The OpenSRS team is getting geared up to exhibit at the Parallels Summit 2010 which takes place from Feb 22-24 in Miami, Florida. This is a premiere event in web hosting and an ideal conference to check out if you are a Parallels customer, interested in building better cloud services, or meeting with your industry peers.
The conference takes place at the beautiful Fountainebleau Miami Beach Resort. If you book soon, you can take advantage of the $279 hotel rate. Registration is free for our resellers.
Last month we attended the cPanel Conference and we are happy to announce our prize winner. Congrats to Lenny from Codero for winning our iPod shuffle. This year’s conference was the biggest cPanel conference yet with over 180 attendee registrations and with folks traveling in from all over the world. It was a fun and educational environment, and a must-attend event for cPanel users! Thanks to the organizers for a great conference and also to everyone that stopped by our booth to say hello.
With another successful WHIR networking event taking place last week in Seattle, that wraps up our OpenSRS events schedule for the year. However, we are already busy planning for next year. I wanted to tell you about about a couple of exciting conferences that are coming up in the new year.
Parallels Summit 2010 – February 22-24
I don’t think you’ll be disappointed with the Parallels Summit 2010 new venue – the iconic Fontainebleau Miami Beach Resort. The Parallels Summit gives you a chance to meet industry peers and get inspired to build better Cloud Services based businesses. The Parallels Summit has become the premier conference for industry leaders to discuss how to drive innovation, create differentiated service offerings, and build businesses that profit from the Cloud.
The conference is free for Parallels’ partners, customers, invited guests, and other industry professionals. If you register before November 13, 2009 you’ll be entered to win your choice of an iPod Touch or Microsoft Zune HD.
WebhostingDay 2010 – March 17-19
WebhostingDay is the largest web hosting event in Europe and possibly the world. Last year they had 2,000 attendees. It takes place in Phantasialand, an amusement park near Cologne, Germany. It offers a great mix of concentrated industry knowledge, networking events, and fun! Check out some of our WebhostingDay 2009 coverage. We will have free conference passes, and we’ll let you know how to register with them in the coming months.
We are really hoping that some of you are planning to attend these conferences not only because they are some of the best in our industry, but also because there is nothing better than connecting with our resellers, partners and industry peers face-to-face. As we get closer to these events, we will keep you posted. Follow us on twitter for event updates.
The OpenSRS team attended HostingCon 2009 last month in Washington DC. Since then we’ve been a little busy preparing for the Parallels EMEA Roadshow which is now in full-swing. However, we wanted to take a few moments to thank everyone that we met this year. We hope some of you had a chance to drop by our booth and pick up some old fashioned stick-candy, and maybe even one of our spiffy new “Service Guy’” toys which we debuted at HostingCon 2009.
This year we had a group of fourteen OpenSRS folks attending and we were able to meet many resellers, prospects, partners, and industry leaders. We also launched our brand new sub-resellers program. Adam Eisner, our Director of Domain Services, presented “20 Ways to Outsmart Your Competitors.” Did you miss it? No problem. You can download Adam’s slides from our HostingCon follow-up page.
Announcing the winner of the Dell Adamo laptop!
As well, we are very pleased to announce the winner of our booth give-away! Congratulations to Eduardo from Hosting Panama the lucky winner of a really cool Dell Adamo laptop!
See you in Austin, Texas for HostingCon 2010 (or maybe sooner)
A special thanks to the team at iNet Interative for putting on a very well-organized and well-attended show. We look forward to seeing everyone next year in Austin for HostingCon 2010. In the meantime we hope to see you again at one of our upcoming events:
A couple of weeks ago we attended WebhostingDay in Germany, a unique and memorable trade show. The fact that it took place at Phantasialand, an amusement park, had a lot to do with it. It was a well-attended event with 2,000 visitors from all over the world and 55 partner companies. The organizers did an excellent job balancing the agenda with business, networking, and fun events. Check out a previous post “The Fun Side of WebhostingDay” to see a video of some of the fun and action.
