Consider us Certified: ServInt Passes 2010 US-EU Safe Harbor Re-certification
We're committed to our clients in the EU
At any given time, a huge percentage of our customers are based outside of the United States. With customers in more than 60 countries, ServInt has terrific connectivity to Europe, Asia, Oceania, and Africa.
Because of our international clientele, we do everything that we can to ensure that our products and services stay compliant with all necessary regulations, both foreign and domestic. We pride ourselves on a host that stands up for the rights of its customers, and as such I’m proud to announce that we’ve recently completed our 2010 Safe Harbor Re-certification.
While this particular provision deals most directly with clients in the European Union, I think it speaks to our continued commitment to protecting the rights and the privacy of our clients all over the world.
For those that don’t know exactly what the US-EU Safe Harbor certification is, it is essentially the framework by which a US based company complies with the standards of privacy laid out by EU Directive 95/46/EC, better known as the EU Data Protection Directive. The directive outlines how a US based company should handle the private information of European clients. You can find more information about the Directive, as well as the Safe Harbor certification as a whole, on Wikipedia.
We’re excited to once again prove to our friends all over the world just how committed we are to maintaining a long-term, respectful relationship with our clients in regards to their data.
Photo by tristam sparks.
Special Thanks to ServInt’s Managed Services Team for Weathering the Storm!
Snowpocalypse Now!
Some called it the “Snowpocalypse”, other called it the Blizzard of 2010.
But thanks to the talented technicians and engineers of ServInt’s Managed Services Team, we called it business as usual.
All of us at ServInt want to give a warm thank you to our very own Managed Services Team for their exemplary work. Their hard work made sure our thousands of customers stayed up and running during the most brutal blizzard Washington, D.C. has seen in decades.
MST members stayed overnight, and in some cases more than one night, at our Network Operations Center to help in case customers needed us. Network engineers also slept overnight at our Data centers in Washington, D.C. and Virginia to ensure our Dedicated Server customers, as well as our entire network, were intact throughout the fierce weather.
In preparation for the storm, ServInt supplied our support staff with ample provisions (and ample junk food) to make the best out of a less than desirable week. Our MST not only excelled, but they made it look easy.
Thank you for all of your hard work and dedication guys and gals!
Photo by Xydexx Squeakypony.
Being Candid About Being Green
Green is vital, but so is pragmatism
Right up there with “The Cloud”, Green hosting has been a heavily trafficked buzzword in our industry for nearly 3 years.
In 2008, ServInt began retrofitting its data centers and, in combination with a massive investment in reforestation projects all over the world, we became climate positive within one year. We strive to be green because we know we have to, we have a responsibility to do so as a growing business with international clientele who expect their hosting company to understand the impact it has on the world around them.
In other words, we get it and want to do our part for the right reasons.
More after the jump.
Reminder: Indie Music for Haiti Concert Tonight in D.C.!
Hey Everyone!
We’re all really excited about the concert tonight, it’s going to be a blast and we’re looking forward to hanging out in what is already my personal favorite night spot for a great cause.
In anticipation, I thought I’d shed some light on a few of the performers who are slated to appear tonight and hopefully entice those on the fence to come out and see the show!
Let me go act by act and explain why this show is going to be so awesome.
Win a Flip from ServInt!
Wow, I look great in that video thumbnail, kudos to YouTube for ensuring that folks question my state of consciousness. Anyway, we have some really exciting news to tell you, so without further ado:
In a connected world, we’re always striving to better capture the adventures that happen around us. At ServInt, we help connect businesses and clients every day, so it’s only fitting that we embrace a world of ubiquitous connectivity and change.
In honor of our upcoming 15 year anniversary, ServInt is giving one lucky winner a new, ServInt branded Flip Mino HD 120!
Anyone 18 or older can enter, so why wait?
There are two ways to enter the sweepstakes:
1. Through ServInt’s Facebook Page. Don’t forget to become a Fan of ServInt!
2. Through Twitter. Simply click here or click the big green button below! Follow ServInt, enter our contest, and retweet it to your friends in one fell swoop!
Good luck to all!
Does Online Advertising Work?
Where does your message best get seen?
Just about every company worth its salt has some sort of online advertising component as part of its marketing budget. With the ubiquity and ease of use of platforms such as Google’s Adwords and Facebook ads, online marketing has truly become an accessible avenue for a lot of novice advertisers.
But there’s another question that has nagged advertisers in all mediums for as long as there has been marketing, does it work?
