However, a few months back we had to think fast and hard about what to do with our ever soaring hosting costs in the Big Smoke (that is London for those of you not from the UK) and I thought perhaps it would be interesting to share some of the thought processes we went through about how to combat the seemingly “recession-immune” Data Centre industry in London.

I say immune really only because it seems that even with the banks pulling out loads of servers and cutting IT budgets left, right and centre that there is plenty of people all to willing to quickly fill the gaps they leave, naturally, meaning that Collocation costs have not stopped increasing in many areas.

First a little history of WAYN Tech. Being a London based business we have always kept our IT infrastructure close by, thinking that the niceties of having it close by should a major failure occur would outstrip the increase in cost, add to this the fact that we started in 2003 when the “Bubble” had not yet been repaired from the burst around the millennium there was actually a ton of space available, and it was going quite often for a song.

We started out life hosting our entire site on a single IBM rack mounted server with a small ISP based in the Docklands, we did not really hang around too long though as they seemed to enjoy downtime a lot more than we did. OK, we did not have many users at the time but nonetheless it is not the way you want to go, so we eventually migrated our hardware to another small ISP based down in Biggin Hill of all places, in fact it was the same ISP where FriendsReunited was born, that is how I got to know about them really as in my previous incarnation I was the Sysadmin for FR. I had a excellent relationship with the owner which I have maintained to this day so things worked out well for us there overall. We actually continually hosted equipment with them from circa 2004 right up until a couple of months ago, although we had migrated the vast majority of kit to another more traditional Tier 1 Data Centre based in the City of London in 2007, we kept some equipment with our original provider for off-site backups. Unfortunately, we had simply outgrown them.

When our contracts for our main ISP in the City were coming up for renewal earlier this year we thought it would be wise to reconsider things, especially given the tough economy, it made sense to try and find a way to cut our costs without impacting the service. Of course, the ideal scenario was to simply negotiate a cut in price with our current ISP, as I am sure anyone in the business will tell you moving Data Centers is an absolute nightmare, and usually a huge impact with downtime. However, since they hadn’t raised the prices in the previous 2 years there really wasn’t very far we could go with this, so we had to move our feet and start looking around for a better deal before it was too late and the contracts renewed!

We looked at a lot of sites, I would go as far as saying we probably looked at every single Data centre in the UK that was big enough and well connected enough for our needs. We also looked in to Europe, however, being very IBM focused on our hardware we were left with a dilemma of losing warranties on all our existing equipment if we took it out of the UK, given that we have paid a premium for top quality hardware we didn’t really want to shoot ourselves in the foot and write off a large chunk of that value! Next time we have to think about buying a large chunk of new kit though it is something we will definitely reconsider, although the Euro’s strength against the pound is diminishing the savings rapidly.

Eventually, we narrowed our options down to 2 sites in London, one near Birmingham and 2 in Manchester. We set up a bunch of tours and I jumped in the car and did a Tour of the sites to check them out. I didn’t really need to visit the ones in London as I had been in them before and pretty much knew what they were all about. To cut a very long story short we eventually had to choose between a site in London, which was cheaper but not so much, or a site in Manchester which was attractively priced – but 4hours up the road.

The Datacenter in Manchester was a company called UKGrid which had recently filled up their data floor, but was in the middle of building out their second floor. I liked this site because it was based very close to Telecity which meant we could pick up internet feeds from any of the big providers we liked, the infrastructure in the building was of a high standard and the Data Centre seemed to be professionally run, with a couple of respectable clients on site that gave it more credibility. We was also able to spec out our cage exactly how we liked it, which made life a lot easier for us to migrate things like for like.

One of the biggest things I think I noticed is that there is a significant difference in prices from one Data Centre to the next, indeed some were over 100% more expensive than our current facilities, and some were as much as 40% cheaper, yet I could see little difference between them to justify the different price points – in the end I think that it is clear that some facilities are just able to demand a higher price and get away with it – perhaps this is why our Banks have no money left!

We migrated our equipment in early September, witht he help of a specialist removals company. We had no choice but to shut down the service for 24 hours, which would have been more like 72 hours if we had not used the removal firm. Being the paranoid type we decided to move our core database server ourselves in the back of my car, and sneaked a Google Latitude enabled smartphone with GPS in to their van to track them – this was a brilliant idea as we could keep a really close eye on progress and make sure we met them on site bang on time.

