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1.) UPS / Power supply
2.) Bandwidth / Latency
3.) Backbone modification and upgrading
4.) New VAT 01.01.2007
5.) New Gameserver Hardware
6.) New Homepage/Webinterface
7.) planned new products and offers
To all customers, and naturally all potentially customers, we introduce our current roadmap for the first quarter 2007.
For a long time we coulnd't provide any news, but too many things weren't ripe for decision, well thought out or the necessary contracts still in progress.
In the future we will try to provide contemporary more and topical information about our actions.
For introduction we want to apologize for the last power blackout and the consequences. Some of you wrote (in bulletins etc.), that is wasn't our fault, because it was the fault of our power supplier and so on. Doubtless it wasn't our direct fault, but we could have taken actions to prevent a power blackout like the last one.
The blackout had also "positive" effects, because of it we know now, that we have to enhance the capacity of the planned UPS. A regular UPS only provides protection of a few minutes, but the last blackout took about 45 minutes.
Because of this "distinct sign" (how I like to call it) and our aim to improve continuouly our services, availability and support, the UPS project got more comprehensive and takes more time as originally planned.
Short time ago we completed the planning and made way for the whole UPS incl. emergency power engine. Because of the massive extension of the project, we have to accomplish new challenges (adequate carrying capacity, height of ceiling, furure expandability etc.) For that reason the time of realization won't be 4 or 5 weeks, as originally planned, but rather 5 months.
The mandatory boring for the fundament will be finished this week. After that we need statics planning, certification of the statics planning and a building license.
I think that we can start the bulding process, if the weather is not too bad, end of January 2007 and the building process last 10 weeks.
After completion we'll have 1600KVA emergency power capacity :P
Of course we will provide further information as soon as we have some.
2.) Bandwidth / Latency
Most of our customers, and especially the ones who are customer for while, noticed that we have latency problems from time to time - and not only we, many providers have the same ping problems.
The reason as the case may be the explanation is very simple. We need more capacity and buy bandwdith from a carrier, who claims to have the capacity we need. But other providers need also new bandwidth and buy from the same carriers. And after some weeks the capacity of this carrier is partially exhausted. But the carrier still connects even more customers to his backbone. So we have to change the carriers all the time and always have to look for new carriers who could handle our bandwidth and latency requirements.
A solution would be if the carriers provide their agreed capacity (e.g. max. 50% bandwidth usage) OR simply not to be too greedy for volume of sales and don't connect more and more customers to the the same backbone capacity.
Because we think that this situation is not acceptable for our customers and costs ourself a huge amount of time, nervs and money, we finally decided to make the one and only decision.
We will buy bandwidth directly from biggest carrier in Germany, Deutsche Telekom.
Only with this carrier we can control the bandwidth utilization of the serveral least lines and also be able to react at an early stage of shortages.
We signed the contracts some time ago and now we have also the dates of delivery.
We will have 2,5 Gbit/s / OC48 in Frankfurt directly to the DTAG Backbone until 15.01.2007 and an additionally 2,5 Gbit/s DTAG connection to our datacenter in Coburg until 15.02.2007. This means for you the lowest latency ever. Because of that we will have additional 5 Gbit capacity to DTAG - EXCLUSIVLY for us!
Another advantage of this partnership is that we get a new redundant connection to our datacenter, because we choosed not the cheaper "PayPeering" but the full-fledged transit incl. complete routing tables. Through that strategic upgrade we will also be able to provide better network availablity. More information in our next newsletter.
3.) Backbone modification and upgrading
Through the increasing demand of our customers we have modificate and upgrade our backbone. You will be informed about the upcoming maintenance work as soon as possible per mail. We don't expect any outages.
4.) New VAT 01.01.2007
As you probably know we will have new VAT in Germany on 01.01.2007. VAT increases from 16% to 19%. Because of the constantly increasing energy costs we are not able to hold our prices and must raise the prices 3%. It means only a few cents for every customer, but the sum is a huge amount money.
Naturally all customers who paid in advance will not get an additional bill for the 3%.
5.) New Gameserver Hardware
Meanwhile our gameserver hardware is a little bit out of date. Of course every new server is built of current hardware, but naturally we have still some older servers in use. These will be exchanged for new ones (Intel Core 2 Duo 6600 / 4 GB RAM / 250GB SATA II HDD incl. 16MB Cache).
The exchange will be done during night and the early morning hours, so that you have as little trouble as possible. Most of the customers won't realize the exchange at all.
6.) New Homepage/Webinterface
During our spring-cleaning we plan also a relaunch of our website. The current one was copied many times of our competition but never reached, but nevertheless it's time to improve our site.
Because of internal reorganization of some products and also to provide new offers, the current website is not contemporary and will be relaunched early next year. If things work out as planned we will release new features and products the same time. For example a template system for our webinterface to customize it to your own design wishes.
If you have wishes or suggestions for improvement please send it to new@ngz-server.de. All feedback is welcome, regardless of suggestions for the new website, webinterface, products or services or feature requests.
7.) planned new products and offers
As described above we are planning new products and offers, e.g. Webspace and Filespace, addtional services for root servers, like monitoring including mail and sms notification. Besides that we will offer Confixx and Plesk at the same time we relaunch the website. And naturally we will update our rootserver offers also with the relaunch.
So, that's all for now from the United Colo HQ. We hope that we could give you a little insight and overview about the upcoming events of the following weeks and months.
Thank you for your patience and loyalty.
| posted by: Gulibert |
10.12.2006 | 16:50 Uhr |
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