In Case You've Read Otherwise, SmugMug Still Loves S3

• By Isabel Wang on March 12, 2007

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Last Thursday night, I came across this SearchStorage.com article via the Storagezilla blog. Beth Pariseau wrote that Amazon's Simple Storage Service (S3) has had "performance and reliability issues serious enough" to prompt second thoughts among early adopters. In particular, SmugMug CEO Don MacAskill recently decided to move hot storage back in-house.

The instant I finishing reading the article, my RSS reader lit up with Don's response. He still loves Amazon, even if S3 hasn't solved the "speed of light problem". It takes at least 60-80ms for bytes of data to travel the distance between SmugMug's west coast location and Amazon's east coast data center. There's no getting around that. He moved hot storage closer to his web servers NOT to solve Amazon's performance problems, but to reduce those thousands of miles to inches. Don also tracked down the Storagezilla post and added a comment there.

Fast forward to this morning, when someone sent me a snippet from a Tier 1 Research news brief in which Dan Golding wrote about Amazon's disillusioned users. I gave Dan a hard time for basing his article on the same two customers Beth interviewed without giving her credit. Dan argued that attribution isn't customary in the analyst world. Besides, we shouldn't even be having this conversation. As a non-subscriber, I should have deleted any T1R content that came my way upon receipt.

Ironically, during his HostingCon presentation last year, T1R founder Andy Schoepfer's key message was "don't be an island". It's important for web hosting providers to connect customers to external ecosystems like eBay and Amazon, because no e-business can thrive in isolation. Given T1R's Hosting 2.0 advocacy, Dan's reaction seemed... Analyst 1.0-ish. But towards the end of our conversation, he did promise that an upgrade is on the way. As a point of reference, Burton Group, Dan's former employer, has a great blog that links to external sources. Same goes for Forrester. And at least 220 other research firms, including T1R parent company The 451 Group. Raven Zachary, who leads 451's open source practice, is even on Twitter!

Anyway, I'll get off my soapbox now and back to Amazon. I think every web hosting exec needs to read Don's blog post - along with Robert Cichon's post on customer satisfaction metrics. Robert said a hosting provider has done a good job if (a) the company gets written testimonials, (b) customers refer other customers because they're happy with service quality, and (c) customers defend the company against negative remarks. Amazon gets three points based on Don's reaction. What's your score?

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