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We wrote a CEO page and it works
- clarkmoody 13y agoI would like to see a blog post describing how it has worked for the company, with a link to the CEO page. But this seems like a great idea!
- rsync 13y agoThe short answer is that we've made a (philosophical) decision to stay right in our highly technical niche and not gussy up our site, or product, with all of the things you might expect to see. This resonates very well with the people that find us and will eventually use us, but the people that make decisions and pay us are not impressed with what they see. So if we're not going to put up the PDF whitepapers and the product tour videos that they want to see ... how do we bridge that gap ? That's where the CEO page comes in.
- hkmurakami 13y agoSo I'm guessing that the technical folks in the company send a link to this page to their CEO in order to convince them of the purchase?
- ams6110 13y agoHow often would the CEO even be involved? Very small companies excepted, I would think this would be something entirely delegated to the CTO, manager, or whoever is in charge of technology in the organization.
- hkmurakami 13y agoLots of CEOs want to rubber stamp things in SMid companies even if they're actually not doing the cost/benefit themselves. This page probably comes in handy for the CTO/MGR who has to get that rubber stamp from the CEO. (that's my guess at least)
- MWil 13y agoI'm a recent law graduate researching warrant canaries. Is there a contact at your company I can be put in touch with?
- rsync 13y agoYou can email info@rsync.net.
- consultant23522 13y agoI'd be interested in hearing of any warrant canaries that disappeared.
- jurjenh 13y agoThat's a very interesting statement that can be read many, many ways... It may pay to clarify your background a little. I'm a recent law graduate (- but I now work for the NSA...) researching warrant canaries (- and looking at ways to deal with these companies) It may be a bit conspiracy-theory, but current affairs suggest it is certainly not outside the realms of possibility.
- MWil 13y agoI can't say I'm a lawyer because I am awaiting MPRE (ethics and professionalism) test results in two weeks. I would be in very big trouble if I did call myself a lawyer before that time so I can say I'm a JD and a law graduate (and bar passer) but not a lawyer or put that badass Esq. (esquire) by my name yet.
- thibaut_barrere 13y agoGuess what: this page is the one that made me look at what you do, and realize that I will probably use your services.
- laurenstill 13y agoI'm building a tech specs/req for a gov project. It's exhausting to distill the information down into a presentable format. This makes _my_ job easier, thank you.
- Xymak1y 13y agoThe "products" page, however, does not work: http://www.rsync.net/products/index.html http://www.rsync.net/products/index.html
- rsync 13y ago... just tested and works just fine ... just a static HTML page that's been in place since 2006 :)
- Xymak1y 13y agoNow it seems to work for me as well. Thanks for the update!
- mrjatx 13y agoI'm on 100MB line and it's been extremely slow. Several of the images from the /images/ directory are taking 6-7 seconds to load. http://i.imgur.com/wEmmMfc.png http://i.imgur.com/wEmmMfc.png
- kaivi 13y agoYep, extremely slow loading time, and I'm in Norway. Here is my network profiler: http://cl.ly/image/1p0Q2l1e322D/o http://cl.ly/image/1p0Q2l1e322D/o
- henrikm85 13y agoExtremely slow for me, http://rsync.net.nyud.net/products/ceopage.html http://rsync.net.nyud.net/products/ceopage.html works.
- michaelmior 13y agoMirror: http://rsync.net.nyud.net/products/ceopage.html http://rsync.net.nyud.net/products/ceopage.html
- yeldarb 13y agoMaybe I'm completely out of touch but what is a "CEO page"?
- mrjatx 13y agoA page to provide to your CEO (as a technical person) that will get them past overly technical/marketing speak. Basically a "I'm recommending this software, an here is an easy breakdown on why we should use it," page.
- mvkel 13y agoWe used to do stuff like this. It worked okay. How do you know the _unique_ goals the CEO is trying to achieve in their strategy matches what's shown on your CEO page? What if your last bullet point is the only one they care about? Showing every CEO the exact same message isn't personalized, and doesn't resonate. What works better is empowering the "recommender" to sell your company themselves, instead of just having them point their CEO to a page on your website. You can work with this person to determine what the most compelling cases are for _their_ business, and tailor the CEO message to that. It's much more effective for building a relationship without much additional work, and it raises conversions because it's more genuine.
- rsync 13y agoI think you are correct - a more holistic approach would be more effective. What we had before, however, was nothing - and this has been better.
- thewojo 13y agoGood idea, but think this needs to be more visual. A couple images go a long way in terms of conveying technical concepts to a non-technical audience.
- jethro_tell 13y agoLike an action shot of bits being written to the disk.
- ultimoo 13y agoAwesome! I like the straightforward nature of this article, it focuses on content rather than style. A minor nitpick if any of the rsync.net guys are reading this. The front page states "11 Years serving customers worldwide" and the top section states "Enterprise Offsite Backup Since 2001".
- BHSPitMonkey 13y agoAnother nitpick, from the linked "CEO page": "it appeals to technical people that appreciate elegant solutions" Should arguably read as "people who appreciate". "Who" is preferred over "that" or "which" when referring to people.
- daviddoran 13y agoUsing the right language for different buyers is a good lesson. First thing I'd A/B test on the page is the section mentioning "Cheap". I think business purchasers rarely want cheap, they want value and cost effectiveness.
