The Whir ( www.thewhir.com ) recently posted a video interview with me that was recorded at the 3rd Annual Parallels Hosting Summit at the Omni-Shoreham in Washington D.C. on May 19 and 20th, 2008. Here is a link to that interview ( Video Interview with Ross Brouse, Solar VPS ). The interview covered the concept behind our new “SolarGreen” initiative. There are some naysayers out there that believe you aren’t truly “green” unless you are carbon neutral, have an array of solar panels or windmills atop your office or are heavy into purchasing carbon offsets. I’d like to take this opportunity to explain what the SolarGreen initiative is all about and how it’s different than typical myopic corporate greening ideas.

First off, I want to identify what an initiative is. The New Oxford American Dictionary defines initiative as: 1. “the ability to assess and initiate things independently”, 2. “the power or opportunity to act or take charge before others do”, 3. “an act or strategy intended to resolve a difficulty or improve a situation; a fresh approach to something”. These definitions provide us with the idea that an initiative symbolizes independent thinking, opportunity and resolve. These ideals are EXACTLY what our SolarGreen initiative is all about. 

A journalist in the tech industry recently emailed me to ask me if we utilized solar power in our business. In short, my answer was no, not at this time, however its on our list of things to accomplish. I gave him a very thorough explanation of exactly what SolarGreen is all about, however, he only seemed interested to know if we were solar powered. He implied ( in so many words ) that our brand was misleading, since we are called Solar VPS and our initiative is called SolarGreen, and we chose to use the word ‘Solar’ but failed to utilize solar power for our business. Personally, I strongly believe in alternative forms of energy, solar, wind and ignoring the cost and risk factors, nuclear power. The fact of the matter is, being a small business, we have monetary limitations to what we can do. If I could line the roof of my house and the data centers we use with solar panels, I would certainly do it. We don’t own our own data center and the cost of building one’s roof out of this material is considerable. I say it’s on our list of things to accomplish, as it’s something I feel very strongly about and have been researching for some time now. I hope that in the near future, at the very least, the sun can power my private home and personal office. I should explain where the name ‘Solar VPS’ comes from though. We indeed were inspired by the Sun when we developed the brand. The concept for the Solar VPS brand emerged from the idea that the Sun is powerful, consistent, stable and always shining. This went along with our always-available support and consistent customer service delivery. We began strictly as a Virtual Private Server provider, so the name Solar VPS made sense. Over the course of 3 years, Solar VPS became an established brand in the VPS hosting industry and the name SolarGreen emerged from our Solar brand and made sense, given this is a green initiative. Now maybe this is misleading to some, but for those who know our brand and know about what we are doing, I believe it makes a lot of sense. It’s a logical extension of the Solar VPS brand and our efforts are unique in their design and their goals. 

Here is the email I sent to the tech journalist. It explains what SolarGreen is and why we are doing it. The gist of the question was with regards to our “Solar VPS” and “SolarGreen” names and whether or not we used solar energy.

Is there any genuine solar connection anywhere?

Let me get straight to your question and address it not only as your question but as the public question to what we are doing and why. I’ve had a lot of people ask me this question, or a similar question, and I think it comes from a common idea that “Green” is all about alternative forms of energy and purchasing carbon offsets. When someone stands up and says, “Hey I’m Going Green!”, we all ask where their windmills are, how many carbon credits they’ve purchased and what their plans are to become carbon neutral. Don’t get me wrong, reducing carbon is arguably one of the most important aspect of minimizing climate change, however, there are so many aspects to the puzzle that seem to be forgotten.  

First of all, let’s address who we are and how we work. Solar VPS is a small company. We work out of several offices in the US and overseas. We don’t own our own data centers and are, unfortunately, not in decision making positions to make changes with the data centers where we host. We operate around the concept of a virtual business; virtual offices, virtual presence and virtualized services. Our name is confusing now that we have begun our “SolarGreen” program as people think we began our company based around alternative forms of energy. In fact, the name Solar VPS emerged from the ideals of efficiency in business and consistency of service. While we knew that virtual private server hosting was inherently greener than dedicated server hosting, when we first began, it was not our intent to market ourselves as a “green” host. As we grew and added on more data centers and servers, we began to realize that the idea of simply delivering the most powerful virtual server hosting solution available, was not the responsible approach. 

