Parallel's - Plesk Control Panel

I've visited this topic several times now - and I have to eat my own words - once again.

Parallel's - a premier Windows and UNIX-base Control Panel for hosting providers - is indeed, a Premier provider of service.

I just wanted to take a moment and thank the team of professionals, support technicians, and all of those working to build a solid product base, and hold the line as a rock solid product.

Thank you...

Communication Skills - And Communicating

I am finding more and more in my career - that as we work with distributed teams - developers, call support centers, software vendors - in all - we're more and more challenged to work with people that we find hard to understand;

Conversely, when I find that communications are strong, and we understand each other very well - we in fact, do not. Case in point:

We have a 3rd party tool that we're leveraging in an enterprise solution - say a SharePoint development effort. We find this 3rd party tool to be a huge enhancement to the solution - so the consensus is - we go for it.

We find quickly that the API is not all that it's cracked up to be (oh, it's cracked up pretty good though); so we're on the phone, and swapping the emails with their support staff.

Mind you, if we're nothing, we're meticulous in our documentation when it comes to communicating issues on engagements like this.

So - we outline exactly what we're seeing/experiencing - and we open a support ticket.

A day or two later - we finally get a response...."... please provide us a step-by-step of what you are seeing so we can re-produce the problem and review it..."

MMmm... Okay - we did exactly this in our original support ticket. So we do it again, in great step-by-step detail.

Several hours later we get an email that they (the vendor) are trying something - on one of our test servers - which we had to allow them to access to troubleshoot issues - and they asked if we'd monitor and report the success/failure of the process.

It failed - just as ours ours had been failing - so, we document this finding - in detail - and forward to them.

The next day - we get another email - they're trying the same exact thing; they conveyd that they found that some of our files from their product were out of date - and needed to be updated. They'd done this and were runnng a second test.

As instructed - we logged in and found - sure enough - it failed again - exactly as it has been doing.

Amazing to us: from - going on a week now - the beginning - we submitted a support ticket documenting everything in great detail.

We opened up our servers for them to review and fix their product so we could continue.

During the days that followed - it's as if we did not provide them anything at all - we had to continue to provide the exact documentation we had been providing.

Alas - good communication skills does not always equate to good communication skills.

In America - we not only have a language that is a bit more verbose and difficult to learn than most other countries, we have a cultural boundary in the way we do commerce, business, and generally interact with one another.

My experience in the IT field has taught me that the boundaries / hurdles we must overcome far excede those of just solid communication skills. We have an entire educational experience of a lifetime that we come to find out - left us short a bit - ow do we communicate our cultural requirements / ways - to those not from America?

When you find some answers - I'd welcome the post.

Have a great weekend - I'm heading home for 2 weeks - and I"m looking forwad to that. I've been gone quite a long time - balancing the challenges of communicating effective solutions for our clients. It is something I'm thinking more and more we need to pen into the ink of our Project Plans, Statements of Work - and General Services Agreements - this added cost of time and over-time.

Take care...

Plesk Control Panel - Turn the Page -Advanced Support

When I am wrong - I do my best to step forward and not only speak to that - translate - I'M WRONG - but to eat muster and move on.

Since 2004, Sclera Internet Services has used Plesk Control Panel for all of our commercial, shared hosting provisions.

During this time - I will admit - there have been far too many times when we needed support, and found the responsiveness of SWSoft - back in the day - and Parallels - today - to be lacking.

However, I can attest to a few fundamental truths:

Plesk is not all bad - and far from it. We were simply dissatisfied with our support responses. That does not make a bad product of Plesk - and it does not open the door for us to slam a service/products company - in any wise.

I've slammed them pretty good - and I want to publicly apologize. No, no one has asked me to do this - and certainly nothing has happen to motivate this - save one thing: they're another services/products company - just like Sclera - and we cannot satisfy all the customers all the time.

Further, I have painstakingly searched, researched, tested, and found wanting - just about any of the other leading contenders:

Dot Net Panel - DNP

cPanel for Windows

Helms

These are the most notable, and formidable products out there that advertise the ability to scale out - 6 to 'n' WFE's (web front end servers) and scale up (64 bit, 256GB RAM). None of the other three (3) came close. Plesk holds firm on all fronts.

We found the support for DNP - outright ridiculous and scary. You get ZERO phone support - EVER  - and the support you get you must pre-purchase in $50 or $100 increments - and it sucks. They're not from America - and the language barrier is the least of your issues - the cultural barrier makes it impossible to discuss business requirements - God forbid you must mention simple technical requirements.

