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Web Hosting Interview - 64bithost.com
June 2009
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Chris Donnelly, owner of 64bithost.com Chris Donnelly is the owner of 64bithost.com – the leading provider in Gainesville, Florida for web hosting. Considering the route that he has taken, this has been no mean feat. Starting out as “employee number 6 of 150” at a Gainesville provider, the obstacles in the way of Chris’ confidence alongside considerable difficulty in his personal life. Now owning over 25 terabytes of server space in a Tier 1 data center, 64bithost.com is testament to exactly where a ‘current success have included an inability to sell anything that he doesn’t have absolute can do’ attitude really can take you. We talk to Chris about his career, the path he’s taken, where his company is right now, and where it is going. |
HOSTSEARCH: Chris – great pleasure to meet you. Perhaps we can start off with you introducing yourself and telling us a bit about 64bithost.
CHRIS DONNELLY: I was born in Pittsburgh. Pennsylvania and we moved to Gainesville Florida six months later, in June 1971. I have lived most of my life here or in school on the east coast. I transferred from my high school to the Blue Ridge School near Charlottesville, Virginia after my third year to take advantage of special programs, and there began my fascination with computers using an Apple II laptop. After graduation I attended Jacksonville University where I studied Telecommunications for two years, but that subject did not light my fires. So I worked in Jacksonville for several years. I returned to Gainesville to enroll at Santa Fe Community College (SFCC) where I got hooked on information technology and obtained Associate of Science degrees in Computer Science and Business Administration. What I learned in college was nothing compared to what I learned outside of college once I got out. During the next few years I worked for Atlantic.net, a startup internet service provider. Health issues intervened and during that time I took additional courses at Santa Fe Community College, including a valuable internship in the IT division of the University of Florida.
64bithost.com was founded because one frustrating day in 2005, during a vigorous discussion with my parents, my father sat me down and asked “what do you really want to do in life?” I told him that I wanted to be back in the internet industry and be in web hosting.
He looked at me quizzically and said "really?" “OK, what do you have to do?” I began the business in our house by building the first servers and using Windows 2003 but soon switched to Linux Red Hat because of its ease. After considerable searching for an optimal stable program, I learned of Parallels, and then called SWsoft.com. I have found this to be the best I can find in the industry. I chose to build on the 64 bit platform to be ahead of the technological wave. We incorporated as 64bithost.com in late 2006 and are a privately held company. Presently, the company is the leading provider of web hosting in Gainesville, Florida. We own and do not lease the more than 25 terabytes of server space that we operate from a Tier 1 data center in the middle of town. We provide a variety of solutions for both beginners and experienced users, from budget web hosting to dedicated servers. Our mission is to provide top-notch web hosting and support for all of our customers.
On the backbone of our internal network, we utilize Cisco equipment such as the Cisco 2950 switch. We connect into our datacenter (GRU.NET) with a dedicated Ethernet line dropped to our network and can be upgraded from a 100 Mbps Ethernet drop to a Gigabit Ethernet drop without replacing equipment or wires.
By having complete control over our own network and servers, we are able to plan ahead with our customers in mind; our infrastructure is built with the idea of growth. The beauty of having complete control over all aspects of your network is that we are able to offer scalable solutions from our current setup. We have the ability to quickly add equipment to our current infrastructure in order to meet the needs of our customers.
Our servers are hand built with Dual AMD Opteron chipsets and Tyan motherboards. Each server runs Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.0 with the Parallels server environment on it. Also each server has in excess of 1 terabyte of hard-drive space and more than 16 gigabytes of ram.
64bithost.com was founded because one frustrating day in 2005, during a vigorous discussion with my parents, my father sat me down and asked “what do you really want to do in life?” I told him that I wanted to be back in the internet industry and be in web hosting.