I was having an argument with a fellow VPS business owner about the need for “Super VPS Servers” with the fastest hard drives and cpus. I took the stance that this approach was overkill. It got me thinking that we were actually taking the wrong approach to the entire process of building VPS nodes/servers. I realized that we could still deliver the same quality of service but simply use LESS power. As I began obsessing about this idea, I got to thinking about all the other businesses out there churning away at the power grid. I truly liked the idea of reducing our energy consumption, but it was not enough to make me happy and I certainly didn’t think it was necessary to make a big deal about deploying servers that would consume roughly half the power of our previously deployed servers. What got me energized was meeting Sean Daily from Green Living Ideas. Sean had been a customer of ours for several months and was very happy with our service. I targeted him as I loved the message his web site sent ( www.greenlivingideas.com ) about making choices in your life to be more environmentally conscious. What got me even more excited was the fact that Sean was working with people who were enthusiastic about environmentally conscious products, service and ideas, just like he was. Sean locates these people and then interviews them for his weekly podcast, which is posted each week on iTunes and on the Personal Life Media web site ( http://personallifemedia.com/podcasts/234-greentalk-radio ).  After meeting and speaking with Sean, I realized that I had a lot to say. I’ve always been concerned about our environment, I’ve always believed that global warming was a real threat, I’ve always made a conscious decision to recycle, save on electricity, water, etc. It didn’t take much self convincing to realize that I had a message to send and it was time, not only to begin making an example of myself and my company, but more importantly, to use my company as a vehicle to spread my message. The partnership we formed with Green Living Ideas is the first step to our 3rd Green Goal, Supporting Green Efforts. 

These Green Goals, or steps as I more appropriately identified them in the interview, are part of a larger process for us. I think that small business owners, as well as people as a whole, believe there is nothing they can do to minimize climate change. Let’s be clear about one thing, at this point, climate change is inevitable. From not caring, not getting involved and misconception about climate change, our societal structure is flawed and simply just doesn’t work. The 3rd step of SolarGreen is to go out into the community and inform people about the issues at hand. My passion is to become involved with others who support the same message that I do and work with those individual and businesses to demonstrate that there is so much we can all do. This program is new for us and we are taking it one step at a time. So as not to let you think my idea is just to blog, gain attention and drive media hype, let me tell you about some of the steps we’re already taking in our initiative.

I now commit several hours each week to studying ways in which Solar VPS can reduce its carbon footprint and become more energy efficient. Alternative forms of energy are on our roadmap, however, I don’t feel we needed a field of solar panels or windmills to tell people about what we are doing. As I said in my interview, I don’t think Carbon Trading is an efficient way for Solar VPS to further our message or be more environmentally conscious. In the most recent issue of WIRED magazine, there is an article about the common misconceptions that exist in the green movement. The subheading reads, “Carbon Trading Doesn’t Work”. It goes on to say that “carbon offsets and emissions-trading schemes…are the environmental version of subprime mortgages.” I am simply not convinced of the validity or the effectiveness of these programs and I think they do nothing to demonstrate that a business itself can affect change rather than paying someone else, with the hope that they are making a difference. We just began working with a non-profit company who will take our older decommissioned server equipment and certify it for use in schools and other non-profit organizations. The VP of Operations of that company and I were interviewed together by GLI for a podcast that will be released on iTunes in a couple of weeks. We are also working with our data centers to help them donate their old equipment for the same purpose. As I mentioned before, there are other very sustainable practices that are being overlooked, such as reuse. A computer that has been decommissioned by Solar VPS has effectively “paid it’s carbon debt” and it is far more environmentally conscious to ensure that computer gets reused and at the very least, recycled rather than rot in a landfill. 

We plan to add to our Goals and broaden our efforts. There is a lot more that we can and will do not only for ourselves but with our partners and in the community. While our program is in its infancy, I felt it extremely important to let others know what we are doing and encourage them to follow. I sincerely hope that publicity like this interview sparks conversation as I truly feel that the more I can talk about this, the more I can energize myself, my business and most importantly, encourage others to join the fight against climate change. I don’t claim to be perfect or that we are making every environmentally responsible decision there is, but in order for us to continue to take our steps and work toward our goals, we need to stay alive and keep talking and changing. As I said before, there is no stopping what is coming and with that knowledge, we need to do absolutely everything we can to change as much as we can as quickly as we can. I’m talking about this now because I know we don’t have any time to waste and for myself and Solar VPS, that’s the most responsible decision at his point.

I have a lot of opinions and comments about many of the different aspects of these ideas, forest farming, recycling, reusing, reducing, alternative energy. I am doing everything I can to learn as much about these things as possible and get involved with others like me. If you’d like to discuss this more, I would love to do so as I hope you can see I am extremely passionate about it.

Getting to Know Us, I Mean Really Getting To Know Us
We run a managed service here at Solar VPS. “Managed” is a subjective term because it means so many things to so many different people. To me, managed means supported and support is arguably the most challenging, most intense and most important aspect of virtual private server hosting. Customers who bounce hosts just to knock a few dollars off their monthly hosting cost are not serious customers and frankly, I don’t lose any sleep over their cancellations. What does keep me up at night are those customers who we call clients. The type of customer who comes to us with a certain expectation of what they will receive when they sign up for our service. This person takes the time to read our web site ( and yes our Terms of Service ), email/call our sales department or talk with us on live chat. They take the time to find out who we are and what we stand for and perhaps they even want to hear from other clients who have something to say about our service. This person doesn’t make an uninformed purchase and when they do press that submit button, they have a fairly good idea of who and what they are signing up for.  