Thanks to everyone that stopped by our booth. We enjoyed the chance to meet and talk with you. Also, congratulations to James from Interspire the lucky winner of our prize draw for a Digital Radio!
Presentations from WebhostingDay are available on the website, along with a video and pictures from the show. Cruise on over to the WebhostingDay website to have a look.
Upcoming Events – WHIR Networking and HostingCon
Our next trade show is HostingCon which takes place in Washington DC from August 10-12. We are also continuing to sponsor the WHIR Web Hosting Industry Networking Events. These are free events, but you need to rsvp in advance. This is a great opportunity to meet us, enjoy some food and drinks, and network with other folks in the web hosting and domains space. Look for Solomon Amoako, our Director of Sales, at the Chicago event and say hello. Here is the upcoming schedule:
Chicago – April 16
New York – May 6
Los Angeles – June 18
Miami – Sept 24
Washington, DC – Oct 22
If any of these events are in your area, please register and mark your calendars. We look forward to seeing you there.
Last week we attended Parallels Summit 2009 in Las Vegas. The conference was a two-day event that brought together service providers, industry and technology experts, media, and vendors. The over-arching theme was “cloud computing” and there were sessions on Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), automation, virtualization and other important topics.
Parallels will be posting some videos and presentations from the event, including Adam Eisner’s presentation on “Domain Names and Web Hosting in 2009 and Beyond”. We’ll let you know when it is ready. In the meantime you can see some conference coverage at theWHIR including a review of Adam’s presentation.
I thought it was a great opportunity for our team to network and meet face-to-face with many of our current and prospective resellers, as well as partners and other industry folks. We were very happy to meet some of you there and to get to know you and your businesses better. I’d like to thank everyone who took the time to meet with us or drop by our booth. On that note, I’d like to announce our booth prize winner. Congratulations to Steve from BlackSun on winning a Drobo!
Overall, we were very pleased with the event. We felt it was a well thought-out, organized, and attended event. We look forward to next year’s summit.
Next month, we are travelling to Germany to meet up with our EMEA team to sponsor WebhostingDay. We are excited to meet some of our resellers on the other side of the world. WebhostingDay takes place from March 18-20, 2009 and is the the largest web hosting event in Europe. If you are planning to attend, or interested in registering, please let us know.
Our team is heading to the Parallels Summit 2009 in Las Vegas at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino from February 2 – 4th and we’d like to invite you to join us. This year’s theme is Cloud Computing and will include topics such as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Automation, and Virtualization. There will be lots of business leaders and other experts to give you insights on how to win against the big fish in the market.
We are a silver sponsor this year. Adam Eisner, our Product Manager for domain names, is presenting “Domain Names and Web Hosting in 2009 and Beyond.” Come and see his presentation, and swing by our booth to chat with us, and see what’s new. Other well known speakers include Morris Miller, founder of Rackspace; Andreas Gauger, former CEO of 1&1 Internet; Bernie Meyerson, VP Strategic Alliances and CTO Server Business at IBM; and several other industry veterans, experts, and leaders who will discuss technology developments shaping the industry.
The Parallels Summit is free and includes:
• Great speakers
• Fun Night Out Events
• Hands-on Labs for Product Demonstrations
• 4 different session tracks: Industry, Service Provider, Enterprise IT, and Technology
• Sponsored Meals
• Did I mention it is in Las Vegas?
There are plenty of Las Vegas travel deals out there. You may be able to snag an air and hotel package from $400-600.
Learn more or register today! Please enter OpenSRS in the “referred by” section of the registration page when you register.
September 29th, 2008 by Mou Mukherjee (Comments Off)
In this video, Ken talks about the changes and plans for OpenSRS and some of the product launches and enhancements we’ve made over the past year. He explains some of the changes that are not as visible such as making our services even more reliable, scalable, and the preparatory work being done for future software development. Ken says that since we have become an Agile shop, we’ve been able to do quick iterations and roll out features and enhancements much faster than ever before.
