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Item Upon - Lies, Damn Lies and 99.9% Uptime
Popcorn and Other Marketing Mistakes In a Changing Economy
Ten years of competitive hell!That was the title on the seminar brochure I received recently. As I survey some of the forces flowing through our economy, and witness the way in which they effect my clients, I have to agree. The Information Age is certainly one of the most turbulent times business people have ever seen.And the force causing the greatest turbulence is rapid, unrelenting change. Consider this. In 1900, the total amount of knowledge that mankind had was doubling about every 500 years. Today, it doubles about every two years. And the pace continues to increase. One futurist predicts that today's high
a whole new meaning -- or lack of meaning.
Ten years of competitive hell!That was the title on the seminar brochure I received recently. As I survey some of the forces flowing through our economy, and witness the way in which they effect my clients, I have to agree. The Information Age is certainly one of the most turbulent times business people have ever seen.And the force causing the greatest turbulence is rapid, unrelenting change. Consider this. In 1900, the total amount of knowledge that mankind had was doubling about every 500 years. Today, it doubles about every two years. And the pace continues to increase. One futurist predicts that today's high
Also, who is the one actually doing the monitoring? Ideally, you'd like to have a third party monitoring service. That way you know your monitoring numbers are independently verified.
Availability From a Business Perspective
There is a better way. Instead of settling for the one-size-fits-all approach of "nines of uptime", set your own availability goals. The key is to examine availability from a business perspective:
- What are my business-critical periods?
- How much downtime is acceptable during off hours?
- What kind of monitoring interval is needed?
- How do we know if the application is down? Ergonomic Office Furniture & Your Health
In recent years, the public sentiment of the American people has seen an interesting shift in a potentially extremely good direction. People have begun to be extremely health-conscious recently, a trend which has brought about a few rather notable things. First of all, the general wellbeing of the American people is on a rise, a notable achievement indeed. However, perhaps even more noteworthy is the increase of products on the market that are geared toward helping people with their personal quests to achieve better health.For instance, the industry of food products that are designed to help people lose weight is boomin
-Benjamin Disraeli, popularized by Mark Twain
Lies, Damn Lies and 99.9% Uptime
Statistics don't lie outright. They just don't tell the whole truth.
Suppose your hosting provider claims 99.9% uptime during the past month. This means all the accumulated downtime during the whole month was no more than 40 minutes. Sounds great, right?
The numbers don't answer one important question: when did the downtime occur? What if you were down 40 minutes during your peak usage time on the busiest day of the week? Suddenly 99.9% of uptime doesn't sound so great. That's the whole truth often missing in uptime reports.
The All Important Monitoring Interval
Convinced you can do better than 99.9%, you search for another hosting provider. You finally settle on one that offers an additional "nine" or 99.99% uptime per month. No more than 4 minutes of downtime.
Before you get too excited, let's see where that extra nine comes from by examining the concept of monitoring interval. The monitoring interval is how often your hosted server is checked to make sure everything is working A-OK. Think of it as the lines on a ruler. It's going to be pretty hard to measure down to one eighth of an inch if your ruler only has one inch lines on it.
Suppose your application is monitored every 15 minutes. Now say your server is rebooted. If the monitor runs while the server is down, your server will show as down for 15 minutes, even though it only takes 3 minutes to reboot. If the monitor misses the reboot window, it won't show as being down at all.
A provider that offers 99.99% must have a small enough monitoring interval that it can measure down to the nearest .01%. How small is that exactly? Let's break it down using the shortest month:
28 days x 24 hours/day x 60 minutes/hour x .0001 = 4.03 minutes
A service provider must provide a monitoring interval of no more than 4 minutes to provide a 99.99% uptime guarantee.
Finally, what of 99.999%, the so-called "five nines" of uptime? Well, we would have to monitor every .4 minutes or every 24 seconds. With the reporting period increased to a year instead of a month, it's possible to have accuracy up to five nines with a 5-minute monitoring interval. Trouble is, who wants to wait a whole year for a report?
The best reporting will include a combination of daily, weekly, monthly and yearly statistics for comparison.
What Do You Mean, Down?
Now that you understand what a monitoring interval is, this next one should be easy: what is the meaning of "down"? If your service provider is providing uptime, how do they decide when something is down? Are they simply doing a "ping" of the server? Or are they testing the application itself?
If "up" to them means your server is running, even though your application is really "down", your uptime statistics take on a whole new meaning -- or lack of meaning.
