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Certification Magazine: At XNet, It’s All about Attitude

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Certification Magazine just published an interview with Arthur Zards of XNet entitled “At XNet, It’s All About Attitude.” The article zeros in on the attitude XNet hires for and how certifications are often a by-product of an attitude of self-improvement and perpetual learning.

Click here to read the Certification Magazine article: At XNet, It’s All About Attitude.

Naperville Sun Article: The big generator that could

Last week, XNet was profiled in the Naperville Sun in the article “The big generator that could: XNet keeps businesses on the grid.” The article focuses on our boutique data center services and how our infrastructure keeps small and medium-sized businesses online in the event of a storm or power outage. In the article, XNet customer Mark Mayle of Equitas Group LLC talks well of his experiences with us over the last seven years. Thanks, Mark!

Read the article on the Naperville Sun web site.

Business Ledger Article: Surviving power outages without going broke

XNet’s Arthur Zards wrote this article that originally appeared in the January 21 TechLink section of The Business Ledger.

Surviving power outages without going broke
By: Arthur Zards

The most common IT disruption for small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) is by far a general power outage. From rolling brownouts in the West coast, to springtime Chicago storms; power outages are fairly common and are on the rise due to an ever increasing commercial demand for power, and limited resources to meet the growing demand.

When looking at your business continuity plan for a loss of power (you did do this, right?) You probably found out that there are not too many cost effective options. A typical UPS (usually your only option) will add only minutes of emergency back-up power. Plus, the more computers you stack on the UPS, the less time you have. With how heavily companies rely on technology, a power outage can grind business to an immediate halt. No power means no email, no servers, no website, and equally as important—no Internet access.

Are there any cost effective options for your critical computers? Luckily there’s one, you just may not know about it. The boutique datacenter.

For many non tech-oriented executives, “the datacenter” conjures up thoughts of gigantic warehouses filled with technicians in labs coats busily managing gigantic supercomputers—at a price tag far beyond your budget. This may have been true years ago, but due to the growing need for business continuity for the SMB market, there are now numerous smaller, boutique-style datacenters that cater specifically to the SMB.

What is a boutique datacenter exactly? It is a facility that has all the features of an enterprise datacenter; redundant power with a UPS, back-up generators, industrial-grade cooling (with back-up units), that’s networked across multiple locations with two or more backbone-level Internet connections. Translation: if any one piece fails, you stay connected. These facilities allow you access to your equipment 24×7 while keeping it secure, and best of all, the services are all tailored especially for the SMB.

Boutique datacenters serve small businesses who need to host as little as a single critical email server, where larger facilities require minimum space allotments that dwarf these customers’ needs. Plus they add special services to help the small IT department manage and grow their company network and systems, so their network can keep pace with their growing business. Best of all, they offer friendly, helpful services to non-technical executives who know they need their equipment secure, but might not know exactly how to accomplish it.

If this is you, and you are not too sure how to protect your systems from a power loss, contact a boutique datacenter that caters to your market. You’ll be surprised at the level of IT help they can offer you, at a price that is very attractive.

Bio:
Arthur Zards is President and co-founder of XNet, a Lisle-based boutique data center, the XNet Critical Computing Facility. Since 1992, XNet has been instrumental in growing Internet technologies in the Chicago area, and is now the largest independently owned Internet service provider in the Chicago area.

XNet on your iPhone

We decided to have a little fun in the wake of Steve Jobs’ iPhone update from yesterday, and created our own webclip icon for XNet.com. Now, you can have XNet on your iPhone: simply visit www.xnet.com, on your iPhone, click the “+” sign at the bottom of Safari, and save the webclip. The XNet iPhone icon will appear.

To do this for your own site, follow these three simple steps:

1. Create a new 57×57 PNG file with your logo or icon with the background color of your choice (transparent creates a black icon).
2. Name it “apple-touch-icon.png”
3. Upload it to the root folder of your web site (the same folder that holds your index.html file).
4. Create a webclip with your iPhone.

NOTE: At first, I searched the web for iPhone PSD templates with the aqua overlay and built the icon you see on this post. When I created a webclip on my iPhone, I noted that the phone had given it’s own treatment, resulting in a double-stamped coin effect. It really only takes the four steps I outline above. Apple builds the stylized icon for you!

Event: Silicon Prairie Social 2

Following on the heels of our first event, we’re hosting the second Silicon Prairie Social on Thursday, January 24. Below are the details. Hope to see you there!

Silicon Prairie Social 2
Suburban tech and Internet industry mixer

When:
Thursday, January 24, 2008, 6:30-10:00pm
Where:
Mullen’s Bar & Grill
3080 Warrenville Rd., Lisle, IL 60532 (map)

Silicon Prairie Social is an opportunity to connect in an informal setting with like-minded people in technology; the event is specifically for upwardly mobile tech professionals, tech executives, tech entrepreneurs, technology service providers, Internet professionals, Web 2.0 and startup companies, and the mobile industry. (No professional recruiters, staffing agencies, or active job seekers permitted).

The event is free to attend, free drinks and food will be provided. RSVP is required at http://siliconprairiesocial2.eventbrite.com.

For more information see www.siliconprairiesocial.com or contact info [at] siliconprairiesocial {dot} com.

