Indie Music For Haiti: ServInt Sponsoring Haiti Benefit Concert on Feb. 2nd in Washington, D.C.

We at ServInt are working with one of our clients, D.C. area recording studio and custom music house Asparagus Media, to put together a fundraising concert to benefit Voice Of Haiti, a charity that’s been working for years to promote sustainable development in the country. The wonderful folks at DC9 join us as sponsors and hosts for the evening.

We believe in the power of the Internet, and so we’re asking you to help us make this project a success. Our goal was to gather up the best grassroots, indie musicians we knew in the area to help make a difference. The concert benefits a charity that fits this grassroots theme. This group is Washington, D.C. based, and has spent years building sustainable development projects in Haiti, trying to help people develop resources such as drinking water wells that allow them to move from populated areas like Port Au Prince. We are incredibly excited to be a part of this, and hope to use this as a template for future projects. Spread the word, and help us pack the house!

Here’s a look at the lineup, a great mix of punk, ska and world music stylings:

-Tommy T (of Gogol Bordello) and his Abyssinia Roots Collective
-The Ambitions
-Sitali (vocalist from Thievery Corporation)
-Eastern Standard Time
-David “Spoonboy” Combs (of The Max Levine Ensemble)
-Rosemond Jolissaint (award-winning Haitian musician)

Tickets are $15, with every penny going to http://www.voiceofhaiti.org.

If you will be in or around the Washington, D.C. area on February 2nd, please come join us for a night of great indie music for a wonderful cause. Stop by the event’s Facebook page to RSVP.

And remember: if you can’t make it… DONATE ANYWAY! Voice of Haiti is an organization that will provide long term, sustainable development long after the media spotlight recedes.

Hosting for Haiti

The internet is a market of ideas; a true democratization of knowledge. That democratization has also brought an unparalleled connection to the goings on in the world around us. On January 12th, 2010, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck just a few miles from the capital of Port-au-Prince, ravaging the capital city and killing an estimated 200,000 people while displacing millions.

The web of ideas brought us images of the suffering, social media provided context and stories of individuals and families who have been directly affected by this disaster, and individuals and organizations worldwide opened their hearts to those affected through innovative donation mechanisms and sheer generosity.

However, many of those donations are unable to be distributed for 90 days. That means 3 long months of toil and recovery in the face of frustrating bureacracy. As an industry that truly understands how investment and resources are utilized on the web we knew we could do better and we’re proud to announce this unprecedented initiative.

In an effort to give back as effectively as possible, the most influential players in webhosting have banded together with the American Red Cross to give aid directly to those suffering in Haiti right now. Along with our friends at Rackspace, The Planet, Peer1, and GoGrid, all of us at ServInt are urging our supporters, customers, friends, families, and employees to donate to Hosting for Haiti.

There are no ulterior motives here. YOU can choose precisely how your tax-deductible gift will be used. You can donate directly to the relief fund in Haiti or you can help the American Red Cross’ International Response fund, as we have done. The choice is yours.

ServInt is proud to stand side by side with our esteemed colleagues in the webhosting world in encouraging you to join us and consider making a donation. Every little bit counts and we feel honored to do our part helping this small nation in a big way.

Please visit HostingforHaiti.com for more information.

ServInt Now Offers WHMCS!

One of the key points that ServInt’s management tries to communicate is that we aren’t an insular company. We thrive on the feedback we get from our customers and a core tenet of this company is utilizing that information and acting on it whenever possible. In that spirit I’d like to announce ServInt’s launch of WHMCS!

This has, admittedly, been long overdue and I’m glad that we’ve finally been able to offer it to customers with confidence. WHMCS has been heavily requested by our users, and for those who are unfamiliar with the software, I’ve included a quick synopsis.

So…What is it?

WHMCS handles customer management, billing, and support for online relationship-driven businesses such as our terrific reseller community.

It is powerful, easy to use and install, and has a terrific support community. Probably the most attractive aspect of WHMCS is its customizability, it has an included SDK for creating addons and modules, a powerful remote API, and an assortment of templates and CSS styling options. All this, along with dozens of other benefits make this solution a proud addition to ServInt’s product line.

The cost of WHMCS is $10 per month and it is available as an option during the checkout process for new customers, click here to get started!

If you have any questions, thoughts, feedback, or concerns, please feel free to post in the comments!

As always, thank you all for your continued support!

Christian

Yup, We’ll Pay for Your Hosting…

I have had the opportunity over the past two weeks to carry the news of ServInt’s LA launch to several well known tradeshows that are popular with our clients. Last week I attended both the PubCon and DevConnections conferences in Las Vegas. This week I’ll be at both Interop and Web 2.0 Expo in New York City. I’ve already got to meet a number of clients face to face, which is always fun. I’m going to meet more this week and I can’t wait! I love to hear how our products are being used to build new companies, and I like to hear feedback of all kinds directly from our customers. It’s the way we grow and improve.

