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.

ServInt's Devon Rutherford

Greetings blog readers!

As head of our Enterprise sales team here at ServInt, I usually spend my days working directly with customers and I’ve never been a contributor on ServInt’s blog before, but today we have an announcement I’m so excited by that I insisted on being the one to share it. Since it is my job to assist customers with finding the package best suited to their needs, I can’t wait to tell everybody about this series of new Enterprise Dedicated Server products we have available as of today.

Our Enterprise sales team helps to outfit customers with demanding, unique, and sometimes esoteric needs. There was a time when these interactions were relatively rare and specialized, but today, even our entry level products see incredibly complex software setups. It’s amazing and exhilarating that today’s internet is far more accessible, far more organic, and far more democratic, than ever before.

One of the true hallmarks I’ve witnessed in my 12 years at ServInt has been our consistent focus on not just providing a single, static family of solutions. Instead, we’ve cultivated an ecosystem where businesses can grow with ServInt. We made sure that when a business moved to dedicated hardware, going “Solo” meant never truly being alone.

More after the jump…

We’ve built our network infrastructure to handle everything from the start-up-friendly Essential VPS all the way to a 100+ Dedicated Server cluster. That capability has made us the go-to host for businesses looking for a partner that will not only ensure they stay up, but will be ready once they grow up. Moving from a powerful VPS to an even more powerful dedicated server used to be a harrowing experience. Migrations were a headache, scalability was stunted, and software workarounds made managing dedicated servers more of a pain than they needed to be.

Not anymore.

When a business grows out of our SuperVPS line, they can now have confidence in going Solo. We’ve built a brand new platform that combines the raw power of dedicated hardware with the efficiency of virtualization software, and the redundancy of the ServInt Cloud. In this spirit, we’re proud to announce our latest line of dedicated enterprise server solutions.

Introducing ServInt’s new Solo Dedicated Server series.

Solo Express

For small to medium businesses who need a powerful server that won’t break the bottom line, the Solo Express series is the best way to step into ServInt’s Dedicated Server solutions. There are 4 Solo Express models, including:

Solo Express 850

Quad Core Xeon X3430 Processor

8 GB RAM
500 GB Usable Storage
6 Terabytes Monthly Transfer
And much, much more!

Solo Pro

For true web focused enterprises the Solo Pro series offers exceptional value and performance in its class. The Solo Pro series is engineered for businesses that need reliability and flexibility above all else. A professional server solution doesn’t just work, it excels. There are three Solo Pro models, including:

Solo Pro 1680

Quad Core Xeon® X3460 Processor
16 GB RAM
RAID 1 Mirroring
800 GB Usable Storage
8 TB Monthly Transfer
And much, much more!

Solo Enterprise

Markets don’t compromise, and with the Solo Enterprise, neither do you. The most powerful server we offer, the Solo Enterprise makes no excuses. It is sheer, unadulterated power. The Solo Enterprise is the flagship Dedicated Solution at ServInt, a high-end system for high-end business. There are three Solo Enterprise models, including:

Solo Enterprise 2450

2 x Quad Core Xeon® L5530 Processor

24 GB RAM
4 x 300 SAS HDDs in RAID 10
450 GB Usable Storage
256 MB Hardware RAID Cache
10 TB Monthly Transfer
And much, much more!

All Solo servers are backed up daily, for free, by ServInt’s dedicated team of brilliant Network Engineers and Managed Services Team members.

Do you need a different configuration than our Solo series but still want to take advantage of our support? Do you need custom solutions that don’t fit neatly in a shopping cart? Let our Enterprise sales team know! We’re experts at custom configurations that will fit the needs of any business.

To order a Solo Express, Solo Pro, or Solo Enterprise, click here! If you have any questions, please feel free to contact ServInt’s sales team, we’ll be happy to help.

Elegant Complexity

15 years ago, I founded ServInt.

The odds were very much against us at the outset.  I was 19 and I didn’t have any connections to the industry, much less the capital that would be necessary to start a company of our scope today.  What I lacked in funding, I made up for with sheer, unadulterated passion for building a rock solid business on the web.  In my mind, the only things we needed to be successful were a coherent vision and geek cred, and ServInt would have both in spades.

From the beginning, the difference between ServInt and the competition has always been our level of accountability.  We wanted businesses of all shapes and sizes to be able to trust us to ensure they stayed up and running.  The things that many folks take for granted, such as 24/7 support, were things we had to develop from the ground up…and when I say ground up, I mean me waking up at 3 am to update someone’s server in the next room. Ah, simpler times indeed.