The “shocking” cost of downtime due to power outages

According to a 2005 whitepaper by APC (PDF Link), manufacturers of uninterruptable power supplies (UPS’s) and power conversion equipment:

“A recent study in the USA has shown that industrial and digital business firms are losing $45.7 billion per year due to power interruptions1. Across all business sectors, an estimated $104 billion to $164 billion is lost due to interruptions with another $15 billion to $24 billion due to all other power quality problems. … Loss of processing in a large financial corporation can cost thousands of unrecoverable dollars per minute of downtime, as well as many hours of recovery time to follow. Program and data corruption caused by a power interruption can create problems for software recovery operations that may take weeks to resolve.”

When looking at national figures, it’s easy to say “that’ll never happen to me.” Let me bring this a little closer to home:

• If your 24-hour courier business relies on a dedicated server with software to dispatch your drivers, what happens when you have a power outage that last several hours?
• If your e-commerce site is down for even an hour, how much does that translate to in lost revenue?
• How do you calculate the value of the lost opportunities when a storm knocks out power to your server room and your sales force can’t access your pricey CRM application? (Remember the storms this summer?)

The average office battery backup lasts a half hour or less. Power outages due to storm damage can take hours to days before power is restored. Fortunately, the recent ice storms didn’t hit the Chicago area as badly as they did Oklahoma City, where:

“About 468,000 homes and business still had no power Wednesday in Oklahoma, suffering its worst power outage on record. That was down from a peak of some 618,000 customers Tuesday, but utility officials said it could be a week to 10 days before power is fully restored.”

To avoid having your business go down in a similar incident — summer or winter — host your servers in a fully-redundant data center like XNet’s Critical Computing Facility™ with backup generator power and full network redundancy. To arrange a tour or for questions on services and pricing, contact us via the web or phone at 630.983.6064.

XNet honored with Business Ledger Entrepreneurial Excellence Award

Arthur Zards		Brian Clark

XNet is proud to announce that co-founders Arthur Zards and Brian Clark are recipients of this year’s Innovation Award from the Business Ledger’s Entrepreneurial Excellence Awards. Zards and Clark were honored alongside other award recipients at the Ledger’s awards reception held October 19 at the Chicago Automobile Trade Association, and were included in a special insert in the October 29 issue of the Business Ledger.

For further details, see the following Business Ledger articles:

• Birck Lauds Entrepreneurs as 25 Are Recognized
• The Business Ledger: Twenty-Five Execs Named Recipients of Entrepreneurial Excellence Awards

About XNet

XNet is a privately held, industry-leading Internet solutions provider located in the heart of the Silicon Prairie in Lisle, Illinois. Since 1992, XNet has been instrumental in growing Internet technologies in the Chicago area, and is now the largest independently owned Internet service provider in Chicagoland.

By maintaining close client relationships and a distinct understanding of tomorrow’s technology, XNet has been the leader in Internet solutions for Chicago’s top corporations. XNet’s client list is essentially a “who’s who” of the technology elite, including Blaupunkt, BP Amoco, Lucent, Argonne Labs, Bosch, Abbott Labs, Motorola, and the Morton Arboretum, just to name a few. XNet was founded in 1992 by Naperville Central High School graduates Arthur Zards and Brian Clark.

Media Contact: Ben Bradley, PR Counsel for XNET, 630-221-9844 or benbradley@bwmginc.com.

Contact: Arthur Zards, President, XNet, 630-983-6064.

Thanksgiving = turkey + family + friends + and…?

…saying “thanks!”

(Wow, what a great idea! Where did that one come from?)

As easy as it sounds, being thankful is easy to forget. We get trapped in planning, cooking, traveling, seeing our relatives, and eating. In the middle of it all, here’s a small challenge for you:

Whether you’re a business owner, manager, or employee, go out this week and thank as many people as you can. Don’t just do lip service by saying “thanks,” give a sincere reason why you are thanking them — even if you think it’s for something small or insignificant.

You’ll be surprised at the reactions you get. Very surprised.

It’s easy to forget to do this, everyone (including me!) should do it more often. Sincere gratitude is powerful.

Never underestimate the power of appreciation.

XNet hosts successful first Silicon Prairie Social

There are a lot of tech businesses in the western suburbs, but no real sense of a tech community. Downtown Chicago has its events and associations, but where are these things along the I-88 corridor? That’s why we hosted Silicon Prairie Social last month at Mullen’s in Lisle.

Building a community doesn’t happen within a single event; the relationships that bring professional growth, business deals, and new opportunities are built up over time. The first Silicon Prairie Social was a step in the right direction, and we couldn’t be happier with the results:

• Over 200 attendees – many of them successful entrepreneurs, executives, and high-level technology professionals
• Great feedback on the quality of networking, thanks in part to the innovative “I Need” and “I Know” name badges that encouraged conversations.
• High compliments on the location—I-88 and Naperville Rd. are central to DuPage County, and the location made for an event that was accessible for people who can’t easily make downtown events in the evening.

See some photos of the event here:

To find out when we’re holding the next Silicon Prairie Social, visit the event’s web site and either add the RSS feed to your reader or sign up for the mailing list (right sidebar, below the sponsors).

Is your kid a “Lemonaire?”

I just found a link to a bank in Oregon who is running a cute little promotion–offering a lemonade stand kit and $10 “startup capital” to kids under 13 who want to run a lemonade stand. Their web site comes complete with a cute promotional video, ranging from the “business plan” to “the pitch” and lessons learned. Check it out:

www.lemonaire.com