Every Monday morning as we gather for our weekly team meeting, you can find Tim, our Data Protection Team Lead, delivering a well thought out lecture to anyone within ear shot about every major sporting event that took place over the weekend. Throughout the month of October, this was especially the case as the Cardinals were fighting to win the World Series. Informative, passionate and highly entertaining, Tim always shares particular details about how the game wasn’t played exactly to his liking or which coach messed up what strategy – regardless of who won. The critical thinking skills and brain power behind the impassioned advice is what draws people to Tim and one of his biggest strengths – not simply for sports related discussion, but also in his work here at Contegix.

In the same way he evaluates coaches, players and managers on the baseball field, Tim is constantly evaluating the way in which our data protection systems are managed, despite constantly delivering positive results. “If a play works out because the other team missed the catch, that doesn’t make it the right play,” explains Tim. “Data must be backed up frequently and correctly, because when it comes to DLP, there is no such thing as a ‘happy accident.’”

Tim’s entrance into the Data Loss Prevention field was no accident either. When Tim was just ten years old he wrote a simple program in basic on an Atari 400 that simulated controlling the power flow into his friends’ homes. “The Atari power program I wrote was a fun way to fool my friends and they all bought it,” said Tim. “The significance of the program was that the Atari 400 had no hard drive to save files and the program had to be saved on a standard tape cassette, then loaded into memory off that tape…years later, a major part of my job is to save entire servers to tape. I guess you could say I started training for this position when I was ten.”

As a ten-year-old, Tim could easily demonstrate the necessity of backups to his friends and family based on the limitations of the technology he was utilizing. Now, he says it is a bit tricky to explain to people why offsite tape and other backup services are necessary. In his straight forward, honest and passionate tone, Tim states:  “Technology keeps moving forward and those selling it continue to make promises without regard for it’s true capabilities. The fact of the matter is, if no one is backing up the information stored on the system and an error occurs, there is no assurance that the data will be there when the system is restored or repaired.”

When asked if the software we utilize for backup management is the best choice, Tim responds without hesitation. “CommVault Simpana 9 has so much to offer. First of all, the management is completely centralized, the restores are super fast and reliable, plus the system’s diversity is beyond cool. It can literally backup just about any platform or application.” With an endorsement like that, coming from a guy who has no trouble criticizing, even when his team is victorious, we are confident we made the right choice with CommVault.

Through our Managed Service Hosting accounts, Contegix offers premium-managed services that help keep our customers’ minds off managing their technology and focused on their businesses. These optional Managed Services are available to all of our clients that give us the duty of managing their Internet Infrastructure needs.

Delegating such a big responsibility might seem risky—after all, information systems need constant monitoring and care. However our engineering and technical support staff members are known for their industry leading customer service and technical expertise. We are here to support our customers all day and all night, every single day of the year. Our support team is such an integrated part of our clients’ IT process and management, that often, clients experience our team as a natural extension of their own (be sure to let us know if you have openings on your company softball team). We cover it all, from protecting data and back-ups, to firewalls, and 24/7/365 system management, including monitoring. And you can relax knowing you are taken care of—we utilize the best equipment, we’re continuously evaluating our systems to deliver the best possible redundancy and we only recruit and hire the most experienced personnel (softball playing abilities are not guaranteed).

When you utilize Contegix Managed Services, you can sleep easy knowing our team of specialists will take care of everything. They manage installations and configuration, and your backup process. If a backup encounters problems, such as locked files or inaccessible data, a specialist is there to address the problem immediately.

Data protection is always a high priority for our clients. However, equipment failures, human error and end-user mistakes do happen. We know that the loss of data can be incredibly difficult for a business. To prepare for the unexpected, we offer customers backups to highly secure onsite SAN back-up system and an optional Offsite Tape Storage offering.

Our team of specialists ensures that customer data is backed up and protected. In the unlikely event that your systems require restoration, our support team delivers on our promise to be an extension of your team—available 24/7/365 to perform the restoration in the timeliest manner possible.

Contegix Managed Services give our customers peace of mind knowing their sites are up, applications are monitored and optimized and that their data is secure. Our team is here, when you need us, every day of the year to put those fires out for you. Learn more about our Managed Service Offerings.

For the month of October, Contegix’s Data Center Technician, Vernon, agreed to discuss his quirks, his work and his passion for his job here at Contegix.

Vernon’s father gave him his first computer – the Commodore VIC-20 in 1986, when he was only 8 years old. Vernon explained, “My career in IT began with that gift. When you grow up with Information Technology, it is always there. This is true for everyone. Most kids today cannot imagine a time when cell phones were not owned by everyone; I have that attitude about computers.” It was with the Commodore that Vernon first experimented with writing code and manipulating technology to see what it was capable of accomplishing. At the time, technology was new to everyone. As time went on, Vernon embraced technology and valued the excitement felt when he could try out his new ideas using technology.

