I'm in the center of the bizarre world of commercial data center IT. How? I cannot say, as it's all fuzzy now. I talk about subjects my kids find absurd and my wife finds laughably geeky. I work with some of the most brilliant people you could ever hope to meet, and somehow it pays the bills, so I'll probably keep doing it.
I have four kids, a great dog, and a cat who thinks he can take you out by looking at you. My wife is a six foot blonde goddess - clearly out of my pay grade. The power of geek speak is apparently hypnotic to the fairer sex. More +
Jon Oltsik
> Insecure about Security
Brian Babineau
> IT BULLETins
Mark Bowker
> Liquefying IT
Mark Peters
> Mark My Words
Steve O'Donnell
> The Hot Aisle
Terri McClure
> IT Depends
"So what happens if the weather gets hot? On those days, Google says it will turn off equipment as needed in Belgium and shift computing load to other data centers."
"The ability to seamlessly shift workloads between data centers also creates intriguing long-term energy management possibilities, including a “follow the moon” strategy which takes advantage of lower costs for power and cooling during overnight hours. In this scenario, virtualized workloads are shifted across data centers in different time zones to capture savings from off-peak utility rates."
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/07/15/googles-chiller-less-data-center/
Crafty, those Google heads......Now, if they can do it, why not the rest of us?
This might be the most horrific story I've read since Stephen King's IT - but at least that was fiction. This is truly unbelievable - and terrifying.
In many ways, the world has changed. In many ways, it has stayed the same. Sometimes, there is a combination where, though the world is changing right in front of us, we try to keep on doing the same dumb things we've always done - hoping for a different outcome.
Over the last 10 years, there have been a handful of startups who, in one way or another, have been able to create (or follow) a funding frenzy that catches the eye of the industry in such as way that even the most logical and even-tempered venture capital firms find themselves caught up in. Firms step all over themselves to inject outrageous amounts of capital into mediocre (at best) plans to shoot for the moon - or keep up with the Jones' (I don't mean the trashy Jones' from the Jersey shore, I mean the Yale Jones' of proper Brahman descent, of course).
Most all of the companies funded to excess - those who instead of raising the obligatory $24 million in their startup lives raise $80-100 million+ - crash and burn on the force of their own weight, selling their "IP" for pennies later on. Many share a similar story line. There are interesting things that can be observed if we look back at over the last ten years.
Of the ridiculously funded psychotic startups, the grandaddy of them all has to be Storage Networks (SNI). A spectacular play grabbing the cash and attention of the world, making it all the way through an IPO that valued the company at $10B at one point - only to flounder into oblivion a year later. Why? Because the company never had a "business" - a small detail,I agree, but eventually no matter how much money you raise, someone is going to want to judge you by a metric or two based in business. SNI never had a real market that would pay for it to solve a real problem - the two basic characteristics every company should be founded on. In this case, the outrageous levels of investment were justified; hwever, as those who piled in the crazy cash were rewarded greatly - as long as they were smart enough to realize they were part of a pyramid scheme and sold when they could. Those who held on believing that acompany without customers or any real hope of getting them could somehow justify and grow their already lunatic valuation lost a pile of dough.
A lot of people made a lot of money with Enron, less ye forget.
In the SNI example, I don't blame the founders, nor do I blame the VCs - they won. They didn't build a real company, nor real sustainable value, but they were able to do what the rest of their kind did not: provide a home run return to those investors. The suckers who bought in after had what pennies were left of their investment returned to them shortly thereafter, along with the AMT tax burden adding insult to injury.
When something catches fire - whether it is based in logic derived from sound business practice or based on an idea gleaned from an acid trip, the VC world goes nutty and the lemmings line up to toss the cash. Remember Storability? They were second in line behind SNI and took a big pile of dough. Sold for diddly. There were dozens of other SSPs - storage service providers - that came and went. Though none had that level of silly VC investment, all had garage sales.