I was surprised to have one particular conversation with multiple people, on something I thought was fairly common knowledge. It made me want to get a blog post out as quickly as possible.

More after the jump…

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We Are Held To A Higher Standard

The iMac I use for work died a fiery death yesterday afternoon. I got a ‘grey screen of death‘ and that was the end of that. After some tests, all signs were pointing to hardware failure so I grabbed the machine and headed up the road to the local Apple Store.

I showed up without an appointment and waited for about 40 minutes to sit with somebody. He was friendly and helpful. He told me that indeed it did appear to be hardware failure, and that they could take the computer and get it back to me, fixed, in 2 to 4 days. I was out of the store within an hour and a half, and I was thrilled with my overall customer experience.

And then I started thinking about the hosting industry, and how that perfectly acceptable customer experience would be utterly unacceptable in this environment.

Waiting for 40 minutes to talk to a tech? A solution in 2-4 days?!?!

Our customers wouldn’t stand for it!

This is in no way a criticism of Apple, who I am still pleased with. I simply want to acknowledge that the hosting Industry is held to a completely different standard than the rest of the computing Industry. We’re expected to have quick responses and even quicker solutions. We’re expected to have anything and everything at the ready to solve any problem, and to not make our customers wait.

Just like in the personal computing Industry, hosting hardware fails. Software fails. Things go wrong. Those of us who do hosting right are prepared to deal with that. We’ve proven it over the years. We compete against kids in their basements trying to undercut us on price, and a lot of them gain traction for awhile and then fall off the map when met with the challenges of real problems, because they are unprepared to be held to the high standard that is required from the stars of this Industry.

I regularly read a couple of the more popular hosting forums out there, and I have had fun over the years watching people list their ideas of who the ‘top hosting providers’ are. I am honored that we often get placed on that list. I have also noticed that every couple of years the people we share the list with tend to change. It’s hard to sustain great service in an Industry that expects you to be able to respond to anything in an instant. I’m proud we’ve been able to meet that higher standard for almost 15 years now, and I wouldn’t ask our clients to ask any less of us. These are people’s businesses we are managing – their livelihoods. We SHOULD be held to a higher standard.

I promise we’ll continue to rise to that challenge year after year, as other ‘top hosting providers’ come and go.

-Christian

Photo by netream.

BoingBoing, Web Hosting and the First Amendment

I want to share with all of you a letter that I sent to The Rachel Maddow Show this weekend. She had Xeni Jardin on, who writes for BoingBoing.net, which I love. My big problem with the segment is that it left viewers with an overall impression that the DMCA was anti-free speech and that people should host offshore. I don’t agree, and to be fair I don’t know if Xeni does either, as it wasn’t even the primary focus of her appearance and they only discussed it briefly and in too little detail.

But our industry doesn’t land in the news all that often, and to appear in this context is what some would refer to as an ‘epic fail’. I understand that given the short time available on a news segment like that to explain our industry, the laws that govern it and the different types of players within it, a lot was left unexplained. But that’s exactly why I needed to take the opportunity to set the record straight.

Video and more after the jump.

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An Unlimited Credibility Gap

Years ago, the usual stomping grounds for those of us in the hosting industry took an interesting turn as shady fly-by-night hosting providers started using the term ‘unlimited’ to describe their product plans.

These companies offered ‘unlimited’ bandwidth or ‘unlimited’ disk space as an enticement for customers to buy their products. There was a strong negative reaction within the hosting community and a sincere attempt among responsible hosts to make it known that ‘unlimited’ plans lacked credibility.

Last week it was announced that 1and1, an industry peer who I like and respect, has joined Verio, another one of the good guys, in touting ‘unlimited’ hosting plans.

I thought we had learned better.

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While My Plastic Guitar Gently Weeps

Everybody has their passions and I wear mine on my sleeve.

I am a huge dork on two very dorky subjects, IT customer service and support (seriously – I study up on the theories and techniques – it’s scary) and music.

Today the two conflict.

You see, we’ve got some pretty cool stuff going on around here at ServInt that’s keeping me really busy. I am shoulder-deep in a stack of exciting work on some cool future projects we’ll be able to announce in the coming months.

And my project passions are keeping me from the other thing I really want to be doing – skipping work altogether to play Beatles Rock Band and listen to remasters of The Beatles’ entire back catalog. I spent WAY too much money and ordered both. Both come out today, and I’ve been counting the days for weeks.

I’m a major music geek in general, but The Beatles captured my imagination long ago. In the late ’90s I even helped start a tech-themed Beatles cover band called ‘The ISPtles’. No joke! We wrote song parodies and recorded (long lost) demos for an ISPCon tradeshow party that thankfully never actually materialized.

We ACTUALLY had a bunch of songs. Our biggest ‘hits’ were “I Want To Hold Your Palm(TM)” and “BSD”, our ode to Unix sung to the tune of “Let It Be”.