We had some fun and games getting our kit up to the new suite ont he first floor, firstly because there was no lift (no joke!) and we eventually had to rope our empty racks up through the window! It sounds a bit cowboy i know, but it was a 100x easier than trying to squeeze them up the stairs and a lot faster than dismantling them! The data centre would normally provide a forklift for the job, but given we was moving in at 7am on a Sunday the forklift firm wasnt interested in getting out of bed.

Overall, the move was very smooth because it was well planned and well executed with a lot of man power on hand, moving equipment from one building to another is always tricky but movinf it from one end of the country to the other is another level of complication. However, with good planning this can be overcome and the savings to be had simply cannot be ignored. We managed to get our kit moved and back online withint 24 hours, which we felt was a great success.

My top tips for migrating datacentres, especially when they are far apart:

• Invest in a thermal Label printer – you do not want to be decyphering peoples handwriting mid migration!
• Label EVERYTHING, every cable, every server, every plug, cabinet and anything else you can think off. Its a godsend when it comes time to put it all back again, even if one network cable is the same as another its just a great way of ensuring you connect everything right first time, especially when your severly sleep deprived!
• Create a good decommision/reccomission plan, and lable any boxes of cables or equipment clearly so you know whats what and dont start opening every box searching for a specific cable. Any special cables or connectors should be packed seperatly so they dont get lost. Your not going to be able to replace special connectors in the middle of the night – so anything that isn’t available from your high street computer shop needs extra TLC!
• Get a specialist removals firm to do the moving, they’re not always cheap but the costs can be easily offset with the reduced downtime and a reduction in risk.
• Have as many people on site as possible when it comes time to put things back together again, the more hands the better you just cannot underestimate the amount of work involved
• Prepare a backup plan – what if an important server fails?
• Servers do not like being turned off and on, they really like to break when they cool down after having been switched on for months (or years), so make sure you shut them off for a good hour before you remove them.
• Get lots of food, energy drinks, warm clothes!
• If you move ALL your hardware, make sure you have a place to host a holding page. If you host your DNS and MAIL servers, you should have a temporary replacement for them as well. You can use a cloud (Amazon S3 etc) and/or OpenSource software for that, or pay someone to take care of it. Because we own our own IP ranges, we was able to switch them over to temporary servers at the new site in seconds, but not everyone can do that and remember DNS can take a long time to update around the world, your customers will already be upset your offline but they will be even more upset if they get blank pages and no explanation!
• Plan ahead – what should be racked and launched first. You do not want to end up in a situation when all hardware is up and ready, buy you really do not remember where have you put main firewall

If you plan well in advance you should be able to migrate without too much hasstle. There is good, reasonably priced colocation space out there but it wont always be on your doorstep so dont be afraid to move further afield.

Mike Lines
Chief Technology Officer

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I thought I would let you know that I was interviewed by Clare from the Up Group which you can now read here:

The interview covers some of the latest thoughts on WAYN’s positioning but moreover provides a short overview of the WAYN story to date with some anecdotal references to the current market and who I am impressed with in the space.

For a more comprehensive set of recommendations for start-ups both new and existing, I thoroughly recommend you take the opportunity to read a book written by one of my former tutors at London Business School when I was participating in the Entrepreneurship Summer School Program there back in 2002. His name is John Mullins, and his latest book, only just released, covers what I think is perhaps some of the most important set of lessons on how to test the feasibility of your business idea and more importantly, get from your Plan A idea to a Plan B winning strategy through a combination of learning from the best out there and coming up with something novel, and adjusting your business plan accordingly. His book is called: ‘Getting to Plan B: Breaking Through to a Better Business Model’:

It draws on years of experience and research both from John and his co-author partner in crime: Randy Komisar, a Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers – one of world’s leading VC firms. In fact, many of the things I learned in the program are referenced and built upon in this book, making this one of the best investments you will make, so if there’s one entrepreneurship book you buy this year – make it this one! To find out more, visit the following website: http://www.getting-to-plan-b.com/

John is also available to do talks on the subject for those of you organising events in entrepreneurship. Feel free to contact him directly via his website.