Also, who is the one actually doing the monitoring? Ideally, you'd like to have a third party monitoring service. That way you know your monitoring numbers are independently verified.
Availability From a Business Perspective
There is a better way. Instead of settling for the one-size-fits-all approach of "nines of uptime", set your own availability goals. The key is to examine availability from a business perspective:
- What are my business-critical periods?
- How much downtime is acceptable during off hours?
- What kind of monitoring interval is needed?
- How do we know if the application is down?
- What are my business-critical periods?
- How much downtime is acceptable during off hours?
- What kind of monitoring interval is needed?
- How do we know if the application is down? How B2B, or Not B2B?
Pay-Per-Click advertising plays a significant roll in the success of small-to-medium sized B2B companies during all phases of the buying cycle.Is your company covered across the entire buying cycle for your behavioral segment keywords relating to your products and services? This article will answer these questions. What is the B2B paid search buying cycle? What keywords should you bid on? When should you bid? How much should you bid? Do you have compelling call-to-action? What other forms of advertising work well with pay-per-click efforts?
A provider that offers 99.99% must have a small enough monitoring interval that it can measure down to the nearest .01%. How small is that exactly? Let's break it down using the shortest month:
28 days x 24 hours/day x 60 minutes/hour x .0001 = 4.03 minutes
A service provider must provide a monitoring interval of no more than 4 minutes to provide a 99.99% uptime guarantee.
Finally, what of 99.999%, the so-called "five nines" of uptime? Well, we would have to monitor every .4 minutes or every 24 seconds. With the reporting period increased to a year instead of a month, it's possible to have accuracy up to five nines with a 5-minute monitoring interval. Trouble is, who wants to wait a whole year for a report?
The best reporting will include a combination of daily, weekly, monthly and yearly statistics for comparison.
What Do You Mean, Down?
Now that you understand what a monitoring interval is, this next one should be easy: what is the meaning of "down"? If your service provider is providing uptime, how do they decide when something is down? Are they simply doing a "ping" of the server? Or are they testing the application itself?
If "up" to them means your server is running, even though your application is really "down", your uptime statistics take on a whole new meaning -- or lack of meaning.
Also, who is the one actually doing the monitoring? Ideally, you'd like to have a third party monitoring service. That way you know your monitoring numbers are independently verified.
Availability From a Business Perspective
There is a better way. Instead of settling for the one-size-fits-all approach of "nines of uptime", set your own availability goals. The key is to examine availability from a business perspective:
- What are my business-critical periods?
- How much downtime is acceptable during off hours?
- What kind of monitoring interval is needed?
- How do we know if the application is down? How to Pull in Clients Like a Magnet
Your marketing could be pulling in clients and profits like a magnet. Think about how many people could benefit from your products and services. Even if only a fraction of them bought from you, you'd be amazingly successful.It doesn't matter if the economy is headed up or down, there are plenty of people looking to spend money to solve their problems and meet their needs. People are happy to spend money on things they want, whether it's a five thousand dollar painting, five-dollar cup of coffee, a golf lesson, a new computer or a new web site.With all these prospects searching for products and services to buy, heased to a year instead of a month, it's possible to have accuracy up to five nines with a 5-minute monitoring interval. Trouble is, who wants to wait a whole year for a report?
The best reporting will include a combination of daily, weekly, monthly and yearly statistics for comparison.
What Do You Mean, Down?
Now that you understand what a monitoring interval is, this next one should be easy: what is the meaning of "down"? If your service provider is providing uptime, how do they decide when something is down? Are they simply doing a "ping" of the server? Or are they testing the application itself?
If "up" to them means your server is running, even though your application is really "down", your uptime statistics take on a whole new meaning -- or lack of meaning.
Also, who is the one actually doing the monitoring? Ideally, you'd like to have a third party monitoring service. That way you know your monitoring numbers are independently verified.
Availability From a Business Perspective
There is a better way. Instead of settling for the one-size-fits-all approach of "nines of uptime", set your own availability goals. The key is to examine availability from a business perspective:
- What are my business-critical periods?
- How much downtime is acceptable during off hours?
- What kind of monitoring interval is needed?
- How do we know if the application is down? How To Make Money While Placing Your Callers On Hold
When a company places a caller on hold, playing an on hold message and music is truly the way to go.On the message, most companies will discuss who they are, what they do, how long they have been in business, what their website address is, and so on. And that's good. But not great!I advise companies to also include cross-sells and up-sells for their on hold production. Below is an example of each. Just substitute in your mind your product or service and see how it will apply to your customers.Cross sells as in, "Hey if you're getting an oil change with us, make sure you ask the technician to check the trea a whole new meaning -- or lack of meaning.