Today, we have staff all over the U.S. serving customers from all over the world.  More than 30% of our customers are in Asia, and we continue to have a dominating presence in North America and Europe, we are a truly global company.  From our Managed Services Team in Virginia, to our network engineering teams in Washington, D.C., Virginia, and California, all the way to our Enterprise Sales teams in Michigan, it shows just how far we’ve come from the early days in ServInt’s infancy.

We’re a healthier, smarter, and faster company now than we’ve ever been, and these last 15 years have been a blast.

This year, we have a lot of really exciting projects we’re working on.  In the coming months, we’ll have new products competing in new markets, paving the way for a future that further enables businesses to grow, and keep growing, with ServInt.

Traditionally, a 15th anniversary is represented by a gift of crystal or a watch.  Both are symbols of longevity, rigidity, strength, and transparency.  Like a crystal, ServInt has a clear focus that has been shaped and refined by our experiences in this industry.  Like a watch, we have stood the test of time, and our product has an elegant complexity shaped by a combination of open source expertise and the attention to detail only true craftsmen could supply.

I think that image is fitting, and I want to personally thank all of you for trusting us with your business.  You are, and will continue to be, an integral part of our success.

Here’s to another 15 years.

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.

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.

Let’s Be Honest

Like other tech related fields, our industry has not been kind to the environment. We never saw the connection between providing services on the web and the climate. Indeed, billions of people and millions of businesses worldwide ignored climate change because the damage was subtle, out of sight, and concurrently out of mind. Now we know better. We wanted to tackle this issue head-on with three goals:

• To reduce the pollution, directly and indirectly, caused by our data centers.
• To create more sustainable infrastructure.
• To, in conjunction with the above, reduce our industry’s contribution to climate change.

In recent months there have been numerous companies who have been focusing on the competitive advantages of an entirely green operation. We think that’s great, and we welcome the competition. It keeps us on our toes and challenges us to better streamline our efforts to combat climate change.

However, another side of this debate has popped up that has turned ugly fast. A few firms have been vocally calling out popular eco-oriented websites for hosting with companies that they (the host) deemed to be damaging to the environment. Some of these companies are making what are at best mean-spirited out of context accusations and at worst outright lies about companies like ours.

ServInt has a great reputation in this industry because we focus on the experience of our customers, not the shortcomings of our competitors. We have a lot of friends who we also compete with, and we’ve even come to the defense of competitors in the past when the situation called for it. We especially NEVER publicly talk down on a competitor unless we feel that they are actively harming our industry. But very few people want to talk about this issue when their businesses are not 100% “green”, so allow me.

Just the facts ma’am

Lets parse a few of the arguments these companies are making (and please feel free to challenge me in the comments):

“[Insert company here] is a fossil fuel host because they have data centers in major cities.”

This is an interesting (read: dumb) argument that I haven’t heard before. The argument I think they’re making here is that companies such as ServInt have data centers in large urban areas which presumably use the traditional power grid. These power grids typically generate energy through environmentally damaging means, so their argument says that hosting with such a company could classify you as being part of the problem.

Without delving into the thousands of asterisks associated with this idea, let’s focus on the actual business decisions that dictate why ServInt, and thousands of other hosts, choose to build and lease data centers in urban areas.

The vast majority of the world’s premium bandwidth sits in these urban areas. As an Enterprise-class host, it’s completely unacceptable to build our entire business on second tier connections. It’s also not logical to tear down a building in the heart of a major city just to build a LEED certified data center in every situation.

The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification (LEED) is arguably the best and most comprehensive green building standard in the world. However, LEED is a point-based system and doesn’t necessarily take environmental impact into consideration in every case. While there are plenty of initiatives that are aiming to change this, LEED isn’t perfect.  For example, points can be earned for installing showers and changing rooms in a building. While that would be a legitimate boon for a company that urged walking and biking to work…it could also mean LEED points and tax breaks for an executives-only gym.

The true environmental impact of the construction, the effect on local traffic, and the reengineering of the power grid all have to be taken into consideration when building a data center anywhere. The LEED process minimizes many of those concerns, but not all.