He looked at me quizzically and said "really?" “OK, what do you have to do?” I began the business in our house by building the first servers and using Windows 2003 but soon switched to Linux Red Hat because of its ease. After considerable searching for an optimal stable program, I learned of Parallels, and then called SWsoft.com. I have found this to be the best I can find in the industry. I chose to build on the 64 bit platform to be ahead of the technological wave. We incorporated as 64bithost.com in late 2006 and are a privately held company. Presently, the company is the leading provider of web hosting in Gainesville, Florida. We own and do not lease the more than 25 terabytes of server space that we operate from a Tier 1 data center in the middle of town. We provide a variety of solutions for both beginners and experienced users, from budget web hosting to dedicated servers. Our mission is to provide top-notch web hosting and support for all of our customers.
On the backbone of our internal network, we utilize Cisco equipment such as the Cisco 2950 switch. We connect into our datacenter (GRU.NET) with a dedicated Ethernet line dropped to our network and can be upgraded from a 100 Mbps Ethernet drop to a Gigabit Ethernet drop without replacing equipment or wires.
By having complete control over our own network and servers, we are able to plan ahead with our customers in mind; our infrastructure is built with the idea of growth. The beauty of having complete control over all aspects of your network is that we are able to offer scalable solutions from our current setup. We have the ability to quickly add equipment to our current infrastructure in order to meet the needs of our customers.
Our servers are hand built with Dual AMD Opteron chipsets and Tyan motherboards. Each server runs Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.0 with the Parallels server environment on it. Also each server has in excess of 1 terabyte of hard-drive space and more than 16 gigabytes of ram.
HOSTSEARCH: What products and services do you offer? Why don’t you talk us through them?
CHRIS DONNELLY: Our shared hosting consists of five (5) separate levels of hosting space beginning at 500 mb, 750 mb, 1 GB, 2.5 GB and 5 GBs of disk space. Each package has its own configuration of individual items that a person can use depending upon their needed resource requirements.
Our virtual private servers (VPS) configuration is unique. We offer four levels starting at 5 GB, 10 GB, 15 GB, and 20 GB of disk space. What we do uniquely is give away all of the software options that Parallels gives us.
We are also an associate registrar with SRSPLUS.COM and register all of our domains through them. We charge a varying rate depending on the domain extension.
For select clients we do resell our services to them. Depending on their location, we try to keep it personal, and will either try meet with them in person or deal with them by the phone. But we do extensive research on them before we hand over our wholesale pricing guidelines to someone.
We do build websites for select clients. An example is Mid Florida Heating and Air, one of North Florida's largest Heating and Air contractors. We have several other business sites under construction at this time.
In the future, we plan to get into Dynamic Dedicated Servers and steer away from the Dedicated Server market.
Our virtual private servers (VPS) configuration is unique. We offer four levels starting at 5 GB, 10 GB, 15 GB, and 20 GB of disk space. What we do uniquely is give away all of the software options that Parallels gives us.
We are also an associate registrar with SRSPLUS.COM and register all of our domains through them. We charge a varying rate depending on the domain extension.
For select clients we do resell our services to them. Depending on their location, we try to keep it personal, and will either try meet with them in person or deal with them by the phone. But we do extensive research on them before we hand over our wholesale pricing guidelines to someone.
We do build websites for select clients. An example is Mid Florida Heating and Air, one of North Florida's largest Heating and Air contractors. We have several other business sites under construction at this time.
In the future, we plan to get into Dynamic Dedicated Servers and steer away from the Dedicated Server market.
HOSTSEARCH: How did you start out in web hosting?
CHRIS DONNELLY: I began my life as a customer service representative for Atlantic.net in Gainesville, Florida as “employee number 6” of 150. I then moved up to become the sole customer service representative for the web hosting department. In this role, the management gave me the enjoyable opportunity to develop and try innovations in billing and web-based client services, several of which they eventually deployed with success, After three years working in that department I asked to be moved to another department. I learned about sales and it was at this point I learned that I was not really a sales man because I told the truth about the difference between a blended T-1 and Pure T-1.
