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As previously stated when we chose Alabanza we felt we were getting the best. We thought that we were getting a company that would provide the best of service, support, and protection for our customers. For the last 2 years that proven to be true, but we learned that choosing the best isn’t enough. We have to have a long term strategy in place that will allow us to be ready to take action to protect our customers businesses in the event anything like this were to happen again. We can no longer afford to have all our eggs in one basket by relying on just one vendor for support. No matter how reliable that vendor may appear to be today, you never know what the future will be.

We have already taken some steps by purchasing two servers on a new network. This network provider, Liquid Web is celebrating their 10th Anniversary this year. We were particularly impressed that Liquid Web was ranked in the upper 20% of the top 5000 of the Fastest Growing Private Companies in America, as ranked by Inc. Magazine. They were also ranked one of the top 50 Companies to Watch by the Governor of Michigan.

This is only one of several upcoming announcements that we will be making in the near future. Stay tuned!

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Two months ago a company named NaviSite bought Alabanza. Like is common in most mergers NaviSite wanted to reduce cost and put their own systems in place. They decided to migrate our servers from the Alabanza’s Baltimore, MD location to NaviSite’s data center located in Andover, MA. From the start the move was plagued with problems. The proposed dates of the move were pushed on multiple occasions. It was certainly inconvenient to have those time frames pushed it was better to push them versus having it go incredibly bad. On November 2nd at 10PM EDT NaviSite began what was to start a series of blunders that has most likely cost them the Alabanza customer base.

Their original plan was to create virtual copies of all client servers on new equipment in Andover. However, by 5am on the morning of November 3rd they had only accomplished getting a fraction of them transfered. They then proceeded to start physically trucking around 400 of the roughly 900 servers to take a 400 mile trip.

By some time late Saturday night by my accounts, servers started to arrive in NaviSite’s Andover location.

At this point I believe a few of the facts are a blur to me. I do know our server was disconnected from Alabanza’s network at around 5:30pm eastern time on Saturday November 3rd and loaded on a truck. Although I can not be 100% sure as to the exact time I believe it arrived in Andover late Sunday night.

One would think this was the end of the problem but amazingly, it was just the beginning. NaviSite immediately started to power up the servers and connect them to the network. When the final pieces were in place NaviSite switched the network from Baltimore to Andover and plugged it in to the new network. The servers came up for about 10 minutes, and then quickly crashed the network. NaviSite blamed the issue on a DOS (denial of service) attack but later discovered it was “ARP” traffic (Best I understand ARP is excessive communication between the computers inside the network to each other). NaviSite discovered that without the Tipping Point system (think: hardware firewall) they had in Baltimore installed the network would never work. So they proceeded to pack up the Tipping Point box in Baltimore and fly it to Andover. By Sunday night they were installing it but it took several hours and a few up and down of the network to get it to work properly.

Our server finally started to come to life at around 6:30 am on Monday November 5. We spent the better part of the morning repairing a few issues on our managed server to get it back online. By mid morning we had 85% of our customers back online. However, due to routing problems inside the NaviSite network many sites started to have intermittent problems. Our server went back down around 4pm as NaviSite shut down the network for further repairs. Not remembering exact times we were back up a few hours later. By Tuesday morning we were running at or near 100%. We did experience some network issues throughout the day but considering the weekend were fairly stable. We have had no official reports of outages today from our clients.

We will have some new announcements to be made in the near future as we look toward the future and past this very unfortunate incident. We thank you for your patience and understanding during this crisis situation.

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More recent, I contacted their community affairs division and asked for a donation to a Great Strides Walk for Cystic Fibrosis that I was participating in. A month after sending the email, I received a message stating that the company would give $1000 to my efforts. That really was telling to me, of the kind of company they are. That they are community minded, and care about their customers.

This is another example of a reason that I’m glad we do business with them.