- koa 13y agoI had the same reaction.. I always tend to use the word "affordable" since I personally interpret "cheap"as low quality. However, I usually interpret "affordable" as a good value for whatever price (even if it is actually expensive)
- BHSPitMonkey 13y ago"Inexpensive" strikes me as a good alternative.
- sinak 13y agoYou should probably update the "Copyright 2011" note in the footer ...
- dovel 13y agoI think the date of copyright is supposed to be the date at which content you are copyrighting was first created and anything after that date is covered. Not certain though
- hornbaker 13y agoThere are no rules here, only conventions. In my opinion, a copyright year in the past makes it look like you don't know what you're doing. If you feel the need to tout your long history, then put the start and current year, like 2011-2013. Otherwise, follow convention and make sure it always reads the current year.
- alextingle 13y agoLying about the copyright date is fraud. That work will (hopefully) enter the public domain one day. By forward-dating the copyright notice, you are attempting to fraudulently extend your limited monopoly.
- Tehnix 13y agoexcept his suggestion backward-dated it seeing as 2013 is not the future...
- alextingle 13y agoErm, if the work was created in 2011, then 2013 is a future date. Remember, positive numbers go up. Negative numbers go down. Try to keep up!
- iand 13y agoAs far as I know, this is untested in court for online documents. There is an argument that says that each HTTP request is an act of publication, thus updating the copyright date to that point in time. It's not a view I subscribe to personally.
- eitally 13y agoImho, you should call it the CIO page instead, but perhaps that varies depending what kinds of businesses you're targeting. In most medium and large enterprises, the CIO will have budget authority to make these kinds of decisions independently and the CEO will never be involved at all, unless the topic of backups & DR arise in a board or audit meeting.
- rsync 13y agoBetter that a CIO gets a "CEO page" than a CEO gets a "CIO page" :) Ironically, I'm the CEO here and I wouldn't want to see any of these ...
- mbesto 13y agoExactly this. Even it's a VP in a big corp, in their mind they can be seen a "CEO". This is one of those things good CEOs do for their subordinates - they empower them.
- eitally 13y agoIt's pretty common, though, for software & service companies to offer a kind of generic (no titles listed) "how to convince decision makers to invest in our _____" web page or whitepaper. Those generally have pretty concise high level bullets with use cases framed in business-speak. This is useful for anyone, though, because all too often the other pages on the site are all couched in useless salestalk that just tries to get you to contact a salesperson for more information.
- beachstartup 13y agothis is usually just called an 'executive summary'
- Accredified 13y agoNothing gets more techy than servers. Why I would hire a tech company that uses pre 2000 design and static pages from 2006 to sell me on their modern tech solution is beyond me.
- drharris 13y agoPresumably because they're spending time on their actual technology rather than fiddling in Photoshop and keeping up with patching the latest Node.js vulnerabilities on a web-appified version?
- Tehnix 13y agoBecause web design and what they do are entirely different areas of expertise. Their design skills tells nothing about their capabilities as sys admins (and the other areas concerning backup)
- fareesh 13y agoIt would be sort of nice if VPS providers did this. I sometimes find it difficult talking to non-technical people about Heroku or Linode and they look at me like "I've never heard of those, can't we use GoDaddy?"
- deGravity 13y agoThanks for sharing! Small grammar nitpick: In the last sentence of the "Cheap and risk free" section you use the word "years" twice where "year's" would be the appropriate usage.
- RKearney 13y agoSo the concept of this is to create a misleading page such that the CEO of a company would be tricked into signing off on an otherwise overpriced service? Towards the bottom it reads: >Depending on the size, this could be as low as 7 cents per GB, per month - which is cheaper than Amazon S3. However, after looking at both the pricing and signup page, it appears as though the lowest you can get is $0.08 per GB, and that's only if you buy 10TB of space. That's also for a SINGLE off-site location. This is the equivalent of "Reduced Redundancy Storage" at Amazon, which starts at $0.076 per GB. However, if you want to compare apples to apples, you would compare it to the 10TB pricing. 10TB Single off-site @ rsync - $9,500/yr 10TB Single off-site @ AWSs3 - $8,011/yr 10TB Multiple off-site @ rsync - $16,625/yr 10TB Multiple off-site @ AWSs3 - $10,009/yr Every time rsync posts something on HN or Reddit, its always filled with FUD.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- dreamdu5t 13y agoTricked? You mean marketed?
- asperous 13y agoCorrect me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't offline backups be more like Glacier, which is 0.01GB/Month? http://aws.amazon.com/glacier/pricing/ http://aws.amazon.com/glacier/pricing/
- the_real_bender 13y agoHIPAA compliance is attractive, as is the support. (physician's husband and IT support guy)
- rsync 13y agoA few comments ... First, our pricing almost exactly matching S3 is not a secret - it's well understood, and by design. Second, you'll note that the following features of a 10TB account with us are not included with S3: - Free integration engineering (as in, a unix engineer on the phone with you) - 24/7 hotline support - as in, xmas morning phonecalls - two physical media shipments of any size per year - We will sign a BAA with you Ask your contact at Amazon what those would cost next time you talk to them. Oh wait, you've never ever talked to anyone at Amazon and you never will[1] So you're right - it's not apples to apples. [1] Except, of course, at AWS summit and so on, where they are very available and helpful.