As our one of our Data Center Technicians, Vernon is responsible for physically racking, wiring, shelving, connecting and testing our equipment and is part of the team managing our facilities. He works meticulously to ensure that the presentation of equipment is not only functional, but also aesthetically pleasing. Again, his father, who was a sub-station mechanic for a power company, instilled this value in Vernon. He is absolutely meticulous about the architectural design of our facilities, to ensure that ultimately, our customers benefit from his clean and seamless layout designs. “My geek passion is centered upon starting with an empty room and boxes of parts only to end up with a beautifully laid out, well-organized data center,” explained Vernon. “I love creating order and functionality out of nothing. It’s what I was born to do.”

Vernon was one of the key architects in the physical layout design for MiraCloud™. MiraCloud incorporates a large amount of equipment in order to deliver our promise of a truly multi-tiered cloud platform. It is comprised of a variety of hosts, each with a different hypervisor (KVM, XenServer, or VMware ESXi). Each host needs access to the multiple storage units, to deliver primary and secondary storage. All of this presents the unique challenge of building something that serves the initial installation requirements and well beyond.
“The objective was to create a layout that would make future maintenance as easy as possible,” Vernon explained. “Functionality is about more than whether or not the servers fit into the allotted space and the proper amount of power is allocated to each unit. For us, functionality directly relates to maximizing uptime, elimination of potential human mistakes and creating a supreme level of accessibility, for our engineers and technicians who work on the infrastructure after the initial build out. We believe that this approach allows us to offer our clients additional confidence in the reliability of our systems.”

Vernon also takes his passion for technology and building things seriously in his personal life. Recently, he purchased a Honda Ruckus and modified the frame to suit his tall stature. In Vernon’s words, “I focus on function first, form second. There are plenty of examples of beautiful things that aren’t practical. My preference is for things to possess both qualities.”

When asked what Vernon enjoys most about working at Contegix, he found it tricky to pin down the right words and ended up saying things like, ‘culture’ and ‘balance.’ There is some difficulty associated with putting our company energy into words. We work in an industry that is all about innovation and forward thinking. Problem resolution in this business often means challenging conventional thinking. “At an early age, my dad taught me that just because things are done a certain way, it doesn’t mean that is the way those things should be done,” explained Vernon. In short, working at Contegix satisfies Vernon’s need to innovate, create practical beauty from chaos and contribute to the healthy balance of teamwork and individuality that makes Contegix such a great place to work.

As the balloons and our egos deflate, we are left reflecting how we got here. We are maturing as a company and one million tickets is a testament to that. We may not have severed the billions as Mickey-D’s, yet, but this is certainly a milestone for us. Congratulation Contegix and to many more millions of tickets to come.

Speaking of appreciation, a big thanks to Gliffy for helping us out with the Case Study that was used on the back of our marketing slick. It was great seeing you all out at Summit. If you didn’t pick one up at the table, you can download it here.

We are definitely looking forward to next year’s Summit and sincerely hope the next musical is as entertaining as this year’s. The keynotes, partner meetings and networking hours were beautifully executed and we were all impressed with how easy it was to get help from Atlassian staff, the hotel and our neighbors in the Sponsor Pavilion.

The best part of Summit was absolutely the people who attended. You all made Summit wonderful for us and for that, we thank you.

NoWait is a cloud-based application that helps casual dining restaurants manage their seating all while giving their customers more flexibility. The host or hostess takes the customer’s name and cell number, and then sends a text message when the table is available. This means no more buzzers and much less sitting and waiting. If the wait is long, diners can choose to stay at the restaurant or go do something else. NoWait designed this additional flexibility and freedom to ultimately enhance a customer’s dining experience.

NoWait will receive a package valued at $75,000 in “Enterprize” technology tools and office space for winning the competition. The award package includes:

• Contegix managed web and managed database server, upgrades and unmanaged development tools
• Flite Diamond-Level Mobile Subscription
• Digital Matters 3-month Start Up Consulting Package
• Customware TrainingRocket high-impact professional training application on cloud-based platform
• Atlassian Bitbucket account, or 10-user JIRA Studio account or 100-user version JIRA, an espresso machine and 10 t-shirts
• Zimbra email and collaboration solution delivered as a VMware virtual appliance
• BrowserMob load testing and monitoring plan
• Two free passes to Strange Loop 2011

Robb Myer, NoWait CEO, says the idea for the application was born out of his own frustrations. Trying to find a place for brunch one weekend, every place he went was busy. He wondered why he could not receive real-time information on more casual eateries. He is looking forward to the time when NoWait becomes the “go to” application for both customers and restaurant owners.