Why I Can’t Sleep, and You Shouldn’t Either
The reason I say this type of customer keeps me up at night is because this type of customer is not only the most valuable but the most challenging type of customer. What makes them so challenging is the fact that they all come to us with a different skill level, a different idea of what their involvement should be in their server setup and most importantly, they all come with a different expectation of what we should do for them. I often wonder how to more effectively communicate with this type of customer. Generally I like to introduce myself to them, and if I can, I let them know that I am here should they feel they are not getting the service they desire or even if they just want to share their feeling about our company and/or our service. I feel it’s truly important to let them get to know who we are as a company since they’ve taken a genuine interest in who we are before ever signing up for our service. I think to myself, I like to know who I am dealing with before I trust Solar VPS to another firm, and so I try to keep that in mind at all times when working with these clients.  


The Duality of Our Customers
Since they have such varying levels of experience and technical knowledge, providing them with the proper support is challenging. Some come to us with a vast knowledge of how the web and DNS works while others know very little. They logon to our web site, place an order for service and then shortly thereafter, receive a welcome letter from our Parallels automation system, which contains the information they need to access their server. Now, we don’t do any sort of fancy configuration of their server ahead of time, we simply install the OS and any applicable control panel they may have ordered. Some clients have very specific setup requirements which they make clear during the sales process, however, the vast majority are faced with this lengthy email filled with small HowTos, login information based on different operating systems and control panels and to be quite honest, it can be quite confusing. Likewise, others know exactly what they are getting and have very few questions unless they run into some sort of problem they’ve not seen before or are unaware of how to solve. Despite these technical few, and I certainly do not mean to offend the technical expertise of many of our best clients, most lack the knowledge to get their VPS setup relatively problem free. 


Getting Started with Getting Started
So now that they have their welcome letter and access to their server, it’s up to them to contact us and let us know if they need help. Since I am being honest, and I prefer honesty, I will tell you that this process feels strange to me. Regardless of our price point, it would certainly make sense to provide a getting started guide for new customers to explain the process, the potential pitfalls and what tools they will need to get the job done properly. As of this post, we are actually in the process of writing that very thing. It’s funny because more than 90% of the problems I see with new clients is a result of a lack of knowledge when it comes to how DNS works. It can be so very frustrating because DNS generally doesn’t give immediate changes. Nameservers, registrars, TTL, caching… are all scary aspects of new server setup. When you purchase a shared hosting account, you decide the domain you want to host and then you update the DNS servers for that domain with your registrar. A system administrator has already installed, secured, tweaked and supported the server where your domain will be hosted. Chances are the server has been online many months and is managed by full time around-the-clock system administrators. Now, a new VPS server is essentially the same thing as a large shared hosting server, however, its been automatically provisioned by our Parallels Automation system and had simply just an OS and control panel install.  What I think many clients misunderstand is that it simply takes time to create nameservers, assign them to a VPS, configure that VPS for hosting web sites and then make every other potential tweak to their server such as changing the Apache version, changing the OS version, installing additional libraries, etc.  I try to tell customers to be as patient and communicative as possible throughout this process because it can be both daunting and frustrating from the customer perspective. 


Take Two of These and Call Me In the Morning
As much as I don’t want to admit it, we have lost some customers because of a painful initial setup. I don’t think anyone is specifically to blame for this as I think this is simply the result of lack of customer education which leads to a customer believing they can order a VPS, flick a switch and everything will work perfectly. Unfortunately any true SysAdmin knows that this is not the case. That evil little acronym (“DNS”) haunts us every time. Too many hours or even days go by and your web site still doesn’t work. The formerly free and now for pay site, DNSSTUFF, throws back all of these cryptic yellow and red boxes that seem to mean your server is screwed. Twenty four hours of email and web site downtime and you think to yourself, this sucks, I need to quickly run and find another host to quickly move my content to and wait even longer for DNS to work. Yeah this is a terrible process and customers who panic and don’t communicate efficiently with us end up with a bad taste in their mouths. I don’t mean to make it sound like these customers are simply the victims of poor communication… In fact, too often we simply don’t know how much a customer knows and how much we need to support them. They might not share every frustration or anguish they have through their support tickets and/or live chats and so we go on believing they are proceeding with their server setup sans-catastrophe. If only we could make sure all customers had what they needed to overcome these problems, no matter how big or how small. A Getting Started Guide would be perfect, like a 101 course on how DNS works, what to expect and what not to expect. Here are your server login details and your Getting Started Guide or rather, The Solar VPS Guide to Avoiding the New Customer Blues. DNS really isn’t that bad and I hope that quite soon we will put this wonderful guide in the hands of our clients and then we can all sleep at night.