HOSTSEARCH: You describe yourself as “not really a salesman”. Surely, this is a pretty big hurdle as far as being a web host is concerned. Isn’t it all about targets and selling?
CHRIS DONNELLY: To be honest, over the phone I could not sell a brick to a brick mason. I am not good at cold calls so I stay away from them. What I really enjoy is direct “in person” contact with potential clients. This enables me to read their reactions and recognize when the client does not understand what I’m trying to explain to them. I like to take the time to ensure that they do understand. So my “target” is making sure the customer gets what’s needed, not oversell product they can’t use. Too many sales people I have known are not customer-driven. We want to keep customers, and have them recommend our service to others.
I have seen various companies with sales groups entirely focused around the 15-30-60-90-120 day turn cycles with a 50 day line to nail profits. They blow through sales people. You may be able to create a large customer base but you end up with a huge churn rate. As they say you can "turn and burn" if you don't care about your sales employees. This company is not about "turn and burn". We are here to create lasting relationships with our customers due to the fact of the market that we are in. As a regional host in North Florida, you actually have to go and see your customer, drink coffee or have a bite to eat with them, or simply stop in just to say "hello" once in a while.
I have seen various companies with sales groups entirely focused around the 15-30-60-90-120 day turn cycles with a 50 day line to nail profits. They blow through sales people. You may be able to create a large customer base but you end up with a huge churn rate. As they say you can "turn and burn" if you don't care about your sales employees. This company is not about "turn and burn". We are here to create lasting relationships with our customers due to the fact of the market that we are in. As a regional host in North Florida, you actually have to go and see your customer, drink coffee or have a bite to eat with them, or simply stop in just to say "hello" once in a while.
HOSTSEARCH: Right now 64bithost.com is doing pretty well, isn’t it?
CHRIS DONNELLY: 64bithost.com has had its up and downs. The economy has taken a toll on our customer base. To give you an idea, we lost nearly a third of our lower level shared hosting platform due entirely to the economy. With slow individual hits like that we have considered re-addressing our cancellation policy but decided not to. We have had to improvise as the economy shifts and go directly to our customers instead of waiting for our customers to come to us. We are slower to roll out new products due to cost and also after talking with our customers about their needs.
HOSTSEARCH: And you have managed to do this in only three years…. What’s the secret?
CHRIS DONNELLY: Years ago, there was a TV commercial that even today has an impact. A team of sales people was gathered around a table. One of them was the president of the company. The man, with a grim look on his face, started to hand out envelopes. He said “today I got a call from our oldest customer who said he wanted to cancel his contact with us.” He said "gentlemen, these are our customer lists. I want you to go out find out what's wrong and talk to them."
In his hand he kept one envelope. One salesman asked who it was for. He replied "This is our oldest customer who just cancelled. It’s my job to talk to him." We in our field have to do the same thing.
In his hand he kept one envelope. One salesman asked who it was for. He replied "This is our oldest customer who just cancelled. It’s my job to talk to him." We in our field have to do the same thing.
HOSTSEARCH: So, things are looking good. But it’s not always been this way, has it?
CHRIS DONNELLY: Like the economy and any small business startup, there have been issues. I have had juvenile myoclonic epilepsy since childhood. In 2002, before 64bithost was started, I developed severe clinical depression that led to hospitalization. Such breaks occur in about 0.16 percent of the people with epilepsy. Depression is now recognized as a common complicating problem in all forms of epilepsy. I was hospitalized for 16 weeks and had to have 12 sessions of electroshock therapy. It worked. It is hard tough work, but you can’t let such issues take control. . Over the following few years, the epilepsy and my life have stabilized so that I can comfortably run 64bithost.com with two employees.
HOSTSEARCH: For many people such difficulties would be enough to give up and perhaps not try and pursue a career. How did you remain motivated throughout all of this?