From The Washington Post:

NEW YORK — GoDaddy.com, the leading registration company for Internet addresses, has agreed to take over and manage more than 850,000 domain names belonging to customers of a troubled rival, officials announced Tuesday.

The deal, reached with the support of the Internet’s key oversight agency, means that customers of that rival, RegisterFly, could once again renew names, or transfer them elsewhere if they do not want to stay with GoDaddy.

Those names had been in limbo following financial and operational troubles at RegisterFly. In some cases individuals, groups and businesses were finding their Web sites inoperable because they could not properly renew their addresses before they had expired, nor could they move them to another company, officials said.

“For the past few months, they were pretty much in the dark and there was a lot of frustration there,” GoDaddy Chief Executive Bob Parsons said in an interview. “All that is a thing of the past.”

Parsons refused to disclose terms of the transfer deal, saying they are confidential. But he said GoDaddy isn’t buying RegisterFly, so any lawsuits and other previous disputes remain with RegisterFly.

The deal calls for RegisterFly to give GoDaddy its customer databases. Transfers of names will be automatic, and GoDaddy will notify existing RegisterFly customers about the switch and set up a Web page and telephone hotline. GoDaddy expects to start running those names within a week.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the organization in charge of the Internet’s addressing policies, said the deal was good for RegisterFly customers.

“GoDaddy is a well-known, large customer-service-driven organization, and so that should diminish the sorts of problems people have experienced,” said Paul Levins, ICANN’s vice president for corporate affairs.

The deal also marks a win for GoDaddy, which can make money when those names are up for renewal.

“If it wasn’t for that, our interest in doing the deal would be diminished quite a bit,” Parsons said. “It is going to take a certain degree of efforts on our part. We’re going to have to answer any questions customers have and resolve any issues.”

ICANN already had moved to yank RegisterFly’s accreditation and sued the company for its databases. Levins said ICANN would proceed with the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, saying the company still wasn’t prominently notifying customers of the decertification decision.

GoDaddy Group Inc. manages more than 20 million domain names under “.com,” “.net” “.org,” “.biz,” “.info” and other suffixes. Like RegisterFly, GoDaddy functions as a registrar, meaning it registers names on its customers’ behalf and submits them to a central database for each suffix, known as a registry.

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One such example is Jerusalem Dental Center for Children.

From their About page:

Dr. Isaac Perle, a dentist in private practice in Boston, recognized the need for low-cost, high-quality dental care in Israel. With the support of the South African Israel United Appeal (I.U.A), the Alpha Omega International Dental Fraternity, the Slome family and former Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek, he founded The Jerusalem Dental Center for Children (JERUSALEM DENTAL CENTER FOR CHILDREN) in 1985.

From their Home page:

The Problem

Each year, thousands of low-income children throughout Israel are rushed to dentist offices and hospital emergency rooms suffering from severe tooth pain. Often, that pain is a result of extensive decay – and neglect.

In many cases, these children experience more than just pain. Many have difficulty chewing and speaking, and suffer from poor overall health. They also struggle in school, with studies showing that millions of productive school hours are lost each year to dental-related illness.

The reason is simple: Many large and limited-income families in Israel cannot afford dental care. Often, their children only see a dentist after they develop a severe problem – one that, in most cases, could have been avoided.

The Solution

A nonprofit clinic, the JERUSALEM DENTAL CENTER FOR CHILDREN provides high quality dental and preventive care at subsidized fees to families throughout Jerusalem and all over Israel. Our goal is to give children from poor families the dental care they deserve.

Since our establishment, we have had more than 200,000 patient visits. Today, our 30-member staff treats more than 12,000 children and adults a year, at discounts of up to 80 percent off standard private practice fees. In cases where families can’t afford even these minimal fees, we set up special payment programs and, sometimes, waive fees altogether.

We are currently seeking other non-profits or charitable groups to offer our services to. If you believe that we could assist you in your web-technology needs, please feel free to Contact Us.

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