Network Availability & Hurricane Ike

As many of you are well aware Own Web Now Corp global network operation center (NOC) is based in Dallas, TX. Today will be the most significant test of our network infrastructure impact due to inclement weather. Hurricane Ike is posed to hit Dallas, TX with the eye going directly overhead:

Our network operations center is staffed 24/7/365 and today is no exception. We are staffed better than usual for the Saturday’s 2nd and 3rd shift to monitor and manage any unusual events that may come as a result of Hurricane Ike. We do not expect significant network or wind damage as the data centers we operate from are standalone structures with poured cement and among the most element-proof buildings available.

What we are curious to find out is the state of flooding and power. Below is the map of our neighborhood.

The areas in blue represent our data centers and the big blue block in the center is our global network operations center at 1950 N Stemmons Frwy, also known as Infomart. All our data centers are well above the ground and can easily sustain several feet of water without impacting network operations.

Our primary concern is with the proximity of the Trinity River which is one of the largest public works in the history of Dallas and also the main flood protection solution for the Dallas-Fort Worth area. All the green “rivers” you see on the picture above are part of the Trinity River Corridor Project designed to take excess rainwater and guide it away from the sensitive downtown Dallas area. This system has never been tested by as large of a hurricane as Ike and we anxiously await to see how everything plays out. None of the diesel generators or operations are even close to the ground, and the lowest point of entry is some 8′ feet off the ground.

We are also anxious to see the performance of the new electrical grid monitoring service recently deployed in Dallas. You can read more about this system at The Dallas Morning News:

In February, an Oncor engineer, using the new technology, noticed unusual grid activity.

A worker went to the problem spot, noticed a loose bolt at a power line connection and tightened it.

Without the new technology, Oncor wouldn’t have known about the loose bolt until it fell off, power went out, and a customer called to complain.

We look forward to the test of Managed Power As A Service. 🙂

Given the fears and uncertainties we are very confident in our choice of Dallas as the headquarters for Own Web Now Corp. Every geographic location has its geopolitical uncertainties and tradeoffs and we feel that Dallas offers the best mix of corporate friendliness, network availability and redundancy, skilled workforce and reliable utilities. We are confident with our choice and our thoughts and prayers are with our fellow Texans this weekend as we weather this storm. After all, god blessed Texas 🙂

Sincerely,

Samantha Ellison

Chief of Operations, Own Web Now Corp

New Backup Features Available

It gives me great pleasure to announce that we have completed the upgrades to our global offsite backup network this weekend and that all the new features are now online. Make sure to take a moment and download the latest agents to take advantage of all the new awesome things our systems are able to do for you.

Continuous Data Protection

The absolutely coolest, most profitable and most desired feature available in the new release is the continuous data protection. This feature allows the backup software to make snapshots of data as it is being changed on the users PC or on the server. Backup jobs can now be executed in 1 minute increments if necessary.

Why is this absolutely phenomenal for you? Because it ope s up a profitability margin in the solution that nobody else can compete with you. For example, one of our competitors in this space requires you to purchase expensive hardware to do CDP, to pay for it up front and to pay for offsite backup quota as well. Not with Own Web Now – there is just one monthly fee, allowing you to choose your own hardware, even the affordable network-enabled USB hard drives from Western Digital MyBook Series (750GB market price around $200).

Another one of our competitors in the SMB space has a requirement ratio, so you have to buy far more offsite backup space than you actually need. Offsite backups are for critical documents, but what about a competitive advantage of having more robust, local backups? Well, that doesn’t make sense for them because they don’t make money. With Own Web Now there are no offsite/onsite ratios, you can start with our lowest plan (10GB offsite, $16/month) and install the agent software on all the office PCs and create local backups with CDP for every workstation in the company.

We are absolutely thrilled with this new feature!

Seeding

Starting with September 1st, we now offer seeding services for $100. If you have a client that has a ton of data to offsite or you just don’t want to tie up their Internet connection for the weekend we now offer the ability to seed the backup and bring it over. This has been a huge area of discontent for our users with larger backup sets, that it sometimes took forever to get initial backup to Own Web Now and then random failures and expirations didn’t quite line up.

So let’s say goodbye to all those problems. Here is how this works. When you order the offsite backup let us know that you want to send us a backup on a hard drive. We will UPS you a hard drive to plug into your server/workstation and save a backup on the hard drive. Put the USB drive into the included envelope and give it to your UPS guy. It will arrive at Own Web Now Dallas or Los Angeles NOC in a day or two, we’ll restore it and from that point it’s just your daily changes being pushed over the Internet.

