Dynamic Net, Inc.
do business on the Internet by providing them with complete, turnkey,
managed hosting, and managed services. (see complete profile here)
1) Why do you think Dynamic Net, Inc. is as successful as it is?
Dynamic Net owes its success to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the hard work of our staff, our board of directors, and our loyal customers.
Everyone defines success differently. My personal definition of success God granting me yet another day to make a difference in the world.
Dynamic Net will be nine years old come June of this year. Most business fail in five years or less. We got this far because of God and our desire to follow after Him.
In terms of our team, we are a very small company. At our peak we had fourteen employees including a hand full of interns. Now we operate with three full time employees.
Each of our staff members do our best to keep in mind the only reason we are in business is because of our customers. So we do our best to put a smile on our face for each phone call or email. We try to be quick to apologize and correct mistakes when we make them. And we take responsibility for the mistakes we make (sometimes “I’m sorry doesn’t cut it). We always try to think in terms of what is best for the customer.
2) What are your long-term goals?
This is actually our first year where we are working to “re-define” our long-term goals. In previous years, we were blessed with the ability to know where the market was going anywhere from three months to twelve months in advance. Right now the waters are muddy.
So we are still working internally as to what our long-term goals should be for our company.
3) Do you have a mission statement? What is it and why?
Over the years we have had several.
Right now we keep it simple by telling everyone our goal is to enjoy doing
what we do while providing the best value we can provide as defined by our
customer.
4) How do you define customer service?
By doing our best to get a “wow” from our customers. Here’s a very current
example.
A customer wanted to get their own digital ID. Most will try everyone but
us first (I’m not sure what that is that way). However, the customer
finally asked our support department.
We asked the typically questions of who is the owner, their legal business
name, D&B number, etc. When the client didn’t respond after eight hours,
we researched the information, ordered them their digital ID, installed the
digital ID, then made changes to their shopping cart for them to work with
the digital ID.
Our support department then emailed the client so they would have a written
record; and, then we called the client to tell them everything was taken
care of. They were speechless.
In terms of managed services, we are working with an Interland client who
needed to move from shared to dedicated. They called yesterday late in the
afternoon (but prior to 7 AM Japanese time).
While they originally told us 500 MB of data, one database, Interland’s own
DNS, we found out that it was close to 1 GB of data, three databases, their
own DNS. We are communicating regularly with the client who needs the
migration done today to keep them apprised of each step.
When we found out their internal mail server (which was not directly tied
to the migration) was set up incorrectly; we informed them and told them
how to fix the problem.
When Interland’s shared support team was swamped with other work to tar up
the 1 GB of data (FTPing five sites of approximately 1 GB total is slow
even when you have 768 KB dedicated), we are working to intervene with the
sales rep to see the ticket for taring the data is done.
So for us, customer support is asking ourselves “what more could we
do?” And working as a team so that we know the answer (one might be
tempted to answer one self — we did enough; get a team together, and there
is usually a few more things that could be done).
That doesn’t mean we always get a wow or we always succeed. What it does
mean is that there cannot be “status quo” for how we support and service
our clients.
5) What advice can you give to newbies (new web hosts)?
A. If you have not yet started your business or your customer base is
small enough that you have 20+ hours per week of literal free time not
dedicated to God or family, spend the time planning.
One of the mistakes I wish I could go back and correct is not
spending the free time I had in the very early years where business was
slim planning.
The planning should cover what type of business entity (legal
business structure) to where do you want to be in one year, two years,
three years, and five years.
While we’ve gotten better at planning over the years; we spent
many years winging it because the management team was already putting in 60
to 90 hours per week on servicing customers and managing staff.
B. Ask yourself the question, “why you?”
Sooner or later a customer will ask why they should use your
product / service compared to another company.
You need to be able to answer why are you special.
The answer cannot be “just because” or that you are another choice.
You should also be very careful not to base your answer on price
unless you know for certain that your price is unique.
We first started hosting in November 1996. In early 1997, I lot a
potential client who wanted to know why they should go with us compared to
HiWay Technologies.
We were a reseller for HiWay (then RapidSite when they started a
reseller division of their company prior to being purchased by NTT/Verio);
and I didn’t know what to say.
Part of me was thinking, what makes us different than our direct
provider?
I lost that client; but, it caused me to come up with a short list
of why Dynamic Net (why We Manage Servers).
C. The national market for Web hosting is extremely saturated in the
opinion of many providers and customers alike including me.
If you were a Web host in 1995 through 1997, it was relatively
easy to stick out nationally.
Today is a different story.
Examine your local market on a county and tri-county area. What
can you bring to your local market that the current local providers (if
any) are not bringing. What makes you different and better?
Be very careful of answering “price,” because it would be easy for
already established local competitors to beat you in a price war.
You should also be very careful of answers that are purely based
on technology. Only nerds (of which I am one) get impressed with
technology. Most people want solutions to real world problems; and they
don’t care about the means to solve the problem.
D. Lastly, the “build it and they will come” only existed on the Web
in the extreme early 1990’s. Right now the Web is saturated with Web
sites; and most search engines have gone to some form of paid submission.
You need to work to get your name out there in the market
place. And the most successful people have built their Web hosting
business by social networking. That’s right, not computer networking, not
local area networking, social networking.
You have to get out there in public, shake hands, hand out
business cards and flyers, and get to know people.
Who is Dynamic Net, Inc.?
We Manage Servers helps companies take advantage of managed hosting
solutions without dealing with the day-to-day hassles of server management
and system administration for dedicated servers and other hosted network
devices.
This means that we work to provide a bridge between data center providers
and their customers. We are typically called upon to provide the duties
above and beyond that of the data center staff; and in a way that the
client of the data center can have piece of mind.
Dynamic Net, Inc. (the parent company of We Manage Servers) helps companies
do business on the Internet by providing them with complete, turnkey,
managed hosting and managed services.
Dynamic Net was founded originally as PMP Computer Solutions in June of
1995 to meet the computer and network consulting needs of local Berks
County, PA area businesses. God blessed us with the opportunity to provide
Internet application development services to J&W Scientific in California
in the latter part of 1995; and, then again in the latter part of 1996 when
we had the chance to work with a startup bank that went into on-line backing.
Within a short period of time PHP Computer Solutions grew into Dynamic Net,
Inc. as our company focus changed from local networking to meeting the
needs of business owners who needed highly secure Web sites that were
reliable and could perform well under heavy load.
While PHP Computer Solutions (and then Dynamic Net, Inc.) started off as a
reseller for another hosting provider, we had the in-house skills to handle
all of the server management tasks. By 1998 we became our own provider
through renting dedicated servers; and then later on co-locating servers
when it made financial sense to co-locate.
While we always managed our own servers, in mid 2000 NTT/Verio brought to
the table the need for managed services above and beyond what they provided
in-house, and We Manage Servers was born.
While our original managed service clients where that of NTT/Verio, over
the years, We Manage Servers has built relationships with Rackspace.com,
Interland.com, and other data center providers and their customers.
Sites: http://www.dynamicnet.net/
http://www.wemanageservers.com/
Many thanks to Peter M. Abraham for spending the time answering our questions. Good luck for your future ventures from WebHostingreport.net -> This interview was done in March of 2004.
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