Cardin Nguyen 
August 30, 2007Well even though I flew into Huston, Texas late last night, but I enjoy my time here. Meeting imporant people and people who could help my business grow. Ntow After going to this CAC meeting I had a vision of revampin my resellin business to sell ThePlanet Line of servers. I met wonderful people who could make a different in a company. From this meeting I alo notices that thepanet is working hard to sell their products. I also realize the top end of theplanet makes a huge differnt and impact on the whole work.
The Business enviroment is hard to undrestand sometimes but this has cleared my initial questions. Since the merge The Planet got better to some extend. I approve how they work hard to improve Customer services and make Orbit more user friendly, but I disapprove out they are workin hard to make an image. Designin a whooe new TP Office is totally unessescary right now. I believe that Ewin Doug kinda took it too far. When I step in the TP offices in development. I had a werid feeling. Before the meeting I was proud of theplanet trying so hard to make a changes and providing an outstanding product. The walk through the office change the idea and I was asking myself “Why dont they reduce this and that and invest some of this to improve more Tier 3-4 staffs”. So the impressure and external experinces to is TP most important aspects. Also if I could remember Doug Ewin words correctly while he was talking about the Basketball room. Hes trying to make people line up to work for TP and trying to make people like the offices. That is a good approach I guess. I cant always take this negatively. But anyways the show was great. For me as a reseller I want reliablity and can be confidences that theplanet will provide me the customer service that I can resell to my customer + my own support which would make theplanet a great services. Without theplanet bein my backbone I wont beable to provide a services that customer will buy.
Every company has its down and ups. You can litterally read bad impression about the planet on webhostingtalk.com all the time. Its just a natuarally thing in business. Bad post affects a business. Now that even with EV1.NET as a merger . With the massive OS Reload accidents that Ev1 has encounter it create a negative effects. Similar to life. theres a cause and theres the effects. The cause will always be there and the effects may be gone but to people who read popular sites such as webhostingtalk.com it creates a negative effects on users.
The approache that theplanet has changed to make me as a customer and stafff (I see myself as one I guess) reselling theplanet products I have to do the hard job.
a.) I must provide an enviroment that those things that happen with EV1/theplanet in the past wont happen to me.
b.) If I give false promises it will affect my business as a reseller and staff. I will quit reselling theplanet line of servers and keep improving what I can for the servers thats already on the network
c.) Without the planet changing and revamping their customer support and sales tech it will be hell of a hard time
d.) sales dpt is trying too hard to sell their product. With the many people that attend CAC meeting they are all saying similar things. They are saying that the new sales staffs are trying too hard to sale RACKS cabinets without understand the background aspects.
for example:
70 servers to move
73-750 gig servers to move x 2
146gigs-1500
146×70 1500×70 = 10220gigs -105TB
so in all I’m moving roughtly 50+ TB of data from liquidweb to another datacenter.
I’m sitting here dealing with some sales tech that knows I need servers. But they are trying too hard to sell their product immediately but not understanding my needs.
For example Equinix, when I call them up they try their best to undertand and help me design a network that provides me confidences that the move would be sucessful. They alway said that the bandwidth during the move would be free too. Buyin 50MB but they would provide me 1gig while the move is in progress.
These are the kind of sales team that I’m looking for. A little more knowledge in what customers want. Thats the whole point of having account manager. Accuont manager trying to sell TP products. But most important of all they should understand that we’re not using these products for ourselfs. We have to go through our customers then back to TP. So theres this gap of wait time so its hard to make immediately decision, thats why reselling is a diffucut task. If theres a problem we as the provider will get point at. But then customer dont know that. I would point at theplanet for this but then customer point at the provider.
