Hey guys, just curious as to how everyone is doing in the Co-location industry. We currently have space in the Telco here where we have access to dual OC-3 lines and a DS3 to Charlotte. Even with great capacity and what I feel are reasonable prices, we are not snagging any co-lo customers even though our site is getting hit fairly well.

I'm afraid colo is becoming a major comodity. :( Bandwidth prices are dropping fast and to compete you have to be loosing money like crazy.

Any thoughts/comments from other small-biz players?

Drew

Are you related to VDI?

Uh, no. Why?

Originally posted by drewnick
Even with great capacity and what I feel are reasonable prices, we are not snagging any co-lo customers even though our site is getting hit fairly well.


I visited your webpage (valuetech.com) and really got surprised with your colo price! Full rack with 1 Mbps only $599/mo? Is this for real? 10U space for onyl $75/mo? wow!
Although the prices are really interesting, I don't like my bandwith be capped at xx kbps and my traffic be measured with 95th percentile....

Anyway, where are you physically located?

cheers,
:beer:

The problem may be that many people are no longer looking for just a good price on bandwidth and rack space. People want to get some type of extra benefit not offered anywhere else. Take VDI.net, they get customers by offering the CPanel for customers.

Tcoy, is right. A major deciding factor in choosing a provider are the extras. Of, course there are people that don't need anything special.

In my humble opinion, really affordable colocation service plus good service is my top priority. About administration software (like CPanel), I can just get it from Plesk and it's already good enough for me. In my personal opinion, Drew needs to pay more attention on the marketing sides since I have never heard about his company nor I know about his service. But from talking to you over the phone, you seem to be really knowledgable about what you do.

cheers,
:beer:

I heard about Drew's company quite a long time ago, I use to be a customer.

Originally posted by JTY
I heard about Drew's company quite a long time ago, I use to be a customer.

Can you give us some feedback about his company? Thanks

cheers,
:beer:

We are in Greenville, SC and do not cap bandwidth, just use that as a tier to calculate usage based on MRTG's monthly average. See http://mrtg.valuetech.com for a non-production sample.

Drew

Originally posted by drewnick
Uh, no. Why?

without prejudice: This might clarify my question

-------------------------------------------------
IP block lookup for 216.215.248.254
whois -h whois.arin.net 216.215.248.254

Carolina Online, Inc. (NETBLK-CAON-IP4-2) CAON-IP4-2
216.215.128.0 - 216.215.255.255
VTPC (NETBLK-CAON-VTPC) CAON-VTPC 216.215.248.0 - 216.215.251.255

--------------------------------------------------------

whois -h whois.arin.net NETBLK-CAON-VTPC
VTPC (NETBLK-CAON-VTPC)
1754 Woodruff Road, Suite 162
GREENVILLE, SC 29607
US

Netname: CAON-VTPC
Netblock: 216.215.248.0 - 216.215.251.255

Coordinator:
OperationsCenter, Network (NO110-ARIN) support@pcnoc.net
864-234-5900

Domain System inverse mapping provided by:

NS.GVL.PCNOC.NET 216.215.248.2
NS2.GVL.PCNOC.NET 216.215.248.3
------------------------------------------------

Official name: http://www.valuetech.gsp.vtdata.net

Addresses: 216.215.248.254

Possible forgery - http://www.valuetech.gsp.vtdata.net is claiming to be 216.215.248.254, but 216.215.248.254 isn't a valid address for http://www.valuetech.gsp.vtdata.net

--------------------------------------

pcnoc.net is hosted at VDI

Well, when I was a customer, they were much smaller. But they had good service.

Marshall: Why did a post about the way the colocation industry was going turn into a inquisition of ValueTech? Just doesn't seem appropriate to crap on his post like that.

I guess a good question leads to nothing but flames.
Drew

Marshall just asked a question, provided the reason why, and on we all go. Just keep on topic if at all possible.

I dunno about the VDI comment Marshal was talking about, because the ValueTech website appears to be hosted near a place in Atlanta. Also, the datacenter on their main page is that of a colocation company in Florida, which is probably where they are storing their servers. So at least their colo isn't related to VDI... I don't see why this is important, but hopefully this clarifies the VDI issue.

Sorry for posting again, but this is on topic. Frankly I think all the hype we hear about colo is mainly driven by the large companies like AboveNet, Exodus, and Level3 (which owns the largest amount of colo space in the entire world). L3 has spent TONS of money building very large carrier flagship facilites (easily upwards of 100,000 sq ft) . The argument these colo companies make is that there is not enough colocation space available, and in some cases they are true. Frankly I think the clients that are driving the colo industry are major customers that require sizeable installations (more than 1 rack). These guys are gobbling up space in places like AboveNet and Exodus. I do remember, for awhile though, that AboveNet's IAD1 facility had virtually no shared rackspace used up, while every single one of their cages were sold out (mainly filled by companies offering DSL connections).

Just my two cents...

To start with your website (no offense) is absolutely embarrasing. How do you get new customers with it? Pay somebody $1000 and get it redesign! It looks just like a fourteen year old did it...

<<ADMIN EDIT>>

Now it might be just me, but my common sense tells me that you don't first insult the potential client, *then* try to get his business. Maybe it's just me?

Side note: Please don't solicit business on the board (use the advertsing forum for this).

Sorry, i wasn't meaning too. I wasn't trying to get his business. :-) (Zips mouth, and remembers rules) :-)

I can offer my services. I do work. Contact me here. I'll wait. Hey! found an old cheese ball!

p.s.

I'm lost...


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