Here we are ten years later and SaaS (storage as a service - maybe that was the problem, they were missing a letter!) in the form of "Cloud" is all the rage. Different terms, different times, same principals apply. Is it a business that has been formed to address a legitimate problem, which I define as one which a market will pay to solve? Is the problem itself sustainable - or will it only be a short term issue? If you can't answer these questions, you have no business putting money or time into anything.
There have been other monumentally huge investments into startups where the answers to these questions have been simply "no," only no one bothered to ask them. Companies that might have had cool ideas or great technology where VCs simply never bothered to ask the hard questions, or answer them honestly. I'm no genius, but I could be taught to ask myself, "assuming this company does everything it says it is going to do, then:"
- Does it solve a real problem that people will give us money for?
- Is the problem going to get worse instead of better (organically)?
- Since I know that no one wants to deal with a new vendor, no matter how nifty this new company is, will the incumbent vendors have "good enough" answers to the problem - and if so, for how long?
I know I'm a simpleton, but for the life of me, I can't find one example where this simple test doesn't work.
Thus, when a hundred million was pumped into Z-Force or Cereva Networks, all I can ask is - why? There was never an answer to #3 that would work. How about Incipient? They are the latest mega-funded story to have their greatest revenues come from selling the office furniture they left behind. That one never got past #1 - there was never a problem great enough to merit a "business" case.
Note: I'm not suggesting that people/buyers will do the "right" thing - they won't. They will do the wrong thing, even when they know it, as long as that thing continues to work to the degree of acceptability. Only when a previous decision absolutely no longer works in current conditions will a buyer look to make a wholesale change - and even then they will first look to the devil they know - their incumbent provider. I'm not saying it's right, I'm saying it's fact. Only when a "nice to have" becomes a "need to have" is it a sustainable business opportunity. Until then, it's exclusively a marketing exercise.
The bigger the VC investment, the higher likelihood of spectacular failure is what it seems like to me. I haven't studied the data, mind you, but it appears that the fear of missing out on something - or the lemming philosophy of "well, if they are in then I have to be in" overtakes all logic and reason when the numbers get big.
Boring "normal" deals have a much better chance of both providing returns at all and at providing home-run returns. Equallogic and Data Domain were "normal" deals. They exited spectacularly. Both had positive answers to the questions above - thus giving themselves a legitimate chance. Neither was a fantasy or total pipe dream. Both needed one key factor to work for them as well: luck.
3Par, CommVault, Compellent, and LeftHand all were "normal" deals that came to fruition. All are still at it. Why? Because they executed, had a little luck, and had legitimate business opportunities.
Guys like Acopia and Avamar had lots of money in them and got out for unspectacular, but profitable, exits.
The modern world has unveiled new opportunities for spectacular returns - at least from a percentage basis. The modern era of IT business startups is one that doesn't require the large traditional investments normally associated with manufacturing. Software development plays require significantly lower investment and have yielded significantly higher percentage returns as of late. Mozy, WysDM, and StumbleUpon had little to no VC money in them, but returned 25-50X. There are far more of these opportunities out there than any other.
A little bit of money in more of these types of deals will yield a lot more positive returns to a VC's limited partners, so why aren't we seeing this? Because the VCs judge success by the size of their (fill in appropriate term here) "funds" - which is often stupid. Because they have such big funds, they have to do bigger deals, because they get paid a management fee on dough invested. Thus, they would often rather commit $25M to a deal that looks ok than do all the work to go find 25 deals at $1M that is "new" (read: hard). Sooner or later, the traditional VC will go the way of the dodo - or at least be consolidated down to the best of the best - and a new type of VCwill fill this void. I look at social networking technologies and trends as a catalyst to this, by the way, and as a means for those of us who have a little knowledge and even littler bank accounts to put ourselves into this game. Hell, I would put up some money into a VC fund that leveraged the mass intelligence of you all. How much worse would that fund do than the big guys? It wouldn't. My guess is that it would do 100X better, but I digress.