Also, who is the one actually doing the monitoring? Ideally, you'd like to have a third party monitoring service. That way you know your monitoring numbers are independently verified.
Availability From a Business Perspective
There is a better way. Instead of settling for the one-size-fits-all approach of "nines of uptime", set your own availability goals. The key is to examine availability from a business perspective:
- What are my business-critical periods?
- How much downtime is acceptable during off hours?
- What kind of monitoring interval is needed?
- How do we know if the application is down?
- Who is actually doing the monitoring?
Always make a distinction between business hours and after hours. You should have different availability requirements for each period, even if your application is used 24x7. Next, create your goal using words and whole numbers, not percentages. For example:
- Zero downtime during business-critical periods.
- No more than 2 unscheduled downtime incidents per month of no more than 5 minutes per incident during after hours periods.
- No more than 1 scheduled maintenance period per month of no more than 30 minutes during after hours periods.
- Monitoring interval of 5 minutes.
- Monitor key aspects of the application, not the server.
- Independent third-party monitoring from multiple locations.
After defining exactly what your availability goals are, you can now strive to achieve it. The difference now is that your goal is 100% achievable. That's a statistic you can count on.HTTP = HTML link (for blogs, profiles,phorums):
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How To Succeed and Create Multiple Streams of Income
There is just so much already written about making an income on line and creating your own web site and traffic generation and search engine optimization . . . . . . And there are so many high powered seminars out there about how to make money in real estate with no money down or how to do well in Forex (Foreign Currency Exchange), etc.For the most part, I agree, if at least partly, with all of that. I have been involved in both the making of and the losing of money in all those arenas.Any relatively successful person has had ups and downs but has done better overall.The key in anything is to have a plan
There is just so much already written about making an income on line and creating your own web site and traffic generation and search engine optimization . . . . . . And there are so many high powered seminars out there about how to make money in real estate with no money down or how to do well in Forex (Foreign Currency Exchange), etc.For the most part, I agree, if at least partly, with all of that. I have been involved in both the making of and the losing of money in all those arenas.Any relatively successful person has had ups and downs but has done better overall.The key in anything is to have a plan
The All Important Monitoring Interval
Convinced you can do better than 99.9%, you search for another hosting provider. You finally settle on one that offers an additional "nine" or 99.99% uptime per month. No more than 4 minutes of downtime.
Before you get too excited, let's see where that extra nine comes from by examining the concept of monitoring interval. The monitoring interval is how often your hosted server is checked to make sure everything is working A-OK. Think of it as the lines on a ruler. It's going to be pretty hard to measure down to one eighth of an inch if your ruler only has one inch lines on it.
Suppose your application is monitored every 15 minutes. Now say your server is rebooted. If the monitor runs while the server is down, your server will show as down for 15 minutes, even though it only takes 3 minutes to reboot. If the monitor misses the reboot window, it won't show as being down at all.
A provider that offers 99.99% must have a small enough monitoring interval that it can measure down to the nearest .01%. How small is that exactly? Let's break it down using the shortest month:
28 days x 24 hours/day x 60 minutes/hour x .0001 = 4.03 minutes
A service provider must provide a monitoring interval of no more than 4 minutes to provide a 99.99% uptime guarantee.
Finally, what of 99.999%, the so-called "five nines" of uptime? Well, we would have to monitor every .4 minutes or every 24 seconds. With the reporting period increased to a year instead of a month, it's possible to have accuracy up to five nines with a 5-minute monitoring interval. Trouble is, who wants to wait a whole year for a report?
The best reporting will include a combination of daily, weekly, monthly and yearly statistics for comparison.
What Do You Mean, Down?
Now that you understand what a monitoring interval is, this next one should be easy: what is the meaning of "down"? If your service provider is providing uptime, how do they decide when something is down? Are they simply doing a "ping" of the server? Or are they testing the application itself?
If "up" to them means your server is running, even though your application is really "down", your uptime statistics take on a whole new meaning -- or lack of meaning.
Also, who is the one actually doing the monitoring? Ideally, you'd like to have a third party monitoring service. That way you know your monitoring numbers are independently verified.
Availability From a Business Perspective
There is a better way. Instead of settling for the one-size-fits-all approach of "nines of uptime", set your own availability goals. The key is to examine availability from a business perspective:
