da3dAlus
join:2002-12-18
Duluth, GA | reply to Seen_this_movie
Re: Speedfactory is STILL IN BUSINESS!
*clap*
*clap*
/stands
*clap, clap, clap, clap*
Well said sir, well said. |
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teradude
join:2008-04-13
Cumming, GA | reply to Seen_this_movie
this is a good summary of what has happened, recapping and amplifying what a couple of other posts in other threads summarized. Thanx for a thorough analysis. |
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Seen_this_movie
@abraxis.com
|  reply to speedfactory
Well, I am glad to see SF got back up eventually. Wife was able to forward all her email off to other systems.
Having been in IT for 20 years, and having worked for, consulted for, or dealt with everyone from, well, let's just say the "Intelligence community", DOD, USAF, several GA state agencies, several Fortune 100 corporations, to DOZENS of small to medium businesses all I can say is... if it smells like DEAD FISH three different ways, then that is probably what it is.
Reasonable conclusions can be drawn. We can tell several things, I think.
First, the lack of communication was critical. There were technical means to communicate with the customers (in an official capacity). No apparent attempts were made for whatever reason (we can speculate, but why bother). Vague anonymous postings (which may or may not have been authorized by management) don't count. Damage Control 101 is a core management responsibility and it is hard to imagine how this situation could have been handled worse... from the customers point of view anyway.
Second, vapor-ware platitudes about how plans are going to be enacted to prevent this from happening again can reasonably be seen by customers as useless. It is hard to tell with the complete lack of information (see point 1) but if the critical infrastructure was that badly neglected then there is no expectation that effective remedial efforts will be managed any better. Assuming it really was a hardware fault.
Third, when your SEC filings are widely distributed and clearly indicate a lack of operational funds past Q1 2008 the base management competency and business model is already questionable. It leads directly to the speculation, based on sound observation of closed office, dead phone lines, and circuit "inactivity" the business is failing or closed. Regardless of whether the circuit was suspended for lack of payment or not. Credibility is DESTROYED.
I can speculate and guess several things. Having worked these kinds of things, I have to admit complex technical environments can get... complicated. You can have "redundent" components, circuits, routers, whatever. You try and eliminate all the "single points of failure" you can, but it can be nearly impossible to REALLY get them all. Depending on what happens, the standby systems may not kick in like they are supposed to. Engineers try and anticipate what can go wrong but if there are a lot of "moving parts" it can get nearly impossible to anticipate and prevent everything. I have seen multi-million dollar "redundant systems" catastrophically fail. It can happen. Rare though, if proper business risk analysis has justified the proper engineering. I think SF just went under (long term consequences) because that wasn't done. My kingdom for a horse.
Several key things to note. First, it appears the really skilled or senior technical staff in Atlanta left, were let go, or forced out. Attracting, retaining, and motivating key critical technical talent is a CORE requirement for good management of a technology based company. Small companies have a real tough time. Especially if management sucks. Big ones do too (management always sucks at the mega-corporations). Everybody pays lip service to the ideas, but if your key people leave and you cannot replace them, then management has FAILED. Management usually fails to forsee the consequences for the business. Parts are available all over Atlanta. Skilled engineers could have put this back together (or a workaround) quickly if they had any kind of resources. Assuming it was a system failure.
I think management here went into STEALTH mode, absolute news blackout, on purpose. This is one school of thought in damage control. It prevents the important people (who own stock in your company, or whatever) from finding out what has happened (and selling for example). Limit the exposure. Who owns stock AND reads the forum here? Really, they can write off a bunch of angry posters in this forum. I suspect they are hoping, praying, counting on a bunch of customers DIDN'T EVEN NOTICE. By shutting up maybe they can keep 80% of their customers. They hope. I believe this typical approach costs much more in the long run and succeeds only inversely to the magnitude of the failure. Big failure is an ISP down for 72+ hours. Low chance for success I think.
I could be wrong. I've only suffered through a few dozen IT catastrophes and seen oh... a number... of really bad management responses over the years. Maybe I am cynical? Jaded? Or Wise. Snotty comments allegedly from the COO online could be an imposter but it sure sounds like the kind of management I'd associate with this kind of scenario. Snafu.
All this adds up to management is ultimately responsible and failed to prevent, mitigate, handle, or address the situation in any way that is acceptable for a utility or service provider.
What has changed as of Tuesday morning when they come back to work? Nothing. This has happened to many companies before... Good company built to a certain high standard. Sold to or taken over by others who managed to screw it up (pun intended).
So, off to a (hopefully) better service provider and don't look back. »www.Abraxis.com returned calls and had me up and running in under 6 hours (IFITL). That is a good start.  |
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Athens101
join:2004-08-23
Athens, GA
| reply to speedfactory
I am look at AtNEX right now. Same bang for the buck as SF.
3/384 no blocked ports and a static IP for $84.99 month.
I am REALLY pissed since a my comic »anotherrandomday.com was hosted on my home server. Last week it made the front page of Reddit and we were having 26,000 page views per day. Lost a bunch of add revenue this weekend. Also Athens101 another Athens community site I also run was having a PSA cancer notice about donating bone marrow. Yeah we missed that one this weekend as well.
That pisses me off a LOT more than lost revenue. What do we get? A free month of DSL from a company that might not last that long? Aww, shucks, thanks guys.
I am calling AtNEX in the morning and figuring out if I can put an order on hold for when not if SF goes under. |
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AtlGeek
@atlanticnexus.net | reply to speedfactory
Dumped SF, switched (successfully) to AtlanticNexus.com.