So, in closing, it appears that if a company/opportunity passes the sniff test of the mighty three questions, then the less investment injected the better - not only for a higher payoff percentage but also because the numbers prove it out. Less money means more focus on what matters, and keeps companies aligned more tightly with the three questions. Once you "hit" and you know the only thing holding you back is investment for accelerating growth and scale - then fine, go raise a pile, because by then the valuation is justifiable and the outcome more than a stoned-out thought you had while staring at the shower curtain.
Not that there is anything wrong with that.
First, within minutes of finding out NetApp bailed on the deal and EMC won, the sky's in Hopkinton turned pitch black, started pelting down hail, and we had violent tornado warnings.
I'm not saying anything - but the last tornado in Massachusetts was, um, never I think. It was fire and brimstone, end of the world kind of stuff - and oddly, centered literally in Hopkinton. I'm not making it up - google it. It was all over the news. Just seems weird, is all. Hopkinton was the only town on all three major news channels. The only thing relevant about Hopkinton is that is where the Boston Marathon begins, and EMC.
Anyhow, I've taken a couple million calls in the last 14 hours all with a common theme/question: "What will NetApp do?" The meaning: "who will they buy?"
The answer, is no one. While this drama has been awesome (awesome being a relative term, it's storage stuff after all), I think this is the true skinny;
1. NetApp originated this deal for one simple reason (no, not because there is a secret Dutch society of zillionaires) - opportunity. If you forget the cost/value argument, the fact is that NetApp has a proven ability to sell a ton of "appliances" to a ton of customers around the globe. Data Domain is the prom queen du jour - who just so happens to also sell "appliances". Both sell largely to the same class of account, though clearly NetApp sells to a lot more of them. NetApp saw a totally synergistic and accretive market potential that clearly would be easy for them to apply their 15 years of excellence to - and decided it was worth the big price tag and risk because they saw quick integration and the ability to add an entirely new revenue line without needing to re-invent themselves - because they already play this game every day.
2. Data Domain knew that their problem was the exact same problem faced by NetApp years ago - once you get public you have a very short window in which you need to become relevant and defensible - which requires you to grow very fast for a very long time (effectively doubling sales year over year - for many years). They (DDUP) were already slowing down from a new customer acquisition perspective if you look at their last 4 quarters as a ratio of new customers to sales head count. They were averaging UNDER 1 new customer per sales person per quarter. That growth is too slow - it left too much room for a giant to be able to kill them. Dan Warmenhoven knew that. Frank Slootman did also. Smart guys, those Dutch.
3. 1+2, at what both felt was a fair valuation, inked the deal.
4. EMC decided that there was risk in giving NTAP the opportunity to succeed in their strategy. NTAP is already number 2 depending on who's idiotic market share numbers you believe. EMC clearly felt that they were better off gambling on perhaps paying more than they might be able to reasonably justify at face value than to run the risk of NTAP becoming a $7B player potentially in a few years. EMC played defense - because they could.
You can't rationalize the price in a vacuum - and neither of these companies is dumb. Therefore, I'm right.
Thus, NTAP doesn't need to do anything really - at least not in the backup de-dupe target space (blah blah blah). This began opportunistically, not because they really wanted to get into that business (or more into that business). This began because if they got away with it, while extremely risky, there was a reasonable assumption that based upon historical success and the obvious synergies, that this deal could have added some hot growth opportunities for them. There wasn't a ton of execution risk if you consider that they really don't have to "integrate" much - they just need to add the product line and merge the sales org's. (Not to diminish this task - but compared to rationalizing existing product lines, channels, development efforts, etc. these tasks are no where near as complex).
EMC will face these challenges in spades, but they aren't dummies either. They haven't done a deal of this size that has been right smack in the heart of their core business since Clariion (which was only $1B) - and that took years to get off the ground (let alone the removal of cultural icons). They have a lot more to contend with than NetApp would have - and I don't think they would argue with that. They also have a lot more leeway to make mistakes than NetApp would have had. EMC could screw it up entirely and while embarrassing, it wouldn't be fatal.