Ken also shares some of the reason why we decided to reclaim OpenSRS as the name for our wholesale services. Ken explains that “reseller friendly” is not just a tag line; It is a value we have believed in for a long time.
What’s your opinion on some of the changes we have made recently? What would you like us to do more, do less, do differently? Also, what projects or products have you launched recently, or are thinking about doing in the future?
Stay tuned for two more videos that complete our series of six videos called Inside OpenSRS.
September 23rd, 2008 by Mou Mukherjee (Comments Off)
Kevin Rueckert has a long history with OpenSRS. He’s worked here for almost a decade! And as you can see, he’s still passionate about his work. Kevin is our Manager of Network Operations Center (NOC). Kevin and his team monitor our systems 24-hours-a-day to ensure high availability and performance of our services to our resellers. In addition to monitoring, the NOC documents and trouble-shoots any issues, and escalates to other departments if needed. In this video, Kevin describes the major functions of the NOC, best practices used including an ITIL-compliant process, and what happens when issues are serious. His team is proactive by providing data trends and monitoring, and working with engineers and architects to roll fixes. The NOC is the technical information hub at OpenSRS.
We’d like to hear from any of our resellers about their technical and network operations. What are some of the things that keep you up at night? And what do you (and your teams) do to relax when the pressure is off?
This is part of a series of six videos called Inside OpenSRS that features some of the people who work to provide high-quality services for our resellers. Stay tuned as we share the other videos with you over the next few weeks.
September 18th, 2008 by Mou Mukherjee (Comments Off)
You don’t need to spend much time at OpenSRS before you hear the words iterative, sprint, or see a handful of people standing around in a huddle (scrum). That’s because we use the Agile software development model here at OpenSRS. In this video our Principal Engineer, Rick Yazwinski, talks about the basic methods of Agile, why OpenSRS made the transition from Waterfall to Agile methodology, and the positive impact it had on our resellers. Rick emphasizes the human and lightweight characteristics of Agile. He shares examples of how personal communication trumps overly documented specs and requirements. He also talks about some of the other best practices at OpenSRS, such as focusing on simplicity, and using hardware virtualization.
Are you involved in development or project management? What models or best practices have you found to be most effective?
This is part of a series of six videos called Inside OpenSRS that features some of the people who work to provide high-quality services for our resellers. Stay tuned as we share the other videos with you over the next few weeks.
September 16th, 2008 by Mou Mukherjee (Comments Off)
Have you ever wondered how much spam is floating around the Internet? The number may surprise you. Garrick Lau certainly knows the answer as he and his team work every day to ensure email deliverability for our resellers.
Garrick is our Manager of Security and Compliance. A good amount of his team’s efforts are spent on messaging abuse such as spam. While controlling spam might be a relatively straight-forward task for corporations, it is a completely different world for ISPs and web hosting companies. In this video, Garrick explains some of the challenges our resellers face, and how OpenSRS handles messaging abuse.
Garrick explains why software is not enough, and that collaboration with other ISPs is critical to ensuring email deliverability. Tucows is a member of Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG) and Garrick explains how this plays an important part in establishing best practices, standards, and staying ahead of abuse trends. Garrick wraps up with some future emerging trends such as moving to a behavioral and historical based (reputation) model to track down spammers, and ends with an interesting example of a regular user vs. a spammer profile.
Its a big and increasing complex world of messaging abuse and a challenge to stay one step ahead. If you’re going it alone, or outsourcing, we’d really like to hear from you. What trends are you experiencing? What are your most common messaging abuse complaints?
This is part of a series of six videos called Inside OpenSRS that features some of the people who work to provide high-quality services for our resellers. Stay tuned as we share the other videos with you over the next few weeks.
The OpenSRS team is getting geared up to exhibit at the Parallels Summit 2010 which takes place from Feb 22-24 in Miami, Florida. This is a premiere event in web hosting and an ideal conference to check out if you are a Parallels customer, interested in building better cloud services, or meeting with your industry peers.
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