Brand New Interface

The interface in the new agent is stunning, on par with the competitive backup solutions. I think you will really enjoy it.

Advertising Support

Never miss an opportunity to market to your own clients. With the new release we will accept ads that can be displayed to your own user base. Since the agents can be installed on multiple PCs this gives you more exposure than just your logo!

I sincerely hope that the new agent gives many of you not just a more remarkable offsite and onsite backup solution, but also provides you with the profitability margin that nobody can compete with you on.

End of competitive promotions for ExchangeDefender

Effective tomorrow, August 14th, 2008, we will no longer offer competitive transfer promotions for service providers who switched their accounts from Postini/Google, MX Logic or Message Labs to ExchangeDefender.

OWN Partner Call with Dana Epp

Yesterday we announced a new SMB security solution priced at a point that any SMB user can afford it – $20/month. Our solution is powered by AuthAnvil from Scorpion Software and it’s CEO Dana Epp joined us today to talk about it.

Over the course of this nearly 50 minute podcast you will hear many security concerns, sales and business conversations, learn how to position and intelligently discuss the aspect of two factor authentication with an SMB customer. Dana and Vlad talk further about the offering becoming a point of differentiation and trust for managed service providers (MSP) that want to assure their prospects they can trust them with their systems.

We are extremely excited to offer this solution at just $20/user/month because it breaks the pricing barrier that kept this type of an offering from becoming mainstream in SMB. With more mobility, more cloud services, more people involved in IT systems management, two factor authentication is something to discuss with your prospects, clients, staff and bosses. Tune in and listen to us address many security pain points and how we believe this announcement solves them.

Click here to download the podcast, runtime 50 minutes.

OWN and Scorpion Software team up for an affordable password protection

Own Web Now Corp and Scorpion Software are teaming up on an exciting new service that helps your passwords more secure and less likely to be compromised, guessed or sniffed by hackers. Using token-based (keychain) one time passwords improves the security of the organization by allowing remote and mobile workers to provide one time passwords when they login remotely from a less secure location.

How does it work?

Logging into an organization requires a username and a password, but if you are using a shared connection, computer that may have keylogger installed, system compromised by spyware those credentials can be stolen. The token that you are issued as a part of our service has a password that changes every 60 seconds. When you attempt to login to your organization you will be asked for the password currently displayed on the device. Only the server and the token know the correct password at that time so even if your password should happen to be compromised and stolen hackers will not be able to use your password alone to gain access to your organization.

Offer Details

AuthAnvil tokens will be available with full service and support for $20 per user per month. There are no minimums, you can sign up a single user. Shipping is free as is the ongoing support, setup and service. We have worked very hard to deliver a solution that is the most flexible, affordable and meaningful for the SMB market and we look forward to offering you more ways to trust that your information stored in the cloud can only be accessed by you.

Announcing BlackBerry Support

Due to heavy demand by our ever increasing mobile customer base, Own Web Now proudly announces immediate availability of BlackBerry Enterprise Server. BlackBerry users can now use fully featured synchronization between their mobile BlackBerry devices and Own Web Now hosted Exchange 2007 services. BES service is available at a low monthly fee as an addon to our hosting services. BlackBerry is the #1 selling smartphone in North America and among the most demanded business communication devices by our customer base and we are glad to finally offer you this option.

In addition to BlackBerry Enterprise Server, Own Web Now fully supports Blackberry, Windows Mobile, iPhone 2.0 as well as every POP3/IMAP based device that can communicate with Exchange over SSL.

Support request response delays July 10-14

Over the past few days we have missed our SLA on a number of support requests in the support queue, order queue and maintenance queues. An upgrade to the support portal on July 10th included a new algorithm for privacy control and support request routing, meant to allow for different types of support requests to be entered into the system but not visible to the entire staff. Accounting would see accounting requests, Support would see support requests, Executives would see executive requests and so on. In process of enabling the SLA against the requests we improperly routed a number of requests to the executive queue which was not monitored from Friday until today. We have addressed and corrected the issue and are moving the tickets and responding to them as fast as possible.

If you experienced an issue that was reported through our support system and was not answered in a timely manner we apologize and promise to have all support requests addressed today. Thank you for your patience.