Online advertising, whether it’s in the form of a banner ad or text ad, seems inherently impersonal. You’re creating and placing ads that are viewed by nameless, faceless people who could literally be anywhere in the world…the task to reach them seems daunting doesn’t it?
What a lot of people forget is that this is exactly the same with all advertising, regardless of the medium. You don’t really know who’s looking at an ad on a billboard, or who is listening to the radio, or who is watching your commercial on television. Sure, there are demographic studies you could perform that could help you make intelligent guesses, but the truth is that data is useless if your product has a narrow or hyper-competitive market. In this respect webhosting is an excellent example, as costs per click (CPC’s) for popular keywords in our industry regularly hit the $25 mark in Google Adwords, the most popular ad network online by far.
comScore, a tech marketing analytics firm and a great source of genuinely interesting internet marketing info has performed a spate of studies recently that bring up some great points on this very topic.
In August, the firm released the findings of a study it conducted with dunnhumbyUSA that focused on the difference between television and online advertising. You can checkout a detailed press release about the study here, but I’ll do my best to summarize the findings.
The two firms used the example of consumer packaged goods, things such as food and snacks, to test whether online advertising actually worked. By tracking the buying habits of thousands of shoppers using their supermarket discount cards the firm was able to obtain fascinating, and to some extent unexpected results.
The study found that, in a sample size of roughly 200,000 shoppers, the brands who were exposed to consumers via ads on the web saw a 9% sales lift over a three month period with 80% of the campaigns showing a statistical increase. Those exposed through television ads saw an 8% sales lift over twelve months with only 36% of the campaigns showing a statistical increase. This is staggering data, it means nearly 1 in 10 consumers will change their buying habits in the affirmative after being exposed to an ad online and in a very short amount of time as well.
Of course, there are plenty of things to take issue with, the study doesn’t comment on the frequency of ad delivery or what percentage of ads were static vs flash, but it does at least validate the concerns of many advertisers out there.
What’s your take on the status quo in online advertising? Let us know in the comments, on our Facebook page, and on Twitter.
Photo by kevindooley.
2009: The Year of ServInt. Happy New Year!
Should Auld Acquaintance be forgot...
This has been an incredible year for ServInt. Despite one of the messiest economic downturns in history, we’ve been able to grow bigger, stronger, and more global, all the while maintaining the quality of service our customers have come to expect from us.
This isn’t always easy. Staying competitive in this industry requires a tremendous understanding of just how to properly create, build, promote, and launch a product or solution. Judging by the number of fly-by-night companies that started, and ended, in 2009; it serves as a powerful reminder that a good network, copious experience and open accountability are the most important aspects of any business and they are especially important to ServInt.
Here is a quick recap detailing a few of the biggest events this year for ServInt!
More after the jump…
Happy Holidays from ServInt!
As we approach the last batch of holidays this year, all of us at ServInt wanted to wish everyone happy holidays!
Thank you for your time, your support, your business, and your competition.
Data Centers and Your Hosting Business
Free Tip: Invest in cable management.
The data center is the most important tool in a web host’s arsenal.
That might sound painfully obvious, and it is, but for those looking to get into this industry it’s an important item to remember. Competitors brag about which bits of software they use to push product out the door but they often forget to mention the necessity of maintaining a powerful, scaleable, stay-in-business-able data center to actually store that information.
After our most recent expansion into ServInt LA, I thought I’d share a few insights into the choices we had to make when building our infrastructure to give folks a better understanding of our corporate goals as well as offer advice to those looking to get into the hosting biz.
Here goes.
More after the jump…
Google Chrome OS – Eating Words and Raising Eyebrows
“We drive into the future using only our rear view mirror.”
- Marshall Mcluhan
It's the only way to go.
Now that the hype has died down a bit, and now that I’ve had a chance to play with very early builds of Chrome OS myself, there are some interesting questions about the new OS that arise as they pertain to the web, and to web hosting in particular. I’ll start by saying this, what Google is doing through Chrome OS will eventually change the way we use computers forever. Bold statement, I know, but here’s my take.
For those who aren’t knee deep in the geeky tech news world, Chrome OS is a new operating system by Google. The premise behind the open-source project is simple, it’s an extremely light-weight operating system that is nothing more than a web browser on top of Linux.
Its file system would be largely inaccessible to the user, its applications would be web based, and again the actual OS would be the Chrome web browser itself. Your documents and preferences would primarily be stored online by Google, in “the cloud” (take a drink), so that if your device were ever lost your data could easily sync back to a new device or to a different computer. By eliminating the distinction between a web browser and an operating system, Google is banking on the idea that most people only use their companion computers to surf the web.
More after the jump…