The entire Contegix team extends congratulations NoWait and to say thank you to all the great startups that share our love of technology and our spirit of entrepreneurship.

Having a vision comes with challenges. We were once a start-up and understand those challenges, and we want to help your vision come to life.

What we need from you:

• An explanation of how your company shows competitive differentiation
• How your company will achieve commercial success or positive social change
• How your company will incorporate cloud computing as part of your growth strategy

What you could win:

• Contegix managed web and managed database server, upgrades and unmanaged development tools
• Flite Diamond-Level Mobile Subscription
• CustomWare TrainingRocket high-impact professional training application on cloud-based platform
• Atlassian Bitbucket account, or 10-user JIRA Studio Account or 100-user
• Zimbra email and collaboration solution from VMWare virtual appliance
• BrowserMob load testing and monitoring plan
• Free office space in St. Louis
• Two free passes to Strange Loop 2011

An independent panel of judges and group of technology partners will select the winner. Judges include Alex Williams, editor or ReadWriteWeb, Jennifer Ehlen the interim director of the Saint Louis University Center for Entrepreneurship, and Jay De Long, vice president, New Ventures and Capital Formation for the Saint Louis Regional Chamber and Growth Association. The Contegix executive team and strategic partners will also participate in the judging process. One winning company will be selected.

Any start-up formed in 2010 or 2011, as well as those still in development and any US industry with a business or concept that relies on an Internet infrastructure may apply.

You can’t win if you don’t apply! Visit www.StartUpBootUp.com to take the first step and sign up.

Applications will be accepted through Monday April 25, 2011 and the winner will be announced in early May.

If you have any questions or need additional information about the program, contact Heidi Dubrouillet at (314) 622-6200 ext 248 or heidi.dubrouillet@contegix.com.

Sign up today and your dream could soon become your reality.

Just yesterday at Contegix, we had a triple drive failure in one of our Cloud SANs, which caused outages for many customers. Our Engineering, Operations and Customer Service teams all worked tirelessly diagnosing the issues, working with vendors and repairing our systems. It was a rough day for us, because as much as we would like to, we cannot always circumvent a crisis, especially with respect to hardware.

We are extremely hard on ourselves and are all still reeling from yesterday’s experience. However, what this has shown us is that our number one core value is more than just lip service. Every one of our employees understands how important our client systems are, and that was self-evident. Had any of our clients been in our offices yesterday or even this morning, what would become immediately clear is how disappointed we all are by the impact the outages had on some of our customers.

We are regrouping around here by reminding ourselves exactly why we are here and by acknowledging what our customers expect from us. We believe, (and were told several times yesterday by our customers) that we are here because of our expertise, attention and communication. That customers do not expect us to magically make hardware fail less frequently, but they do expect that if there is a problem we could not prevent, that we do everything in our power to fix it and to provide relevant and timely updates on the situation.

We intrinsically feel pain when even just one of our customers feels pain. We are dependent on our clients’ successes; we never want to be a source of stress. At Contegix we understand that it is not enough to just write down on paper that we want to “wow” the customer. It is not enough to post it on our walls, write about it in our blogs, or include it in our marketing materials. True customer service and customer love comes from living that value and always striving to do better. In fact, writing it on our walls is a little silly. For us, it’s like having a giant sign in front of your desk with the words “don’t forget to breathe” on it. Customer service is our nature. We will do it whether or not someone is telling us to.

We are also not afraid to discuss bad days or problems. It is so easy to be there when everything is going perfectly. The challenge is to stand up and answer the call when things go wrong. We are deeply sorry for the problems of yesterday and we promise to continue to aggressively and proactively eliminate any future issues. Again, customer service is our lifeblood and our success is completely dependent upon our customers. We sincerely appreciate every one of our clients who acknowledged our efforts in the thick of it. Thank you.

Questions? Give us a call:  877.426.6834 or shoot us an email at support@contegix.com.

We are proud to give back to the Open Source community by releasing a recently developed Hyperic plugin we wrote to address the needs of our customers. This plugin connects to remote IRC servers via a configurable port and checks that “Checking your hostname” is returned by the  server after the connection is established. Deploy the plugin to your server and agents per Hyperic’s documentation and you’re ready to go.

You can find the compiled and ready to deploy plugin at
https://github.com/downloads/gregwalters/irc-plugin/irc-plugin.jar

The plugin is also available on the Hyperic community HyperFORGE at
http://support.hyperic.com/display/hypcomm/IRC+Plugin

If you wish to check out the source code please see
http://gregwalters.github.com/irc-plugin or via git:

git clone git://github.com/gregwalters/irc-plugin