Month of May, 2009

The situation involving the American automakers in Detriot, Michigan is astounding, disappointing, and yet predictable. The companies (specifically General Motors and Chrysler) built poor products for too long, and now must live with the consequences. I've spoken to many people who assume their businesses are immune from the issues which brought down GM and Chrysler. But they're wrong - these issues can affect any business in any sector (even the Internet!).

In my last entry http://www.hostreview.com/icontent/the-blog/anti-virus-approach-not-enou... I wrote about how we need to inoculate ourselves, our data, and our identities against the poisons of the online world. It makes no sense to use 20th century technology to protect our networks against 21st century threats.

Here's how 21st-century protection works:

Surviving a downturn is difficult and there are no silver bullets to increase or maintain your current level of revenues. However, there are ways to alleviate the pain of declining sales.

1. Communicate with your customers large and small on the phone or better yet, face to face. This also means listening and learning about their business as much, or more so than talking to them about yours.

2. In a slow economy, everyone on staff must increase their sales effort relative to their function in the organization.

I come from the traditional advertising world where packaged-goods titans like P&G would buy millions in mass advertising which would stimulate billions in sales. A predictable, reliable engine.

But then the Internet happened.

It opened up virtually all heretofore closed systems: distribution, marketing, promotion. It held the promise of creating a level playing field for all types of merchants – large and small. This was the promise that drove the explosive growth of e-commerce for the past 5 years.

US Senate Bill S.773

President Obama has, on multiple occasions, promised to take the government’s initiatives against cybercrime to the next level. With US Senate Bill S.773, the Obama administration has shown, at the very least, that it’s willing to put its money where its mouth is and push cybersecurity to the next level.

Which web hosting companies and related businesses operate the largest number of servers? Rackspace announced they had hit the 50,000 mark recently, and DatacenterKnowledge took the opportunity to determine who is in the same league. Three web hosting companies lead the pack: 1&1 Internet (55,000), Rackspace (50,038), and The Planet (48,500). They are followed by Akamai Technologies, OVH, SBC Communications, Verizon, Time Warner Cable, and SoftLayer.