Thus, while NetApp might make another play into the space, it would simply be because the space itself is NOW interesting to them - but not because they felt they had to be there or they would somehow disappear. I bet they are looking for the next synergistic opportunity to come along - and I bet it will be outside of this space.
First, within minutes of finding out NetApp bailed on the deal and EMC won, the skies in Hopkinton turned pitch black and started pelting down hail. And we had violent tornado warnings.
I'm not saying anything - but the last tornado in Massachusetts was, um, never, I think. It was fire and brimstone, end of the world kind of stuff - and, oddly, centered literally in Hopkinton. I'm not making it up - google it. It was all over the news. Just seems weird, is all. Hopkinton was the only town on all three major news channels. The only thing relevant about Hopkinton is that is where the Boston Marathon begins... and EMC.
Anyhow, I've taken a couple million calls in the last 14 hours all with a common theme/question: "What will NetApp do?" The meaning: "who will they buy?"
The answer: no one. While this drama has been awesome ("awesome" being a relative term, it's storage stuff after all), I think this is the true skinny:
1. NetApp originated this deal for one simple reason (no, not because there is a secret Dutch society of zillionaires): opportunity. If you forget the cost/value argument, the fact is that NetApp has a proven ability to sell a ton of "appliances" to a ton of customers around the globe. Data Domain is the prom queen du jour - who just so happens to also sell "appliances." Both sell largely to the same class of account, though clearly, NetApp sells to a lot more of them. NetApp saw a totally synergistic and accretive market potential that clearly would be easy for them to apply their 15 years of excellence to - and decided it was worth the big price tag and risk because they saw quick integration and the ability to add an entirely new revenue line without needing to re-invent themselves - because they already play this game every day.
2. Data Domain knew that their problem was the exact same problem faced by NetApp years ago - once you get public, you have a very short window in which you need to become relevant and defensible - which requires you to grow very fast for a very long time (effectively doubling sales year over year - for many years). They (DDUP) were already slowing down from a new customer acquisition perspective if you look at their last 4 quarters as a ratio of new customers to sales head count. They were averaging UNDER 1 new customer per sales person per quarter. That growth is too slow - it left too much room for a giant to be able to kill them. Dan Warmenhoven knew that. Frank Slootman did also. Smart guys, those Dutch.
3. 1+2, at what both felt was a fair valuation, inked the deal.
4. EMC decided that there was risk in giving NTAP the opportunity to succeed in their strategy. NTAP is already number 2 depending, on whose idiotic market share numbers you believe. EMC clearly felt that they were better off gambling on perhaps paying more than they might be able to reasonably justify at face value than to run the risk of NTAP becoming a $7B player potentially in a few years. EMC played defense - because they could.
You can't rationalize the price in a vacuum - and neither of these companies is dumb. Therefore, I'm right.
Thus, NTAP doesn't need to do anything really - at least not in the backup dedupe target space (blah blah blah). This began opportunistically, not because they really wanted to get into that business (or more into that business). This began because if they got away with it, while extremely risky, there was a reasonable assumption that based upon historical success and the obvious synergies, that this deal could have added some hot growth opportunities for them. There wasn't a ton of execution risk if you consider that they really don't have to "integrate" much - they just need to add the product line and merge the sales orgs. (Not to diminish this task - but compared to rationalizing existing product lines, channels, development efforts, etc. these tasks are no where near as complex).
EMC will face these challenges in spades, but they aren't dummies either. They haven't done a deal of this size that has been right smack in the heart of their core business since Clariion (which was only $1B) - and that took years to get off the ground (let alone the removal of cultural icons). They have a lot more to contend with than NetApp would have - and I don't think they would argue with that. They also have a lot more leeway to make mistakes than NetApp would have had. EMC could screw it up entirely and while embarrassing, it wouldn't be fatal.
Thus, while NetApp might make another play into the space, it would simply be because the space itself is NOW interesting to them - but not because they felt they had to be there or they would somehow disappear. I bet they are looking for the next synergistic opportunity to come along - and I bet it will be outside of this space.