Finally, the term “fossil-fuel host” is misleading, we are not throwing coal into a furnace or using gasoline to power our servers. The Sierra Club’s National Headquarters are in San Francisco, and National Geographic’s Headquarters are in Washington, D.C., yet no one would ever consider either of these two great organizations part of the problem.

“We are better because we build our own data centers, use solar power, and liquid cooling.”

Building private data centers is an important part of any successful, medium to large-scale host’s business strategy. Construction and fiber connections still need to be taken into account when all of your data centers are located outside of major metropolitan areas.

It’s very nice that you have a solar powered, liquid-cooled data center. But how did you get the fiber connection to your facility? Were the utility workers riding bicycles? Do you have environmentally friendly engineering in place to ensure uptime?

What about your redundancy? Are the batteries you’re presumably using at night environmentally sound as well? What about backup power, are your backup generators running on environmentally friendly energy sources? How effective are all of these redundancies for companies who absolutely require constant uptime?

“Carbon offsets, environmental investment, and reforestation investments are not a solution.”

We completely agree. Carbon offsets need to be properly vetted to make sure that monies are being utilized efficiently, honestly, and where they are actually needed. They are an imperfect band-aid on the long road to a solution.

However, investing in more energy efficient equipment, optimizing and deploying virtualized product lines in favor of traditional dedicated products, and planting trees are absolutely beneficial. These are things we can do NOW, with hard work, energy, and investment.

ServInt recently completed it’s 2009 reforestation goal, and since starting the program not too long ago we’ve planted more than 12,000 trees all while continually improving the efficiency of our network infrastructure. Because of these initiatives, our entire VPS and SuperVPS line are climate-positive.

But we know that isn’t enough. We know more needs to be done. Photoshopping a leaf onto your logo doesn’t automatically change who you are as a company.

That’s why we strive to share what we’ve learned with the hosting industry, including some of our competitors who aren’t as far along. Last year, ServInt COO Christian Dawson spoke at HostingCon on this very topic with the hopes of minimizing the initial sticker shock that prevents hundreds of otherwise socially conscious hosts from taking the plunge. We’ll continue to be a player in an open, honest debate over how best to combat climate change in our industry and we welcome insight, challenges, and debates.

Let us know what you think in the comments, on Facebook, or on Twitter.

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.

1. Tommy T and the Abyssinian Roots Collective

Tommy T and the Abyssinian Roots Collective

Tommy T is the bassist for the self-proclaimed “Gypsy Punk” band Gogol Bordello. If you haven’t heard of Gogol Bordello, you’re doing yourself a disservice. Simply and succinctly put, the band sounds like someone took all the music on the planet, threw it in a blender, and poured it into your ears. Crazy does not do it justice, they are fantastic.

The Abyssinian Roots Collective is Tommy T’s solo project that aims to bring Ethiopian music to Western audiences with a twist of Dub, Reggae, and Jazz mixed in for good measure. Their sound is complex and at times hypnotic.

http://www.tommytmusic.com/

2. Sitali

Sitali

Sitali is an alt rock trio with Haitian roots best known for their vocal contributions to Thievery Corporation (another D.C. stalwart group) and their Trip Hop, Downtempo electronic lounge music. Outside of their contributions, however, the band has a livelier more rock-infused sound.

http://www.myspace.com/sitali

3. Eastern Standard Time

Eastern Standard Time

Made up of some of the most influential names in D.C. Ska, Reggae, and Jazz, Eastern Standard Time represents the best of the best when it comes to pure Caribbean sound. They religiously stick to classic Ska sounds, so the more deliberate, jovial music is a stark contrast from the ska punk of the 90’s.

http://www.myspace.com/easternstandardtime

4. The Ambitions

The Ambitions

These guys are D.C. pros and have a really unique, kooky take on 60’s soul, garage rock, and mod music. These guys are a blast to see and put on a really fun show, which is a stark change from the moodier work a lot of DC area bands pump out.

http://www.myspace.com/ambitionsdc

5. spoonboy

Spoonboy

Guitarist and vocalist for the DC area “DIY” Punk band The Max Levin Ensemble, David “spoonboy” Combs has been at the forefront of the band’s politically charged music and has also been active on solo projects for sometime. Spoonboy has been touring the world and we’re psyched to hear he’s performing in support of Voice of Haiti tonight at DC9!

http://www.plan-it-x.org/artist/spoonboy

Hope to see you all there! For more information, check out our previous blog post or DC9!

Voices For Haiti Promotional Poster

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.

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.

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!

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.