Rapid Networking

Networking... meeting of the minds or just knocking heads together?



I attended the first of many speed networking events this afternoon. It was in college Park, Orlando and was packed (50+) attendees. Mostly small business owners, many real-estate related companies including mortgage brokers, title companies, etc. Some larger companies (Verizon, etc) but more often than not everyone there was a SBO/SB Marketer.



After the lunch (which was full of onions) and then fighting through the unbearable din of all the concurrent conversations, it was a productive afternoon. We picked up a number of promising leads as well as a few potential partners, wherein our existing partnership model will provide added benefits to them at a bearable expense.



On a very important side note: never, EVER server onions or heavily spiced foods at networking events. By the end of the afternoon, many attendees weren't even bothering to hide their burps--nothing like making a good impression on potentials.

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Quick and Easy Business Call - Or How I learned to Love Comm. Services

We're at a slightly interesting juncture. Some of our

hardware is 3-6 months away from the terminal phase of its existance.

I'm talking about you--servers, networking great and that old

standby--the first SAN. Normally, we'd start the purchasing process

about now--laying out specs and expected usage requirements for the

next 3 years, then following up with quotes from some of our favorite

(reliable) vendors.



But this time it's different.



Now, it's actually less expensive to outsource our entire hosting

operation--basically co-lo'ing VPS' from any of the number of

world-wide advanced hosting providers. 3 years ago, when we went

through out previous major purchasing cycle, we were stuck. To run the

systems that we needed, we were forced to purchase our own hardware,

purchase our own server licenses, pay to locate our equipment in a

Tier-1 facility, pay for bandwidth and maintain the hardware our selves

or pay an additional hardware support contract. Now, for 30% less than

our current co-lo bill, we can outsource our entire hosting operation

while still maintaining 100% control of the servers and the

applications (no sharing with anyone else). In addition, the bandwidth

available at that price is greater than what's being offered through

most co-lo's now PLUS the monthly bill includes automated backups (we

used to run them ourselves), 100% hardware maintenance, all server

licenses, 99.9999% uptime and increased SAN space.



So, for a 30% price drop, we can improve our reliability, improve

our operational procedures AND cut a huge chunk of our maintenance

budget? Ah, tell me again why the constant growth and the rapid

evolution fostered by the tech businesses is a bad thing.







--Shawn

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New Blog - Same Message

La plus ca change, la plus ca meme ne chose. The more things change, the more they change. Opening the office center in Orlando has been a huge boost to RTBS, offering us good weather, good growth and good partners. Our marketing strategy of promoting the Marketing Pillar has paid dividends and our Corporate Strategic Management Division is getting off the ground with the expected rapid growth and customer acquisition.

Of course, there are always the day-to-day issues. Hardware in 2 locations that needs to be maintained. Customers now all along the East Coast. Suppliers, contractors, staff located everywhere. But operations are running smoothly. We've replaced our weekly in-person staff meetings with video conferences and whiteboard sessions. Our customers haven't reported a hitch as 98% of all post-sale interactions are handled over the phone. The largest hiccup came when we had to force a reset for our whitehat registrations with the major ISPs and when we tried to use Skype for out telephone services. The ISP issues were quickly fixed.

Skype, on the other hand failed to live up to real-time availability requirements and was dumped for Vonage.



There's always a fine line between putting too much business information in a public message and not enough. For the next few months, we will maintain the policy of 'if it's interesting, put it in, if it's detailed business info, leave it out.'



Gotta run!

-Shawn

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