager you may already have tools for monitoring your infrastructure from the inside, but these packages give insight to the end-user experience. You’ll not only be able to properly analyze the availability of your company’s services and estimate lost revenue, but you’ll also have the information you need to make demands on external network and service providers if they’re not living up to your expectations, or their SLAs.

What are some the packages available?

• NPG … Network Management and Monitoring
• Panopta …
• Pingdom … Pingdom Web site monitoring for 100% uptime. Measure your downtime.
• AlertSite … Web Site Monitoring and Web Performance Management Solutions From AlertSite
• Internet Uptime Monitor … Internet Uptime Monitor – Monitoring Server Software for Your Website
• Hyperspin … Hyperspin Website Monitoring, Web Server Monitoring Service
• Site Uptime … SiteUptime – Website Monitoring Service
• Alertra … Alertra Website Monitoring Service
• Uptime Auditor … Uptime Auditor – Check if your website is online now!
• ezwebsitemonitoring … EZ Website Monitoring • Free Keyword Tracking & Uptime Checking
• ServerMojo … Remote server monitoring – check your dedicated or virtual server uptime and get notifications for free – servermojo.com!
• Nagios … Nagios – The Industry Standard in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
• Cacti … Cacti: The Complete RRDTool-based Graphing Solution
• Zenoss … Zenoss Open Source Server and Network Monitoring – Core and Enterprise
• PRTG … PRTG Network Monitor – intuitive network monitoring software
• MRTG … Network Admins’ favorite free tools – Scrutinizer and MRTG
• Hyperic … Systems Monitoring, Server Monitoring & Systems Management Software | Hyperic
• Munin … Munin – Trac
• Webmetrics … Website Monitoring, Load Testing & Web Performance Management | Webmetrics

I recently read through a thread (about network outages) on WHT that contained 177 pages of posts, 2644 replies and attracted 152,980 views. It was a very powerful thread about the destruction and ensuing consequences of a few very popular web hosting providers. The hacker himself posted in the thread (although his post was deleted rather quickly), claiming it was the provider’s lax security in the assignment of passwords that enabled the attack.  This reinforces a question I routinely pose on this blog.

Is YOUR mission critical data backed up and protected?

A quick Google search for remote backup software returned 6,810,000 results. I’d say that’s significant.

I think everyone agrees that mission critical data needs to be backed up, but how is debatable. In the hundreds of businesses I’ve serviced over the years, most in-house IT departments used DAT tapes. Very few actually physically removed those tapes from their premises every day. Even fewer remotely backed up their data. So maybe the better question to ask would be, “To what degree is your mission critical data backed up and protected?”

As an ex-RMA Manager (for a local networking firm), I witnessed quite a few defective DAT drives doing hard time on my shelves. I’ve also seen my share of managers scrambling to recover lost data following “unscheduled events” like virus contamination or hacks. Do you think it can’t happen to you? Keeping your fingers crossed isn’t the wisest strategy to ensure your business’s continued success.

Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Plans are Important

I always recommend incorporating comprehensive disaster recovery and business continuity plans, then periodically reviewing their effectiveness. One part of that plan should be remote offsite backups. Very often incorporating a remote backup is as easy as downloading a software client onto your network server or personal computer. Many have setup wizards to walk you through the steps of connecting to the backup server, setting up your backup sets, creating a backup schedule and setting a secret encryption key. Typically, backup sets can be configured to run in a variety of ways – backing up data files at the end of the week or your My Documents folder multiple times per day.

Remote backups traveling across the Internet need to be encrypted so that you and only you have the ability to decrypt your data. I recommend programs that use DES, Triple-DES, Blowfish or Twofish algorithms for encryption.

Measuring the success of the data transfer is important. Look for programs with email notification of successful backups or backups with warnings (with log files attached).

Once your data is remotely backed up

Ok, you’ve backed up your data, but now have a need for one file, or an entire volume of data from two months ago. Is this possible? Simply answered – Yes. There are programs that allow instant access to any version of your data files, from the initial backup to the last incremental backup and EVERY version in between.