EMC won - or I should say, bagged - the prize, but we need to wait and see if they really won. I still feel the price was too high to begin with - and nuts by the end. I think NetApp would have enjoyed a lot of synergies and opportunities with Data Domain, but at that price, there was simply no margin for error. I think it would have strapped them and put an unnecessary microscope on their every move that would deflect from the fact that they are a great company.
They are probably pissed off, but in the end, I think they will be happy with their decision.
For EMC, the games now begin. They need to do a ton of work to rationalize their whole product set, kill a lot of other dedupe offerings one way or another, get the sales team on the same page with a believable story, try to keep the Data Domain channel and sales force together for a while, and do it all while growing the business rapidly. This is no easy task.
EMC has more room to maneuver simply because of their size and assets, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be under the microscope. That’s a mongo big price to pay for anyone to simply ignore it. They certainly have the muscle and brains to make it work, but it won’t be easy.
Look for Dell to become a player in this drama shortly - it is the easiest and fastest way for EMC to gain massive global leverage in short order. If they can get Dell moving swiftly, they buy themselves time to make all the other necessary moves because the Dell machine can take up all the accelerated market mass and make Wall St. forget the price/risk potential - for a while anyway.
Everything happens for a reason
A client sent myself and some colleagues an email recently inquiring as to how we view BC vs. DR. It made for an interesting discussion - one which I encourage weighing in on. Sometimes we take nomenclature for granted and miss some things. We all agreed that DR is a subset of BC - that essentially DR is systems recovery while BC is just what it stands for, "business continuance" - or "business recovery". Myself and Lauren Whitehouse were suggesting that DR has become synonymous with what an IT department deals with to bring systems back online in the event of a disaster - which might have far different definitions from what the business might consider as a disaster. Business continuance has to be concerned with getting people, process, and systems all functioning after a disaster. BC includes everything from considerations on how to get people to a new facility in order to continue on all the way to housing and feeding them if necessary. It includes the ability to set up communications that we take for granted - cell phones or the internet - both of which were rendered useless for some time post 9-11. Steve O'Donnell made these comments, which I thought were spot on - and unfortunately properly categorize the way that we tend to think. "I was involved in a 9-11 recovery. Many systems and tons of data just disappeared as the DR plans were incomplete for a full loss of everything.
Much of the architecture wasn't documented - firewall rules not backed up, etc.
However the business was worse as we had injured and traumatised people - much local knowledge was not available as it wasn't written down. In fact I would categorise as we stumbled from crisis to crisis inventing fixes on the fly."
Since 9-11 we've spent more time as a business society developing better, more elaborate, and more complete "continuity" plans, but we all know that for every company that truly invested in this effort, ten more didn't. Moving your DR site from across the river in New Jersey to a hundred miles away is a good (albeit ridiculously common sense in hindsight) thing to do - but how will you staff that facility with the knowledge workers required to conduct business? If you are simply taking orders then I suppose a redirect is easy enough - but if you require skilled labor, from operations to analytics, etc., then how many companies actually plan to that degree? I suggest that the number is far too low.
We still have arcane limits to the simple DR testing available to us - which we can pretty guarantee we will NOT 100% recover properly from - so how can we possibly think we'll be able to get our business back online and fully functional in any reasonable time frame? In my experience the Europeans tend to be more advanced in this area generally than North Americans (surprise!), leveraging (or at least trying to) ITIL/ITSM frameworks to get things documented and to at least consider the possibilities. Language and geography issues have much greater implications - especially combined with privacy regulations that strictly limit where certain data can reside - so by no means do the Europeans have this perfected. I do not know the level of overall "readiness" in Asia, but know first hand that China isn't even on the map for the wide majority of their businesses.
Technology is cool, and we keep pushing the capabilities and boundaries - but I fear that we also use it as a crutch to make faulty assumptions - and that those assumptions will eventually cost us much more than our ability to actually recover the CEO's mailbox.