Adding to that show off walk center. TP is tryin to cut off the cost of customer support but then I think its a mistake. Spliting up customer support with the NOC guys is kinda sad. H2 DC that I went today. Theres 2 people working and one NOC command central. Which the impression was theres literally 8 guys working at the dc and now we’re moving some of the customer support out which would leave 1-2 noc guys there? I DONT trust servers with just 1-2 guys there at the DC with thousand of servers there in that DC. If theres 10 servers down. How can one NOC tech work with all 10 at onces.
e.) Competitive prices is what theplanet should loook into. Maybe TP shouldnt look hard into makin a huge revenue margin but look into making the services better That why when Doug took me through the tour I totally lost the impression of TP work after the tour of the powerful Data Center comparable to all the datacenters that I have been to. At the meeting when one of the CAC members suggest that TP should have better competitive prices. Doug said we dont have much margin in the servers.
With this reseller discounts it gave is a better discount as the reseller which makes us want to resell the products. But still comparing to many others services its not there yet. So maybe work with TP a little more on their prices..
f.) maybe as for marketing for reselling. theplanet should proivde content thats easy take able to implement into th reseller website. To be honest, I hate TP new new new orderin system. Its retraded!
g.) over all I hate the rack 1 year contract signing becuase theplanet is placing a 1 year impliment on the reseller. The customer fucks the reseller then the liability is placed on the reseller. the reseller then offiically fucked. So I think its better that all the reseller of theplanet wil probably wait for the v-xconnects.
h.) thats the same thing that tp is having issues wiht. TP is having issues sellin their products. DO they want like 1 account per server. thats hectic. So most of the revenues is generate by US the reseller of TP products. So tp should impose a lighters rules. 1 year contract is gay. Same thing with abuse. If I go write an abuse email on some random picture on ****** which is a major website I have at theplanet. The abuse team would litterally open a ticket and threat that the server would be close. So the abuse team need to be revamped or escallated similar to myspace style or youtube.com style. They get tons of abuse emails but they were able to live.
Over customer before was decent. Now its like gambling. If you call in and if you the correct staffs they great if not then you’re gonna play the tag team.
Quit the money investng into improving the looks of the planet. THEY should invest in more staffs. Even staff that dont have to be at the Dc. Maybe staffs from all over the country or something. Hell I dont konw if that would work but invest i more staffs who can do common Noc things. Call center wont do any different. Moving the call center away from DC is a mistakes. Now the ticket revamp will take longer
heres the sencario:
Caller A —- calls in ask for help
TP A answers and say oh erver is down I cant restart, the noc guys have to go retart.
– ticket get shooted over to noc guys.
– oh my god the noc guys have 100 servers to reboot. 1minute to reboot the server
= oh shit it took me 1 hr and 40 minutes to reboot my server
Hell so much work I think. LEss guys at DC = more problems later on……… Working on customer support but leaving out the main backbone of the system will probably weaken the reliable system. Working to improve is great but removing some already strong aspects of theplane wil create hell for customers in the long run when problems does exisit.
Well thats over all about the input of the merge
Over all the meeting was great. I enjoy meeting cool people out here in the same business that I am in. I hope next time Ewin Doug would create a better timing of CAC meetings.
– Give more breaks!!!!!
– Actually give LUNCH BREAK! I ENJOY MY FOOD!
– maybe 1 more day at the hotel or something so the session is more joy-a-ble then rushing. From what I heard the CAc friends I made said same thing. Doug Ewin is like old school work. WORK WORK WORK!. So hes there knocking and getting us to work work work work. But hell Dougs a good CEO as he barely knows jackswat about hosting business (thats my personel impression), but he can develope a great team who knows what they are doing. I’m impress. Great leader…….
My wife called me everyday telling me about her stomach expanding and tighten every hour. So at the meeting I was totally out of it. Also becuaes I didnt even sleep. Well anyways I gotta get some sleep and hope the days past by fast. Gotta hope the time fly fast so I can come home and be with my wife. I think she’ll be hella piss at me if I’mnot there for my son and her.
Well anyways good night mr journal.
Cardin Nguyen