Locking down clients

Locking down clients simply refers to implementing procedures to protect critical backup sets from being accidentally changed or deleted, while flexible enough for administers to view and change those settings that control the level of usage each client is offered.

When to backup?

Most organizations schedule backups in the evening, during lulls in their business operations. Some programs allow you to run in silent modes (in the background) without displaying any Windows or Task Bar icons – allowing you to run backups throughout the day.

What if my backup gets interrupted?

Let’s say you start a backup and you lose power. Will the remote server retain the ongoing transfer, or bite the bullet? Features like event managers allow you to resume interrupted backups.

Does remote backup software offer file filters?

Most do – file filters allow you to include or exclude files from the backup selection, mostly via file extensions.

Just the tip of the iceberg

There are so many things that can and do go wrong in business every day. One thing is for sure. If you have hardware, particularly IT hardware, it will go down sooner or later. Power supplies fail, memory modules flake out, hard drives crash, DAT drives melt down – stuff happens. Some issues can be resolved in minutes or hours, but others may take days or weeks.

Backing up your mission critical data is an integral ingredient to averting disaster, but just the tip of the iceberg, in developing and managing a comprehensive disaster recovery and business continuity plan that will ensure your business’s continued success. Step back and ask yourself, “What if?” What if a disgruntled employee, possibly a sys admin, corrupted your main servers, then disappeared? What if your building burnt to the ground? What if that DAT drive refuses to release last night’s tape – holding it hostage with a strangle hold on its recording heads? What if? What if?

Questions to consider when selecting a web host provider:

• Does your web host provider offer personal tours of their datacenter(s)?
• Do they feature online tours?
• How long have they been in business?
• Are they members of the BBB?
• What level of security do they employ?
• What is their uptime?
• Do they offer a Service Level Agreement?
• What are their Terms of Service?
• Do they have a money back guarantee?
• Do they offer managed services?
• Are their technicians certified?
• Are they a one-stop-shop?
• Do they offer control panels, and which ones?
• Do they offer both Windows and Linux solutions?
• Do they charge setup fees?
• Do they have failover bandwidth?
• Do they offer BGP bandwidth?
• Do they offer cross-connects?
• Do they offer live chat support?
• Do they offer 24/7 phone support?
• Do they offer live event monitoring?
• Do they offer disaster recovery plans?
• Are their plans scalable?
• Will they customize a plan for you?
• Will they provide references?

I’m sure there are many many more questions – you may think of, but these are a great place to start. Finding the right provider with whom to entrust your data requires some forethought and research. Don’t over think the entire process. Search the Internet for positive / negative reviews, narrow down your list and then call each prospective vendor. 

Gauge which provider best fits – your business model. How important and relevant are each of the above? Assign a value to each, total the numbers and compare vendors. Often, the correct match jumps of the page and hits you square in the forehead. Often the offer seems too good to be real – for instance, an offer of unlimited bandwidth on a VPS. That’s just not realistic given the cost of bandwidth to the vendor. 

I would recommend – assigning a heavier weight to a disaster recovery plan. And also to their technical expertise, as it directly relates to the level of service you can expect to receive from them. 

You’d be amazed – how many hosts do NOT offer phone support, or only during business hours. Uptime can be verified to some extent as there are sites that monitor hosts, but those do not necessarily monitor every router – so the numbers can be misleading. If your prospective host publicly lists anything less than 99.9% uptime, I’d recommend looking elsewhere. Downtime can cost thousands in lost revenue and disgruntled clients. 

Do you recognize – their references? Are those references credible? 

Even if your application doesn’t fit – a plan you see featured on their website, call and ask them if they’ll customize a plan for you. You may be pleasantly surprised.

Steve-Hostirian was selected as the Most Valuable Member of the Month (May 2009) by the web hosting forum, Hosting Discussion. This marks the third time Steve has been honored with this Award.

Web hosting forums like Hosting Discussion are online communities devoted to sharing knowledgebase, where members openly discuss issues, requests and opportunities with other providers and prospects in a variety of topics such as promotion & marketing, business & legal issues, VPS plans, dedicated servers, colocation, domain names, website design, hardware & server configuration, software & control panels, billing & accounting, customer service & support and legal issues.