Perhaps the real opportunity for the cloud will be not only the way it enables the masses to keep different copies of data in different locations, but that it can provide a realistic set of options that enables a business to bring up their applications quickly and seamlessly, provide the operational knowledge sophistication to sustain the effort, and also be smart enough to provide for the non-IT services. If I were going to pick a cloud partner for DR, I think I'd pick one not only by "reaction" time, but one that my people could get to, had housing, perhaps an airport and some highways, 24 hour Mountain Dew and Pizza, etc. That would be a more interesting story than, "we're cheaper than Amazon - really!"
I hate complex. Life is hard enough. Nothing ever works right. I want to simplify. IT folks would LOVE to simplify. Here are three things that help simplify.
1. I/Osafe - www.iosafe.com - stinking brilliant in its simplicity. Take your disk drive, stick it in one of their containers and it becomes 100% protected from fires or floods. One of the coolest (actually, hottest) demos ever done for me - these guys literally took a drive I had copied some files to and stuffed it into a 1,500 degree oven, melting it beyond recognition. They did the same with a drive in their magic packaging, then stuck it into a bucket of water. Guess what? It still worked.
The packaging is stunningly cheap, which leads me to believe that eventually ALL disks will packaged like this. For now, only about 95% of the world could benefit. I'm not saying that you shouldn't also have copies of critical data in remote sites - but let's face it, unless you are at the top of the IT pyramid, you ain't going to be shipping ALL data offsite. I'm advocating that 100% of disks in a primary site - no matter how large a company (and especially those small ones) spend the extra pennies and apply this technology.
Imagine if your car had this protection. Sure, 99% of the time you'd never need it, but if you could guarantee it would be there when you did, wouldn't it be worth adding $200 bucks to the cost of the car? Sometimes we spend too much time thinking too many thoughts at too high a level. This is so smart, it's stupid!
2. Drobo (www.drobo.com). I've been a fan ever since I started using one at home - and am more convinced than ever that the world of heavy-duty IT needs to pay attention to these dudes. Drobo builds a consumer/small biz "RAID" system that is 100% automatic, lets you use different size disks, grows one disk at a time, and is effectively moron-proof. I'm living proof - I can make it work. I've got about 6 TB of ripped DVDs on mine at home. I had 2 disks fail in the last 18 months, and have had zero downtime because of it. Each time I replaced the failed disk with the current bigger disk of the day and each time the system simply grew without me doing anything. I'm not sure why storage is so complicated and hard, other than the fact that most array technologies were designed a hundred years ago - but if you are a fan of absolutely brain dead simple things, you owe it to yourself to look at a Drobo. I haven't installed a network version at my office, but I wouldn't think twice about it. They support iSCSI and NAS and my cat Floyd can make it work. (That's not really fair; Floyd is very smart. He's just a total A*hole, so while he could make it work, he wouldn't simply out of spite.)
Drobo was founded a few years ago by Geoff Barrall, who also founded big iron NAS player BlueArc. They are shipping thousands of units per quarter now and continue to sell out of production. I find it tremendously interesting that the leap from "commercial" to "consumer" worked so very well in this case, as it's normally the other way around. The Drobettes have taken all the high-value function learned at the high-end of the market and applied it to the mass market beautifully. I'm glad to see they are kicking butt - not only because I love simple things - but also because they are nice people. Keep it up.
3. AutoVirt - www.autovirt.com - Go download their free AutoClone software. Robocopy in windows sucks, as most know, but this stuff rocks. Our giant IT department recently had to copy all of our Exchange mailboxes (all 34) for one reason or another and Robocopy was taking 2 hours per. The AutoClone utility did them in about 8 seconds. (Not true, but my dudes told me it was 10X+ faster at least).
After you use it, tell me your experience, because I made the Auto-Vs give it away free. Their real juice is in their migration (Move) product, so I convinced them that by letting the world use the clone product, everyone would see how great it worked, which would entice folks to take a look at their move product (which isn't free - sorry). They begrudgingly went for it - so do me a favor and go download it, if for nothing else than to make me look bad.
