So you just bought thedomainnameofyourdreams.com for six figures and have developed the business model and your revenue projections make Bill Gates look like a pauper. You have a killer software development team and the best sales department on the planet. You load up your new site to your hosting provider, go live, and your site is an instant hit. 1000 hits the first hour, and suddenly, there’s a YouTube video of your site. 10,000 hits in hour two…you are patting each other on the back, and then hour three…wait…whats’ this? 0 hits. Zero hits ?!?!?The list of what could go wrong is very, very long.
Once you have your internet business idea, you need to consider all the things that could go wrong. My job is to make sure that when you type in FuneralHomes.com , Assista.com , Bido.com , Flowchart.com , or any other RMG related property, that they come up, and that they come up fast. There used to be a time when you would just buy some space on a server, with some ISP and trust them to be good enough.
Back in college, there was the story of all the residents in a dorm flushing all the toilets at the same time, supposedly blowing up the plumbing.
Today, they blow up websites by doing the same thing – too many people accessing the site at once.
When I was asked to write this guest post, I was not sure what my point should be. But then it came to me - Success doesn’t just happen, you have to plan for it. If you don’t plan on success, you won’t be successful. What went wrong, with the plumbing, and the website, was the result of poor planning.
I have a simple approach to life – avoid any single point of failure. We have a management TEAM, we have a sales TEAM, we have a software TEAM. While I am not trying to minimize the value of any single person, the point is that, for lack of any single person, the business would continue to be successful.
Managing the infrastructure is no different. A well planned information system should not rely on any single component 100%. Each and every component should have a backup, where economically feasible.
Sometimes, it’s not feasible to have a duplicate of everything. When a project consists of 100’s of servers, it’s hard to justify having a full installation in multiple locations. When that happens, the decision as to where to locate the system becomes critical. For us, nothing less than a Tier 1 provider would do. But that is not enough.
We still maintain some servers in different locations and on different networks. This is because certain types of services require redundancy, and other locations provide backup for primary sites. While I will not disclose specifics, the idea is that in order to have a successful web presence, you need to have a reliable infrastructure. For that reason, it has always been my personal approach to avoid “bleeding edge” technology. Such technology, while certainly having its place, may not have the track record for performance and reliability that is absolutely mandatory for a secure and reliable system. It also tends to be more expensive. Let’s be honest, this is about the bottom line. Any thoughts to the contrary are naïve.
Planning for success is not easy. It means balancing price with performance. It means knowing your audience. It means knowing not what you’ll do right, but knowing what you’ll do when something goes wrong. Planning for success is about mitigating risk. There is no “one best answer”. Planning for success means finding people you trust, and trusting the people you find.
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Michael Weisman - VP of Technology - Mr. Weisman brings his 20+ years of technology management experience to Recall Media Group. Drawing on his extensive experience in a variety of industries, Mr. Weisman has developed a holistic approach to technology management, focusing on reliability of technology in the enterprise. Mr. Weisman holds a Master’s Degree in Information Management Systems and two security certifications, which enhance his ability to manage and secure Recall Media Group’s technology and development. Previously, Mr. Weisman was a Information and Technology Consultant with PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC). Mr. Weisman is happily married and both he and his wife are certified yoga instructors and avid practitioners.
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Source: Posted on TheConceptualist by Sahar Sahid -- Reprinted with permission -- April 10, 2008