DNP on a scale of 1 to 10? Almost negative.

cPanel for Windows - In all fairness - this has not been available for Windows long enough to really evaluate it. To be fair, it's one of the oldest on the market and holds a very strong UNIX/Linux market share. Most of the people we deal with - developers of API integration and integration specifically with control panels - find cPanel okay. So - we'll concede to that.

Helms - Recently acquired by Parallels - and marketed as a product that is a mix of cPanel and what we were hoping to find in DNP - Helms is something we're not familiar enough with - real life-wise - to comment on. However, it reads very good: open API for extensibility by developers; .Net run-time engine and support - and basically - a provider like Sclera could develop modules to extend Helms just about any way we could imagine.

DNP - digress: We looked at DNP simply because of the advertising and what they CLAIM they CURRENTLY do with the core control panel and add-on modules. I have news for you - buyer beware. Do not BUY anything: take caution and lease it for a couple months - and test the waters yourself. You'll come out better if you find you do not want it.

In all fairness - when we cancelled wtih them after 45 days - they issue a refund for 1 month's lease - and refunded our $50 spent to ask a basic technical question. However, there is NO, translate ZERO, and I mean ZILTCH for phone support - SO - if you are in need of a mission critical control panel vendor - DNP simply fails on all fronts. You cannot seriously consider them for anything real-time.

Alas - we're back full circle.

In all fairness - we push Plesk to the limits. We've tapped the API and we use it heavily. Our frustration had to do with migrations, backup/restores (between versions - going from 1 or 1.x minor to a 1 major increase) not working - and I mean not working probably 60-75% of each use-case. And we had issues with the responsiveness fo Parallels (then SWSoft - who was much more responsive) - when it came to being stuck with an issue that would tie up 1 to 'n' of our WFE's in production. However, we were ALWAYS able to resolve the issues. Always.

Fast-forward: today, we're launching a much more robust hosting infrastructure - building out every single aspect of it from scratch - and we were needing features that Plesk does not speak to out of the box. (i.e. - Exchange, CRM or SharePoint Hosting - Plesk does not provide a way to deploy/provision these sites in any automated fashion - we have to do them manually).

Parallels has acquired a number of companies/technologies the past 5 years, and they're maturing in this space. In all fairness to them - Plesk Control Panel is still - and hopefully will continue to mature to be - one of the better control panels for Windows-based hosting.

Once again, I apologize for slamming them. I find they, and we - are much more productive - when I spend half the energy it takes to slam them - to simply support them - so let it be written.

I'll be following up on our success/failures as we forge ahead in new territory for both Parallels and Sclera.

William Odell Hamilton - Heart and Soul

Yes, I know I said good night already - but reflecting on this latest trip - I've been on the road for 5 solid months. Out of that time - on average - I'm home only 3 to 5 days each month. that's it.

My youngest son, and one more dear to my heart than I can share - is turning 7 when I get home this Saturday - and I'm so hyped I can't even wind down tonight!

I know some of you have those nights/days. Well, I do occasionally - and I'm just missing my little Mr. Buster.

Between California, New York, Michigan, Florida, Alabama, to who know's where!?!?! - It has actually been about 9 months since I've had two weeks at home - and I'm headed home for two weeks - and I can't stop thinking of my little buddy.

On that note? I have 7 other children still home - that's a total of 8 still home - out of ten total - and though some of you already know this - many of you don't.

I love and miss them all equally. The youngest get a little more of my time - because time is something that is not a little precious to me.

WOW - Two (2) weeks of no travel - I can work from our home offices in Michigan. Well - I have a plethora of things to share on SharePoint Server 2010, Foundation 2010, Visual Studio 2010, CRM, Dynamics, and yes - the launch - official launch - of Sclera Dynamics - another practice in our MSFT Partnership that we're really excited to kick off.

If you have any questions that are SharePoint, Commerce Server, BizTalk Server or Dynamics related - or if you just need hosting services for these technologies - please feel free to ping me here - I'll make sure the best of the best follow up with you within 24 hours. You'll love our people!

This time - it is good night. And heart and soul, in all my being - go to Mr. Buster - my buddy. When I figure out the simple science of posting pictures with this fairly primitive but decent enough - CMS framework - Joomla- I'll get some pics posted. You'll see the pieces that bind me and guide me as I face each day.

IF you have a family - and if you by some chance, have struggled economically - and subsequently - with other related issues - and you have just been at odds with your job, no job, family, no family - well, believe me when I tell you - I too, know all of that very well. It is refreshing to my Spirit and soul - to take these moments and just share a little about my buddy. Life is truly grand. Try not to let the ways/means/issues of others impact you or your time with family. Make every day the next day of the rest of your life - and I promise you - you'll love it.

Good night - this time :)