Locality Switch

If you’re a not for profit group in Australia (such as Community Radio), and can’t quite afford to buy the software you need, then this is for you! DonorTech is a organisation which provides software and hardware to not for profit groups for a tiny sum of money:

DonorTec provides donated software and hardware from companies such as Microsoft and Cisco to eligible Australian non profit groups with Income Tax Exempt Status (ITE). Via this program you can get the latest products each year e.g. Microsoft Windows Vista

If you’re strapped for cash, then this is just what you need. No more *cough* illegal software. No more borrowing that copy of XP from a friend. This is the real deal!

Their catalog of software is extensive: from Windows XP and Vista through to Windows Server 2008, Office 2007, Expression Web, etc. The list goes on. There is also a great list of hardware from Cisco, but at the time of writing, they don’t have any readily avaliable.

However, there are certain rules, particularly in regards to the Microsoft products. You can only order once a year, and but within a 24 month period, you can not order more than six software titles, and you can not order more than fifty licenses for each title.

There’s also a couple of other gotchas, but overall it is a very nice program. Did I mention how much they charge for their products? Windows XP costs $11 per licence, and Windows Server 2008 only costs $48. CALs also sell for around $3.

How can they do this? All of the software and hardware is donated by the suppliers.

The key to this is: planning. You need to plan not only how many licenses for each product you will need now, but also in the next 24 months. Develop a long-term strategic plan. But remember, plans are only guesses; I think it is best to over-order slightly, to cover all bases.

Finally, you need to ensure you have an ATO recognised Income Tax Exemption (ITE). Luckily, our government makes it very easy to check out your accreditation status through the web.

The Primus Data Centre in 55 King St Melbourne suffered from another power failure yesterday, wiping out an enormous portion of our web-hosting market in Australia for the afternoon. All of my websites were down from about 3.45PM, and only came back online at 8:15PM (EST).

This is only the third power failure experienced this year from Primus. The first and second time it happened, they didn’t really provide much information to customers. I don’t expect this time to be any different.

Some providers, such as Cove, moved out of the facility in response to the lack of information provided on the failure. This time, I think Primus will really loose a massive chunk of their customers. Having such a major data centre go offline so frequently is a real worry.

It’s only when stuff like this happens when you really think about your resilience to these sorts of situations. My first question is this:

Why do most Australian web hosts only use one data centre, and rely on that for everything? It’s scary. I can’t seem to find an Aussie web host which boasts dual data centres replicated with each other. Hey, I can’t even find one with even a basic backup name server off site!

US hosts such as Media Temple have identical hardware in two geographically disperse data centres. And they aren’t the only people – I have seen quite a few overseas providers which do the same thing. Why don’t Aussie hosts do the same thing?

Why have I not hosted my own secondary name server and used an external email server? It’s not that hard to sign up for a free DNS host, and have them replicate my primary DNS server records. It’s also not hard to sign up for an email service which is in the cloud. I have used Gmail for other clients – why not myself? This would mean I don’t loose my emails when my web server goes down.

Why is anyone still with Primus after three power outages in one year? It was bad the first time, worse the second, and a third time is just a complete joke. Now there is talk of them doing work next week on the power, which may bring them offline again! C’mon people – there are plenty of other data centres around. Start shopping around!

And here’s some irony for you: the Dilbert Comic for today!

I love plans. I love being strategic. At my local radio station, I make sure we put a lot of thought into a quarterly departmental strategic plan. This plan is generally only two or three pages long, but it outlines all the goals we want to achieve over the next quarter, and how much money we plan to spend. This is then delivered to the board, and they say yea or nay.

But, I’ve recently come to realise that a plan really isn’t a plan. Plans can change. Plans aren’t really a good name: Guessing would be a much better word to describe what we are doing. Jason Fried from 37signals describes it well:

Planning’s too definite a term for most things. We often use planning when we really mean guessing. And what we call it has a lot to do with how we think about it, do about it, and devote to it. I think companies often over think, over do, and over devote to planning.

[ From Let's just call plans what they are: guesses ]

You don’t really come to realise the what this means until your plan actually fails. It can be frustrating at best, embarrassing at worst, when this happens, especially when you put so much effort into the planning.

But failing doesn’t have to be a bad thing!

I experienced this recently when my quarterly plan fell to bits due to some proposed equipment being discontinued (and similar models not available, either). This sent us back to square one. For a couple of days, I was annoyed. But then I went and examined the alternatives. We sat down and thought about it, and we came up with a solution which was actually $600 cheaper! Success!!

Failure can lead to success. Failure is what you make of it. Never plan to fail, but be ready for it when it does.