Hostirian participates in these forums to stay abreast of the industry, and to provide leadership by example in sharing the wealth of knowledge we’ve obtained over our years in helping businesses just like yours, with hosting solutions for small and medium sized businesses.

From Hosting Discussion

Finally, let’s get to the winner and an honorable mention for the month of May 2009. Little surprise here I think. For the third straight month, he remains the person to beat (although members I mentioned above have got what it takes). The Roger Federer of writing, Steve from Hostirian.com delivers another month of level of participation. His elegant and carefully built posts, full of juicy information seem to never go out of demand. And for that I salute his performance and thank him for sticking around!

Some of the topics Steve-Hostirian addressed in May were:

• Is your mission critical data backed up and protected?
• Getting yourself out there
• Marking Time
• Microsites versus Subdomains

Why Host With Us?

Hostirian’s ‘Business Class’ shared web hosting plans provide fuel to drive today’s market, allowing you to stretch your investment, all while offering extended features NOT found elsewhere at comparable pricing. Our ‘Business Class’ solutions span the entire scope of hosting  from Dedicated Servers, Colocation, Disaster Recovery, Managed Services and Managed Exchange to Domain Name Services.

Emerging Technology Solutions

Our Business Class shared web hosting plans offer a full suite of features including dynamic support, email, FTP and Web/FTP statistics, with an easy to use Plesk control panel capable of running on Windows, Mac and Linux platforms.

Business Class Solutions that give you a Competitive Edge

As you look to an online presence to supplement your operations, our packages enable you to focus on what you do best - drive your business. We’ve partnered with hundreds of businesses just like yours, giving them the competitive edge to succeed in their market.

About Hostirian:

HOSTIRIAN, a division of River City Internet Group (RCIG) was founded to meet the needs of regional businesses seeking a local web hosting partner capable of providing state of the art and cost effective hosting facilities, superb customer service and assistance in marketing and managing their business’s web presence. Hostirian offers shared web hosting services and managed web hosting services to businesses operating mission critical, multi-functional Web sites. In addition we offer Web hosting services to the rapidly growing number of application service providers, enabling them to more efficiently deliver their application services to their customers over the Internet. We also offer related value-added services, such as firewall management, stress testing and consulting services including capacity and migration planning. Our services give the customer the option to use their own hardware and software or we can provide the hardware, software, network technology, and systems management necessary to offer our customers comprehensive outsourced Web site and application hosting solutions.

Content is KING

Although I’m still jumping through some hoops at StumbleUpon, my first impression is extremely favorable. Together with Digg, these two sites are well worth exploring.  StumbleUpon’s content is affected by vote accumulation – recommended sites from close to 8 million members. I think what makes this service different and appealing is its wide variety of content – unified by personal interests rather than by age groups. If content is KING, this service lends itself to a lot of possibilities.

From Wikipedia

StumbleUpon is an Internet community that allows its users to discover and rate Web pages, photos, and videos. It is a personalized recommendation engine which uses peer and social-networking principles.

Web pages are presented when the user clicks the “Stumble!” button on the browser’s toolbar. StumbleUpon chooses which Web page to display based on the user’s ratings of previous pages, ratings by his/her friends, and by the ratings of users with similar interests. Users can rate or choose not to rate any Web page with a thumbs up or thumbs down, and clicking the Stumble button resembles “channel-surfing” the Web. StumbleUpon also allows their users to indicate their interests from a list of nearly 500 topics to produce relevant content for the user. There is also one-click blogging built in as well.

Toolbar versions exist for Firefox, Mozilla Application Suite and Internet Explorer, but also works with some independent Mozilla-based browsers. Third party toolbars have also been created for Safari, Opera and Google Chrome.

StumbleUpon was owned by eBay from May 2007, when it was acquired for $75,000,000, until April 2009, when two of the founders, backed by investors, bought it back.

My next five stumbled upon websites (as I type this).

http://www.freewareplanet.net/

http://htmlplayground.com/

http://codebetter.com/

http://www.pendriveapps.com/

http://www.theosfiles.com/