Cheers,

Pete

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As I attended the Microsoft  BizSpark conference last week, I got the opportunity of delivering a speech alongside James Caan from Dragons Den as well as Richard Moross from Moo cards as well as an interview with the guys at Intruders TV 

In this interview, I shared the insights and challenges facing our company and some insights on how we took our sales team in-house after long term outsourcing to agencies and why taking feedback from ‘your elders and your betters’ is worthwhile and how to tailor ad engagements to generate strong participation from your community and value for your advertisers.

You can see the interview here:

Speak soon!

Jerome

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Entrepreneurs take a VIP trip to Ibiza…

What happens when you pluck 15 of London’s most promising young entrepreneurial talent, and whisk them off to the emerald isle for a lifestyle retreat they will never forget?…

I guess we are about to find out!

Nicknamed “ICE:09” (Ibiza Conclave of Entrepreneurs), which represents the third in a series of retreats organised for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs, this particular trip is the one that I have decided to host, with the help of one of the leading concierge services on the island – Icon Ibiza.

Given that I am in charge of spearheading the launch of a new aspirational VIP platform for WAYN’s own collection of jetsetters, I thought it only good and proper that I sample for myself what some of our VIP members will be gaining access to, once we have partnered with some of the top lifestyle partners out there. It also happens to be my birthday today so can you blame me for wanting to make a weekend out of it?

ICE:09 is all about getting some of my mates together from the industry to show them why Ibiza rocks. But for me, this weekend is also about finding the right lifestyle and travel partners to work with, to ensure that our VIP members will be getting access to some of the best perks around.

The group of Young Guns I am taking with me are going to be a tough crowd to please, particularly given that they represent a hand plucked selection of the tech crowd’s movers and shakers, who will have high expectations. By enlisting the help of Icon Ibiza – one of the top concierge services in Ibiza, I’ve got Icon’s founder and former Club Promoter – Charlie Chester doing what he does best, which includes turning the techno geek into glitzy chic.

Charlie Chester: These guys are going to be blown away. Icon Ibiza is all about showcasing the best hidden finds in Ibiza, gaining access to the top events that are happening, and doing it all with a bit of panache and style. I’m confident that Pete and the gang will be smiling from ear to ear. I’m also looking forward to upgrading WAYN’s VIP members to experience a similar treatment when they also come over…”

Some of the entrepreneurs that are joining us for this weekend to remember, include:

- Lucian Tarnowski, founder of Brave New Talent and One Young World Ambassador

- Andy Scott, founder of Rummble

- Charles Baybutt, founder of Curious Generation, Brands Live and the Rare Collective

- Sam Mathews, founder or Ugame

- Kieran O’Neil, founder of Playfire

- Alicia Navaro, founder of Skimbit and Skimlinks

- Andre Parrie, founder of Protopage

- Alena Dundas, founder of Gymboo

- Milo Yiannopoulos, Contributing Editor, TechCrich Europe

With press coverage being lined up and some filming for a production company that are covering what happens on the island other than clubbing, which is looking to be commissioned for Channel 4 or Channel 5 in the UK, I am confident that with the help of Charlie Chester, we will help morph those going from the technorati to the gliteratti, overnight. I hope to do the same very soon for our very own WAYN VIP members.

Keep it locked to this channel, to find out…

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Microsoft has certainly been a lot more active in this space, especially with the help of super active Bindi Karia http://twitter.com/bindik) - the Biz Spark programme is a great initiative that provides Software, Support and Visibility for Software Startups – and whilst some may see this as a direct shot at Open Source, I can certainly personally relate to the great benefits our company has managed to benefit from, having been on a Microsoft infrastructure from Day one – Companies such as MySpace have clearly evolved around a Microsoft infrastructure for a long time too and it will be interesting to gauge the reaction of early stage startups at this event to see how they perceive this initiative and whether this will alter entrepreneur’s decisions when it comes to their technology investment strategy.  The event will be help on September 28th – more to come on this so watch this space!
Jerome

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South Africa Tourism Board, as a case in point, is one of our many clients for whom we have offered a bespoke integrated solution – their recent campaigns on WAYN generated the highest number of views for their promotional video – in fact, the highest number of views ever generated for any promotional video they have ever ran.