CHRIS DONNELLY: During those years, there truly were moments. But, I really have to give credit to a number of people who have encouraged me along the way to even undertake web hosting and keep pushing when things looked bleak. The primary catalyst was Marty Puranic of Atlantic.net. Although only a customer service representative at the outset of my time with Atlantic.net, Mr. Puranic always took the time to hear out my ideas or suggestions. He was the first to suggest to me that I leave the company and start on my own because he felt that I could do a very well on my own. Brett Tambling, president of Acceleration.net, on several occasions asked me to consider working for him. He also encouraged me to consider starting my own hosting company. I am eternally grateful to Sheard Goodwin, my internship mentor who drove home the importance of correct wiring in the management of large scale server operations. James Charleston of Urtechs.com, a major teaching contractor for Parallels who has been my guide through the labyrinth of software patches, major upgrades, billing issues, backward compatibility and the countless other tricks to the trade. I hope to be as good a student as he has been a teacher.
HOSTSEARCH: You have described Parallels solutions as “the best in the industry that I can find”. What makes them so special do you think?
CHRIS DONNELLY: I had doubts about the Windows environment and Novell Operating system, while a student at Santa Fe Community College. I felt Linux and the Open Source Community would provide a better answer in time. When I started working with Windows it did not have any built in billing capacity. So I began looking for a better option. When comparing various other systems I chose the leaders in their fields, including Cpanel, SwSoft and Helm. SwSoft, with its built in billing system, capacity to register domains, and its easy provisioning for new customers, far outstripped the competition. That made it the obvious choice Parallels has since upgraded the software consistently.
HOSTSEARCH: So 64bithost.com is kind of bucking the trend, especially in light of the current economic climate – how did you do this?
CHRIS DONNELLY: At this early stage of our corporate development we have to pick and choose what we offer to our clients in order server our customers best. We don’t want to offer more products than we can comfortably handle. It would not be fair to customers. We want to be very good at what we do, that means providing excellent service. Once we have established a larger client base and add skilled support people, we will consider expanding services into areas such as VoIP, SaaS and Cloud Backup.
HOSTSEARCH: What direction do you see web hosting heading in? Is it irrevocably moving into the Cloud?
CHRIS DONNELLY: This is a difficult question to answer and I will do my best. Web hosting has already broken into a multi-layered environment. It seems to center on who has the most money. In your typical environment you have the Provider, the Reseller, the Client and then possibly someone who is just using the straight email service of either the Provider or the Reseller. Now within this structure of Provider and Resellers you have Web Design firms which are reselling the providers services and selling their own services at the same time. You can also have large scale associate registrars who resell the Providers services. On top of that, there are people just using standard Windows 2000 - Windows 2008 boxes, iis 5.0 through iis 7.0 and doing web hosting. Not to slow the world down or anything we can toss in Mac OSX and then the soon to be released version Mac OS11 (Snow Leopard). By the way don't forget all the versions of SunSparc UNIX that can be used for web hosting. This in of itself creates a glorious array of computer Operating Systems to choose from.
Now to consider your second question: I think that there will always be small to medium size suppliers for web hosting as long as the open source software permits. “Cloud computing” is not going to be the final simple final solution. Software as a shared service, controlled by a few big players, probably will not become the all – purpose answer to all problems. I think that there will always be a role for the small to medium size web hosting solution as long as the open source software permits. Regardless of the proposals, the “people” and infrastructure that constitute the basic internet service will be required. Someone has to mind the store!