Seriously, who doesn't need to copy stuff on or off Windows servers or NAS boxes? No one - therefore, think of all the time you'll save by dumping that dumbass Robocopy and going way faster (and easier). I made them promise that they wouldn't harass you either. If they do, tell me and I'll publicly ridicule them.
The summary message here is that the world LOVES simple stuff. Complex USED to mean value - but today, at least for me, its the opposite. I want easy. Life is hard enough; anyone who can simplify mine is welcome to the party. Last month, I bought my first MAC. Now I'm on a quest.
Out of solidarity, my brothers and sisters. Since I now hate them, I call on you to join me. Dump their lame arses.
The Deal: A while ago, I got a call from American Express inquiring about some unusual charges. They were unusual because they were small and outrageously random in parts of the world I've never been. I had my card number stolen and sold through some dirtbag online hack/broker.
Amex is great at this - normally. It's probably the reason I use them almost exclusively. It wasn't the first time I was data violated, so I figured it was over with.
The good news with Amex is that they "take care of it" and cancel the account, get rid of the charges, etc. The bad news is, for some inexplicable reason, even when an account has been cancelled due to fraud, that doesn't mean the account stops accepting recurring charges. Duh!
A few months later, I was reading one of my statements where I noticed (2) identical charges on the same day to AOL for $25.90 each. I stopped dealing with AOL in 1987 when they refused to stop sending me CDs in the mail. I was a bit surprised they were still in business, truth be told. Anyone that annoying eventually goes away, normally.
Anyway, I called Amex, and said "hey, these aren't my charges." They figured out that the charges were placed on the cancelled account (then spent ten minutes trying to explain why that could happen, which I still don't understand for the life of me). They got AOL on the line and we had a nice chat. I explained that the charges were fraudulent, AMEX explained that the card account was cancelled prior to them placing the fraudulent orders, and we all wasted time. No problem. All is well.
$50.80 and I spent an hour. Today, I received a collection letter from Allied Interstate (nice!) for $50.80 for AOL. Back on the phone with Amex, they told me the account was cleared, so AOL was coming after me directly. I hate them now.
Amex got AOL back on the phone. They acknowledged the fraud report and the conversation of months ago. The woman then said, in very sloppy English, "I'm making no changes to any account and noting to remove you from any collection list." Huh? No changes? I want changes. After 10 minutes of Abbott & Costello routines I gave up. I'm willing to bet this is not over.
A business KNOWS they have received fraudulent charges - so they now can't claim moronic ignorance - and then they STILL attempt to extort money from me. Perpetrators? Maybe. They certainly are just as guilty now as the original thief in my book. Is that service or what? Is that the marketing strategy of a legitimate business? Screw the victim to make $50 bucks? They better hope their supply of Eastern European ID thieves add fake orders to AOL faster than legitimate people dump their sorry ass.
Who does business in the real world like that? Dumb companies and criminals, that's who.
This is very interesting - though not because of this particular company. I don't have high hopes for any company that sends out a release such as this, but can't even get it on their own Web site. Plus, their site is useless. Check out the form they put up "if you would like to invest in zer01mobile.com fill out this form" - brilliant. How can they fail?
Having said that - read the release I received - it makes the mind do gyrations.
I would have linked to it, but there is no place to link. Blame them.
"(Las Vegas, Nevada) – Zer01 Mobile announced today the formal launch of its new nationwide truly unlimited voice, data and Web mobile wireless service that will allow users to make as many phone calls, surf the Web, view movies and videos, text messages, download music and use their smartphones for a variety of other applications all for one, low monthly fee. Offering the new mobile wireless service as a mobile virtual network enabler, Zer01 Mobile has created its own grouping of mobile virtual network operators and strategic business alliances including a new partnership with Netmovies.com, an online entertainment network.