The use of advanced profiles (micro sites) on WAYN enables organisations to capture and engage global audiences; our clients also experience an exponential increase in traction, when profiles are launched in synergy with a competition or survey. Targeted members are typically encouraged to engage with client profiles once they are informed of the “carrot” (What’s in it for me), and they can then apply directly via the client hosted profile, allowing clients to a) engage members with their profile hosted content, b) maximise interest in their profile ion the promotional phase and c) benefit from data capture and traffic to their website portal. Clearly the wider the reach of the campaign, the higher the odds of success – and in our experience a global campaign will become viral a lot quicker as users spread the word, and by nurturing this viral element, messages are dispersed with more ease when reaching a wider pool of contacts.

Tourism Boards are embracing the Social Media trends:  they have become far more sophisticated (and rightly so) in their online media strategies and more and more become experts, some even without the need of Media Buying Agencies – the largest Tourism Boards will now even have a Social Media Expert internally – something that clearly wasn’t commonplace a year ago, let alone a few years ago.  This is great news for the Social Media industry. Whilst many debates are still leading to the opened question of, ‘how the monetisation of Social Networks can be executed’?, many agree that the bulk of the value is yet to be discovered and the evolution of technology combined with an increasing appetite to be part of this global phenomenon, lead us to believe that we have merely scraped the surface. Fingers crossed, the trend will carry on – especially as the key to success is ultimately in a direct, consultative approach with our clients as we build our own expertise in the field and educate our clients directly – this is key for longer term client retention and commercial scalability.

The good news is that the strong performance of those integrated campaigns has led to multiple buys from more Tourism Boards in the last couple of months - Canary Islands, Tunisia, Philadelphia and Orlando , amongst others being some of the latest ones to join the ever growing WAYN client portfolio.

We are now rolling out this approach to Asia with 3 major clients coming on board shortly thanks to the signing of Fox Networks in Asia (part of News Corp) and TAN (Travel Ad Network) continues their progress in the US Market, whilst North America saw CPM rates dropped earlier this year by as much as 40% in some cases, we are certainly seeing an uplift in activities on the other side of the Atlantic. My bet however, remains on the Emerging Markets where we are still experiencing strong growth and increasing demand in online buys. We are still far from the optimal levels but patience is a virtue. Perseverance is a golden rule too!

Finally, if I had to provide 3 recommendations to companies considering investing in social media, and based on what we have seen over the last 12 months: 

• Try to work directly with the publishers where possible – this will save you time and money and you can also tap in directly to their  experience and expertise
• Be prepared to dip more than just your toe in and give your campaign a chance to succeed over an elongated period,
• Be engaging, informative, enticing, provocative and overall inspirational to your target audience and embrace their feedback…they are potential customers after all

 Let’s hope for some continued momentum and more positive news in the industry for the months to come!

Jerome

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I thought I’d take the opportunity to update you all on the latest happenings on WAYN…

Me and my team are working hard on making the WAYN VIP proposition live up to its name, as the new black. We recently surveyed over 6,000 of our members to see what kinds of benefits they would value, and were surprised to see how much interest there was in a wide variety of benefits, not only online ones, but also offline lifestyle and travel benefits, which they can take advantage of, on the go.

Interestingly, of those surveyed, 15% were existing VIP members, and of those non VIPS, nearly 90% of them had not been a VIP before, which means that the majority of the members surveyed were sharing with us what they would value in a VIP service to make them pay for it.

First of all, we asked our members whether they valued “lifestyle” oriented benefits, having picked an assortment of benefits that we thought members would like, and this is what they responded with:

As you can see, almost all of the benefits were valued reasonably or higher, with all benefits pretty much being highly valued by 30% of more of our members. We asked them the same for travel benefits and this is what they said:

Again, in nearly every case – more than 80% of those surveyed valued the benefits as reasonably valuable or higher. Interestingly, adding the ability to gain access to airport lounges was seen at the most desirable travel benefit, so that our users could travel in comfort and style.