I'm back on the net now! Good luck to everyone, thanks AtNex. |
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heretohelp2
join:2008-04-14 | reply to speedfactory
»messages.finance.yahoo.com/Stock···10&frt=2 |
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MrOrph
@adp.com
| reply to speedfactory
Right! Still in who's business?
The benefit of the doubt isn't dark for days. There should at least be a receptionist in the office, and a way to field calls.
Here's the deal, charge back from my credit card, moved to AtNex (great folks thus far), and a fond, albeit pissed off, farewell to SF!
This is really bad business people. If there was a problem that wasn't business related, you'd been up over the weekend. You must be waiting for business hours to attempt to negotiate a failed debt. I'd put money on that.
cya SF. |
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ATLXSpeedFactory
@comcast.net | reply to speedfactory
I tell you one thing, I've certainly jumped ship because of the amazingly ridiculous way this was handled.
They BETTER NOT try to charge my card and they BETTER NOT try to charge me for leaving, or it's going to be one helluva court battle. |
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boxcarmiba
@atlanticnexus.net | reply to speedfactory
just a note:
there is simply no better isp than atlantic nexus (atlanticnexus.com) they are everything that speedfactory in the old days was, and more. |
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cw1ls0n
@uu.net
| reply to speedfactory
Well, if you do not want to lose a single customer, then this shutdown, transision, reorg or what every you call it is a great way to lose customers. From all appearences, it seems speedfactory is dead and I should be looking for another ISP.
If speedfactory is still in business, when will my service return? Where is the website? Why is the phone disconnected? What about the news on google? I think speedfactory is dead. It was a great ride while it lasted. First Prodogy, Mindspring, Directv DSL, Speedfactory and now ???? I guess I'll just go with ATT, I'm sure they will be there for the next few years. |
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adasdda
@atlanticnexus.net
| reply to speedfactory
This is pretty ridiculous. There are plenty of other ISPs in the area that I am sure could lend you a part. Have you called any? Further, XO doesn't have any ability to deliver fiber in the Atlanta market outside of COs and carrier hotels. If you ordered fiber from XO you are actually getting fiber from at&t and you'll be waiting at least 90 days. Most CLECs can drop you a T1 in a few days, which is better than nothing. And then there is One Ring which actually has a wireless network allowing them to drop you service in a day. We know NP is aware of One Ring since you followed their PR stunt regarding 3.65. |
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XSpeedFactory
@bellsouth.net
| reply to speedfactory
There are no more major techs left in atlanta. So I guess it makes sense to try and get their other NJ acquistion to start taking calls. However it doesn't not explain the outage, the tunnel is dead.
However, I disagree with the SF not being profitable you don't spend millions to by a non-profitable business. I could say more but I won't. When it all said and done there is no inhouse talent (left in atlanta) to get an emergency message on the website. If NP could they would at the least changed their domain so that it would still be up but I guessing they (since they are all execs) don't know how.
I will give a hint to get them going...try changing your registar's whois record. |
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Linxdev
@edeltacom.com
| reply to RPOdsoon2bexcust
said by RPOdsoon2bexcust :
I gotta 2nd invalid on this...
if this is SF then why post here instead of putting it on your homepage which was been happily serving the normal "we rock/sign up now!" page during this entire ordeal w/no mention of the outage, issue, ETA, etc? that begin said I will say the explanation above is consistent with the one a neighbor of mine was able to get from the parent company.
I'm going to have to ask your question too. I use a caching nameserver that gets requests from top-level DNS servers. I don't even know the DNS servers at SF. If I did I guess I could get to www.speedfactory.net without issue since it is on the internal network.
If that is the case and other SF users can do the same why has their not been any information placed on that site? |
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speedfactory
@hatesville.com | reply to ugg
Tomorrow morning or late tonight.
Speedfactory Staff |
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speedfactory
@hatesville.com | reply to wanderedinn
Because Speedfactory hosts NextPhase.
Speedfactory Staff |
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URBroke
@edeltacom.com
| reply to speedfactory
Based on your SEC filings I'm not sure where you are going to get the cash to pay for redundancy. And if you are truly from SF you've just came clean that your company never had a redundant plan to begin with. More of a reason for customers to jump ship. |
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ugg
@comcast.net
|  reply to speedfactory
PLEASE tell us an ETA for return of service in the Decatur area. I've tried to be a voice of moderation here and hang in there with you guys -- but I am very dependent on my internet connectivity and cannot last much longer without going ahead and getting another ISP. Please show people like me, who have tried to remain loyal, the courtesy of telling us:
WHEN do you realistically believe you will have my area back online? |
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wanderedinn
join:2003-10-27
Acworth, GA
| reply to speedfactory
This problem is bigger then hardware for speedfactory.
Why is it that both the speedfactory and nextphase websites are not available? »www.speedfactory.net »www.npwireless.com |
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speedfactory
@hatesville.com
| reply to ugg
We are having difficulty getting parts on the weekend. We anticipate being back up 100% by late tomorrow. The network should go back on line n stages.
We are installing redundant systems so this does not happen a second time. Including redundancy in NJ and with the addition of XO fiber.
Again we cannot tell you how sorry we are this happened and we will work to keep your business.
Speedfactory Staff
714 765-0010 |
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ugg
@comcast.net
| reply to speedfactory
TO Speedfactory Staff:
PLEASE tell us an ETA for return of service in the Decatur area. I've tried to be a voice of moderation here and hang in there with you guys -- but I am very dependent on my internet connectivity and cannot last much longer without going ahead and getting another ISP. Please show people like me, who have tried to remain loyal, the courtesy of telling us:
WHEN do you realistically believe you will have my area back online? |
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