Consider this: It is late August in Florida or Texas; Saturday evening 11:58 p.m. and you are standing in your pajamas watching the Weather Channel personnel describe the approaching Category 4 hurricane. Rain hammers at your windows. You are wondering will that hurricane head left or right. Suddenly your town suffers a massive power outage. You cannot get on your computer and wireless is not an option. Needless to say you get dressed in 10 seconds in dirty clothes because they are handy. You drive through fierce winds and rain to reach the datacenter where you find 45 other distressed Network Administrators. You systematically check all your systems from stem to stern, from routers to switches, to servers, to cables and finally to the power cords looking for anything that might have burned out during a system restart. As you close the last of 4 rack doors you over hear one of the other network administrators breathe a sigh of relief as he says, "I'm o.k. are you o.k?" and a retort comes from the other side "yes, thank God for that 4000 KW generator they have out back!" "Why? You ask “besides the obvious”. A person on the other side of the room replies "It has a 2 millisecond turnover rate and is on natural gas, it is not diesel. We have an uninterrupted supply of natural gas from the city as long as the gas main does not rupture. You try getting a semi-load of diesel in a hurricane. It is impossible." The “cloud solution” is not going to be able to find either diesel fuel or natural gas to start that generator…
Now to consider your second question: I think that there will always be small to medium size suppliers for web hosting as long as the open source software permits. “Cloud computing” is not going to be the final simple final solution. Software as a shared service, controlled by a few big players, probably will not become the all – purpose answer to all problems. I think that there will always be a role for the small to medium size web hosting solution as long as the open source software permits. Regardless of the proposals, the “people” and infrastructure that constitute the basic internet service will be required. Someone has to mind the store!
Consider this: It is late August in Florida or Texas; Saturday evening 11:58 p.m. and you are standing in your pajamas watching the Weather Channel personnel describe the approaching Category 4 hurricane. Rain hammers at your windows. You are wondering will that hurricane head left or right. Suddenly your town suffers a massive power outage. You cannot get on your computer and wireless is not an option. Needless to say you get dressed in 10 seconds in dirty clothes because they are handy. You drive through fierce winds and rain to reach the datacenter where you find 45 other distressed Network Administrators. You systematically check all your systems from stem to stern, from routers to switches, to servers, to cables and finally to the power cords looking for anything that might have burned out during a system restart. As you close the last of 4 rack doors you over hear one of the other network administrators breathe a sigh of relief as he says, "I'm o.k. are you o.k?" and a retort comes from the other side "yes, thank God for that 4000 KW generator they have out back!" "Why? You ask “besides the obvious”. A person on the other side of the room replies "It has a 2 millisecond turnover rate and is on natural gas, it is not diesel. We have an uninterrupted supply of natural gas from the city as long as the gas main does not rupture. You try getting a semi-load of diesel in a hurricane. It is impossible." The “cloud solution” is not going to be able to find either diesel fuel or natural gas to start that generator…
HOSTSEARCH: Will web hosting become a total utility or will there always be web hosts providing the types of services you are?
CHRIS DONNELLY: No. Web hosting has already become a multi-use utility in which people can now "plug-in" what they wish their hosting to look like people now have the ability to change their web hosting packages if they have the correct provider. People can upgrade and downgrade their packages at will, at anytime of the day or night without having to call customer support.
As long as people take A+ computer classes to learn how to build and maintain computers, and people have the motivation to break and put something back together or make something good even better, there will always be a reason to have web hosts providing services. It is in certain people’s nature to "buck" the trend and not use the "accepted" way and do something different.
As long as people take A+ computer classes to learn how to build and maintain computers, and people have the motivation to break and put something back together or make something good even better, there will always be a reason to have web hosts providing services. It is in certain people’s nature to "buck" the trend and not use the "accepted" way and do something different.
HOSTSEARCH: HostSearch: As we all know, web hosting is very stressful, so what do you do to redress the balance at the end of the day?
CHRIS DONNELLY: When I finish some of my work, I like go to the gym, at 4:00 in the morning! After a workout, I take advantage of the gym’s hot therapy pool. It is about 15 yards long and 10 yards wide. On the ceiling is a painting of the blue sky with clouds. I float on my back and stare up at the clouds for 20 or 30 minutes and listen to the strange gurgling sounds that the pool makes. It is very peaceful.
HOSTSEARCH: Well Chris - thanks for your time and you candor.
CHRIS DONNELLY: Don't mention it - it's been great talking to you.
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