"Many years of research and testing have culminated in the public launch this week of the new, truly unlimited voice, data and Web mobile wireless service from Zer01 Mobile. Thanks to the ingenuity of the Zer01 Mobile engineering team, our new Veritable Mobile Convergence technology allows each smartphone user to make voice calls or transmit data through a VoIP system," explained Ben Piilani, CEO, Zer01 Mobile. "Because Zer01 Mobile is the only carrier in the United States offering truly unlimited mobile Web access, a number of important strategic partnerships with Zer01 Mobile have been finalized including the recent agreement with Netmovies.com, the Boston-based online entertainment network."
In April 2009, Zer01 Mobile first premiered its new truly unlimited voice, data and Web mobile wireless service at the CTIA Wireless Conference in Las Vegas, NV. Receiving positive reviews while showcasing its service at the global wireless industry event, Zer01 Mobile was presented with the "Best Overall Product" Award by Laptop Magazine. "That's the appeal of Zer01, which uses highly efficient VoIP technology to let users make phone calls over existing cellular networks. This new breed of carrier will sell a variety of Windows Mobile devices starting in July that can tap into its service, but it will also enable users to bring their unlocked BlackBerrys, Android phones and other handsets. An extra $10 per month will allow subscribers to add international calling to 40 destinations. Zer01 Mobile promises that it will take as little as five minutes for the company to update your phone's SIM card to make it compatible with its network," stated the Laptop Magazine Web site.
"With movies, music, games and television available anywhere on a mobile device, our agreement with Zer01 Mobile is a natural fit with our company's business model and overall plan for the coming decade. The technology behind Zer01 Mobile's service will assure a top rated viewing and listening experience for the end-user," explained John Fanning, chairman & CTO, Netmovies.com and founding chairman & CEO, Napster, Inc.
Creating interconnect agreements throughout North America and the globe, Zer01 Mobile is the first mobile service to offer a truly unlimited voice, data and Internet plan that is priced affordably with taxes and fees included. Zer01 Mobile's international plan also reaches out to the most popular calling countries around the world and is also economically priced. The company has licensed patent pending proprietary Veritable Mobile Convergence technology that allows each smart phone user to make voice calls or transmit data by sending voice communications through a VoIP system.
Established in 2001 and 34% owned by Blockbuster, Inc., NetMovies is an online entertainment network providing producers and owners of video content a secure, highly functional and efficient digital distribution outlet. NetMovies' proprietary downstreaming network builds on the technology model pioneered at Napster which was created using a regulated peering system offering high-speed downloads and secure and flexible digital rights management. NetMovies' video content is licensed from studios or created by independent artists and introduced into a centrally managed and protected network then distributed to and among paying subscribers.
Based in Las Vegas, Nevada, Zer01 Communications is owned and operated by the Unified Technologies Group, Inc., a global technology services and consulting company headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware. Zer01 Communications recently premiered the new Zer01 Mobile service at the CTIA Wireless 2009 Conference. Laptop Magazine awarded Zer01 Mobile the "Best Overall Product" Award at the conclusion of the industry conference. For more information about Zer01 Communications, visit www.Zer01mobile.com."
Fixed price all-in phone and data? with SMS? Global? Way cool. Again, I can't imagine that zer01 can be a zillion dollar winner, with the way they are messaging (would it be too much to ask to actually explain what a CMVO is at least one of the 800 times you refer to it?). That kills the high priced traditional cell carrier and the outrageous issue of international usage. It also enables real endpoint data usage, which in turn enables more corporate end point application requirements, security, etc. It sounds like it's $50 bucks for a net connection and all the apps I can eat - which is how it should be.
Traditional carriers will fight it of course, the same way they all fought IP. Eventually they gave up, and now those of us who still have a land line pay a fraction of what we used to pay. The cell carrier will go the same way - although the land line did actually require a line - the cell is not so sticky. WiFi = internet and internet = IP, therefore Cell = who cares? Play nice or perish, methinks.
Hey zer01 - cool thoughts, horrid execution. At least Vonage had snappy commercials.
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