Of the online social engagement benefits, the results were again pretty much consistent with those above:

What’s interesting about the results above is that users have shown that the ability to see who likes them is desirable, with almost 50% of those surveyed saying they would value this highly, with a further 40% valuing this benefit reasonably, leaving just over 10% who didn’t value this at all. All the other benefits mentioned, which are now available to our VIP members, were still valued highly, with ~85% or more valuing these benefits in some way.

The same seems to be the case when it comes to online customisation benefits, with only online invisibility (th ability to browse in secret) not being valued as highly, albeit still with nearly an 80% portion seeing some value in this benefit also:

The real test is determining whether we can package these benefits up in a way that makes them profitable for us. When asked what our members would be willing to pay for the above benefits, here were the results that came back:

This is where the true test of a freemium model comes in. As you can see from the above graph, a good 70% of those surveyed would be willing to pay $5-$10 per month for these benefits, whilst some, albeit a small proportion, would be willing to pay up to $100 a month for the same collection of benefits.

We are currently working really hard to try to bring together a combination of premium benefits that will be able to deliver to the majority of our members at a fraction of the cost that it would be for them to obtain those benefits anywhere else. After all, that is what any business should be striving to achieve. We hope that we will achieve that goal, so I guess you are going to have to watch this space to see if we do…

Pete

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Hi everyone,

I realise we havent posted for the last few weeks as we have been extremely busy working on a new release concerning the relaunch of our VIP Club.  Aligned with the new branding of the site (more lifestyle / aspirational focus), we wanted to come up with a fresh looking VIP Club and a renewed value proposition for our users worldwide.  This is a Phase 1 launch and we are now in the process of refining it on an ongoing basis and Phase 2 will see the launch of new offline benefits for our VIP members which are currently being worked on such as: Airport Lounge Access, Significant discounts to prestigious Boutique Hotels, Access to the top nightclubs VIP Lounges & Coktail upon arrival in 20 destinations worldwide to start with, Auto Car Upgrade and many other benefits.

Until then, our new VIP Club was relaunched yesterday with the following:

- Free Lifestyle Card offering cheap travel money (UK only)

- See who likes you and others (New Feature!)

- Unlimited standard Gifts and Rates

- Stand out from the crowd on search results

- Send 100 Free International SMS per month

- Browse in secret and create private forums

- See who has read your messages

- Customize your WAYN experience (turn off advertising and choose custom profile skins)

To add to the list will be the offline benefits I mentioned earlier which should start coming up in the coming weeks – the idea being to create a real experience to our users, both online and in the real world – a real lifestyle and travel package that can appeal to many around the globe and giving them access to all the exclusive benefits a VIP member should expect.

Here is a screenshot of the new offering:

So far the reaction from the community has been extremely positive with thousands visiting the new Club yesterday alone. This is an interesting move for us as we come from a subscription background back in the days where revenues and EBITDA were certainly not seen as the important metrics to value a community… But on the other hand, you need the scale and the traffic to revisit subscription and Free Models are great enablers to achieve those goals.  You have to start somewhere I suppose

For us, this is a move to enable us to diversify whilst offering users more engagement capabilities online and more lifestyle value in the real world – a move to also support our new strategic positioning since the site relaunch last April. We are extremely excited by this re launch and especially as more positive feedback from our users come our way.

There are increasing talks in the industry that the free models are now dead and an increasing number of businesses start shifting to more traditional methods to monetise – essentially focusing on extracting the value from the users themselves rather than the advertising budget which are without a doubt, more challenging to secure these days.  But I will have to agree with Fred Destin from Atlas Venture who wrote this great article in NMA this week called ” Reports of the death of the free content mode are exagerated” - quoting him below:

“Free shrinks industries, but the model is sustainable. Start-ups disrupt at every level in the way they generate, aggregate and distribute content, and in the way they engage with users. I hear you say, “Facebook doesn’t monetise well.” So what? It’s a social network designed to let people interact and, unsurprisingly, they don’t click on ads. But the cost of delivery is close to zero. These guys don’t need to make much money per user and have all the time in the world. If activity stream is the future of human interaction, they’re sitting on a goldmine.