As an act of kindness, I won’t mention what other 2 current members of ServInt’s staff rounded out our quartet. They can out themselves if they want to share in my public embarrassment.

Has anybody else tried, even as a joking flight of fancy, to combine their disparate passions like that? Let us know! And is anybody a Beatles fan like me, sitting at work with way too much to do when you’d like to be at home? Let me know that too!

The best story as judged by myself and our tech savvy at-risk youth wins a ServInt T-Shirt. Let’s hear it in the comments, on Twitter, or our Facebook page!

Don’t let me down.

Photo by dunechaser.

PSA: You must understand DMCA Safe Harbor

In Louis Vuitton Malletier, S.A., v. Akanoc Solutions, Inc., et al., CV07-03952 JW (N.D. Cal. 2007), Louis Vuitton brought suit against hosting companies Akanoc Solutions Inc., and Managed Solutions Group Inc., as well as Steven Chen, the owner of the two companies. Vuitton’s attorneys sued these entities for contributory infringement of both trademark and copyright, and won a $32.4 million dollar verdict against the hosting providers!

The hosts attempted to argue that the Safe Harbor act of the DMCA should shield them from liability. But apparently evidence seemed to show that they knew the illegal activity was occurring on their network and they failed to stop it.

Many people are fearing that this case will set a precedent for hosts that will affect us all in ways that set a detrimental precedent in other copyright cases — or that hosts will no longer have the full measure of protections they deserve. I’m not sure that’s true. There are many prior precedents that show trademark cases being given protection under DMCA, and it makes sense that this would be the case. It may just be that, in this situation, people didn’t follow DMCA guidelines and meet their own obligations, in the process intentionally or unintentionally breaking the law.

We host a lot of resellers – a lot of people who are hosting providers themselves. I am concerned that some hosting providers may not be aware of the protections they are provided under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, but also of the OBLIGATIONS that DMCA requires of hosts as well.

I am not a lawyer, and I cannot tell you what you need to do to plan for a trademark or copyright infringement case. But I can tell you that if you don’t HAVE a lawyer you should get one – and talk this stuff through with them. If you host and feel you don’t need one you’re wrong.

As such, I urge managers of ALL web-based services and applications do the following:

1) Learn about the protections available to you under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, particularly outlined in Title II of the Act.  A copy of the act is available
online at the USIIA web site at:

http://www.usiia.org/legis/title2.html

2) Ensure you are protected by the act.  Service providers are protected ONLY if they register an agent with the U.S. Copyright Office.  Details regarding the registration
process and forms can be found at the following site:

http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/

3) Remember that a request to remove copyrighted materials from any server under your control must be specific as to the content and location, and must meet a specific set of guidelines established for your protection.

4) If you receive such a request and do not know how to best proceed, seek assistance from an attorney familiar with copyright law and with experience dealing specifically with cases involving trademark infringement.  If you do not have an attorney familiar
with this area of law, contact your friends here at ServInt for assistance in finding one.

DON’T wait until there’s a crisis to get your ducks in a row on this one. If you host ANYTHING you need a plan. You need to do your legwork to protect yourself, and you need to research your legal rights and obligations. As we can see with Louis Vuitton Malletier, S.A., v. Akanoc Solutions, Inc., et al., CV07-03952 JW (N.D. Cal. 2007), the cost of negligence is pretty high!

As of today, it’s a $32.4 million dollar oversight.

VPS: 6 years On All 6 Cylinders

In all the hullabaloo of HostingCon events this week, I nearly forgot that yesterday was the 6-year anniversary of ServInt’s VPS offerings. Passing that landmark day there was fitting. A lot of the folks we partnered with to create our VPS products were there, particularly Parallels, and it’s an excellent reminder of just how far we’ve come as a provider as well as a company.

ServInt has always considered itself a managed hosting provider first, with the vehicles we actually use to deliver those services an important concern, but ultimately just a technological envelope. We learned very early on that the most important part of a company is its people and we’ve been really, really lucky since then with our efforts to attract great people. VPS technology, and more specifically Virtuozzo, has been very good to us and we’ve been able to create powerful, unique products that have evolved immensely over the years.

There are a lot of really great things happening in hosting right now. We now have viable, virtualized alternatives to dedicated servers such as our own SuperVPS line, pairing the speed and control expected from a dedicated box with the reliability and scalability of a VPS. Cloud is on the horizon in some form or another, promising new ways to deliver content and store data and with it will come a new wave of entrepreneurship and a pay-as-you-go business model that is fueling a new generation of startups and industry leaders. A lot of this hasn’t come to fruition but it will be great to be a part of this industry as we all figure it out.

6 years ago, we had no idea what the industry would hold for us. Who would have thought that an online bookstore would become one of the most progressive cloud storage companies in the world, or that a small Russian software development firm would build the technological backbone of our most popular product?

So in 2015, when we’re driving our flying cars to work and scarfing down Jetsons-style breakfast tablets, who knows what will be fueling the internet?

I for one, can’t wait to find out!

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