Some start-ups will fail, clearly, but there’s no denying the huge impact free has already had on all our markets. Let’s point to Skype in telephony, DailyMotion in video, GameForge in gaming, or Last.fm or Spotify in music. The point is simple: the credible free businesses out there are designed to be resilient and incredibly hard to compete against.”

That is certainly valid for massive traffic platforms like Facebook, Twitter, others – for most, the answer is perhaps in the middle – but we remain convinced that by offering a true unique value proposition,  Social Media Owners should certainly be able to re engage on subscription models – the days of subscriptions to access full interaction are long gone (unless you are a Match.com or Meetic.com – which seem to hold well) – hence the need of a new unique offering. The growth of emerging markets like India and the every expanding list of online payment methods certainly offer an exciting avenue ahead of us.

Time will tell.

Jerome

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Hi everyone, we are pleased to be part of the nomination list for the TechCrunch Europe Awards which will, on July 9, hold the first Europe-wide awards ceremony for technology innovation. “The Europas. The ceremony will host the top tech companies and startups on both web and mobile across Europe.

We are clearly very proud and priviledged to be recognised on the nominated list and would appreciate your vote!

To vote, here is the link: http://uk.techcrunch.com/2009/06/24/the-europas-best-startup-founders/

Thanks for your time and congrats to all our colleagues who have made it to the list: list below for reference:

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The WAYN Party which took place in London at the Kensington Roof Gardens on Friday 22nd May Bank Holiday Weekend, proved to be a smash, with the venue reaching capacity by 9:30pm! It proved a great opportunity for those members and friends of WAYN to meet up in person, in many cases for the first time, and also, perhaps more interestingly, meet other like-minded people in the neighbourhood. A few lucky punters won some Champagne to share having met their matching WAYNer, and all the rest of us sucked up the good atmosphere, warm weather, exotic outdoor gardens, Spanish band and more.

To check out the WAYN Summer Party photos, click here

The event proved to be quite high profile, with attendees from the Press, including the Times and Telegraph, with a good article capturing the essense of the event in the Times Online published yesterday…

Funnily enough, that’s a picture of me being Macfarlane’d by Mark, one of my mates (of all the pictures taken at the party they had to pick this one! ).

To read the full article, click here

WAYN Parties around the world and VIP Membership

The hope is that we can organise a lot more gatherings of this nature around the globe, giving not just members who live in, or happen to be in London, a chance to meet up and make new friends, but all members. As a first step towards this end, we are in the middle of revamping our VIP offering, to make it a lot more valuable for our members, combining a mixture of tangible online and offline benefits that will give members the opportunity to obtain VIP access to a selected number of nightclubs around the world and hopefully some free cocktails on arrival. It will also provide them with a variety of lifestyle and travel tools to benefit from when abroad, whilst also giving them a selection of valuable online tools to help members stand out from the crowd, express themselves in more ways, and interact with more tools at their disposal. We also hope to give such members the opportunity to organise some of the WAYN parties on the ground, wherever they are, so that they can be the first to meet and greet those members in their neck of the woods. I will update you with more on this as things progress…

Everybody’s Diski Dancing (Including the WAYN Team!)

Last but not least, we’re doing a great campaign with South Africa Tourism Board, in the run up to the Rugby Lion’s Tour, which is taking place over there, where we are showcasing the infamous Diski Dance, practised by the South African Rugby players and fans around the world alike. In fact, our very own WAYN team members thought they’d have a go and show us all how it’s done! To have a laugh and get some inspiration to have a go yourself, check out the video here:

WAYN Diski Dance

Why not enter the competition to win a luxury holiday at a game lodge in South Africa and 2 tickets to the final game of the Lions Tour between the Springboks and the British and Irish Lions on July the 4th 2009? All you have to do is do your own version o fthe Diski Dance and if you’re one is jusgded to be the best – you will win! To find out more, check out the Diski Dance WAYN Profile here:

http://www.wayn.com/profiles/DiskiDance

That’s all for now. I’m off to the Founders Forum this evening to meet other entrepeneurs that have set up their own businesses to discuss some of the latest trends and happenings in the market and entrepreneurship world, which should be fun! Will fill you in more on what’s happening in WAYN’s world shortly.

Pete

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