***Note to Everybody Who Has Been Trying to Reach Me at emediadynamics.com email address: We switched away from Navisite earlier this evening and my email is now functioning***
****Update for Navisite Customers at 10:54 p.m.: Don't expect your sites to be up anytime soon. The mysterious Mark Clayman has posted this notice on the website that says, in essence, things are screwed up and we're working on it, which, in some variation or another, is what Navisite has been saying since Saturday.
Despite promising to bring up "the vast majority" of its relocated servers by 1 p.m. today, publicly traded hosting and applications providers Navisite (Nasdaq: Navi) has failed to bring up fully even a minority of the servers that it relocated this weekend.
The company is headed into its fourth day of a horrifically botched relocation of hundreds of servers that it acquired when it purchased hosting provider Alabanza. And I'm headed into my fourth day without email or access to my web sites.
At this point, Navisite's poorly planned data center consolidation has slipped from mere incompetence to outrageous indifference to its customers needs and should be grounds for legal action, if not government sanctions of some kind. As I understand it, Navisite planned to "virtually" relocate servers from Baltimore to Andover, MA while an actual physical move of the servers was conducted via ground transportation.
Once the servers arrived in Andover, MA, the physical reconnection was supposed to take place, with minimal disruption to the hosted sites. For reasons unknown to customers, Navisite didn't follow this procedure. Navisite simply unplugged the servers, put them on a truck to Andover and then attempted to bring them back up again, skipping the necessary first step.
According to people who have talked to Navisite's tech personnel, they were ill-equipped for the relocation and ignorant of how to accomplish even basic tasks. Even as late as this afternoon, my developer believes that Navisite is hopelessly mired in the weeds and is vainly promising anything while lacking the necessary in-house expertise to solve the problem.
So, in essence, Navisite yanked the servers for 200,000 web sites, put them on trucks and then didn't know what to do when the servers arrived in Andover. Nobody was prepared for this kind of relocation nor was anyone skilled enough to successfully implement it.
Worse, Navisite had informed its clients of a completely different timetable and process for the server relocation than the one implemented.
Please email me at cynthia@ipdemocracy.com if you plan to seek legal action against Navisite. I'm researching the relevant government officials in Massachusetts and DC who should be contacted to stir up possible government investigation into the company's practices. I'll post that information in an update to this item.
Update: Although there are no government agencies that have direct jurisidiction over website hosting companies, I spoke to the FTC. There's no clear-cut office at the FTC that handles situations like this, but one of the staffers told me to direct people to file a consumer complaint anyway. Someone will pay attention if enough people file. Here's the direction: go to www.ftc.gov and click on the "consumer complaint" box or call 1-877-FTC-HELP and talk to a staff member.
I've just emailed a staffer at the JOINT COMMITTEE ON TELECOMMUNICATIONS, UTILITIES AND ENERGY for the Massachusetts legislature to find out how to apply political pressure on Navisite.
And I've got a call into the FCC to find out if there's any chance they have jurisdiction.
But, the bottom-line is that web hosting companies are not regulated. This is a contract issue and probably calls for class-action litigation.
Update: We're going to switch to a new provider if Navisite fails to get the sites up and running by midnight tonight, although as one web hosting provider has suggested, this might not be the greatest thing to do. My developer is also concerned that if we switch hosters and then Navisite manages to actually get our sites up and running, then some sort of IP address/DNS server conflict will occur, although I don't know anything about this. I'd be glad to post alternative web hosting company names and addresses here for those of you likewise given the shaft by Navisite, with the proviso that I won't be making any recommendations. Just offering people some alternatives.
Update: Navisite "thanks" its customers for patience as it stares down the barrel of a fifth day of massive outages. I sincerely doubt that any of Navisite's customers are patient. Here's a typical email I received from a Navisite customer:
This has been a total disaster for my company. I have about 30 websites down for over 3 days so I have lost 3 days of new business and I have no idea what current customers are trying to email me with any issues.
Interestingly, the company's latest missive is signed by a top executive Mark Clayman,
Senior Vice President of Hosting Services. From my understanding, no Navisite executive has participated in any of the conference calls the company started hosting yesterday. Only "customer service representatives" have participated on these calls, and they are unable to answer questions.
Cynthia Brumfield at 3:48 PM|Comments(10)
Cynthia you emailed the Massachusetts legislature, well that should be useful.
Here in Massachusetts we have a hole in the ground (called the "Big Dig") that was suppose to cost 2 Billions dollars and now the cost is up over 15 Billion and still climbing quickly, all the while the Massachusetts legislature was keeping an eye on things. The hole leaks like sieve and drops parts of the roof on cars killing the occupants. Good luck with that email.
Navisite screwed up, no doubt about it, but your problem is a business problem. You can sue (good luck, see you in about 20 years), or you can leave in mass (the best solution), but please keep the damn government out of it or you will make a bad situation far worse...
Posted by: Rick at November 8, 2007 6:27 PM
Navisite is totally responsive for the disaster
and have no consideration for customers since Year 1999, ALABANZA was a very good service provider and communicative with her customers
take all the opportunities to make a legal common action all together we can win !!
Regards
Didier MARTIN
QISOLUTION & KOALACONCEPT
Posted by: MARTIN Didier at November 8, 2007 3:48 AM
Granted NaviSite's botched "migration" (to Hell I suppose") is unforgivable and bad business, it is also the fault of these businesses for having no disaster recovery in place. I keep full backups of my entire site, databases and files locally, ready to go up on another host within 1 day of outage.
It was poor planning on their part, and all of yours for not having a backup plan.
I do sympathize to the fact that this problem is detrimental to many businesses out there, Id be mad too. But there again, as a business person it is ALWAYS your responsibility to cover your own ass in case of the worst, you cannot rely on anyone else to do it for you.
Posted by: Breach at November 7, 2007 3:18 PM
Someone needs to smoke a bit less grass if they want to make intelligible comments.
Posted by: dj at November 7, 2007 3:11 PM
Well, I'm not one for litigation, as I said. But you have no idea what Navisite has been like during this crisis. Top management never participated in the public discussions. They put only CSRs on phone calls with web hosting resellers, many of whom knew more about the problems than Navisite did, and were frustrated by the fact that no engineers sat in on these calls until yesterday.
Navisite didn't answer emails, nor did they return phone calls. They never discussed with real specificity the problems they were facing.
On top of all this, the company completely botched the server moves to begin with, and didn't follow the plan it presented to customers.
Don't even mention the fact that their public posts have been so arrogant -- at one point yesterday they kept trying to spin this whole development as a positive thing.
Thousands of businesses have been destroyed, people have lost days of work time and Navisite still hasn't brought up thousands of sites.
Alabanza promoted its back-up capabilities. We all did our due diligence by relying on Alabanza's promises of keeping back-ups in place. What we didn't figure on was that Alabanza would hold those back-ups hostage.
Navisite should be made to suffer for what it has done to people because the company seemingly doesn't care about its customers. I don't personally want to benefit from this debacle and may or may not join a class-action lawsuit.
I'd be much happier if the company's investors woke up to the bad investment that Navisite is, sold out and forced the management of this company to face what it has done.
Posted by: Cynthia Brumfield at November 7, 2007 12:59 PM
Ah yes, the American way; when you fail to do your own due diligence in having a contingency plan for your web hosting service being down, litigate!
Posted by: pdisme at November 7, 2007 12:33 PM
A law suit at this current time is a BAD idea...Why feed the fire...Sit.....wait....twiddle your thumbs..Smoke some grass..Shit,do what you gotta do. But dont rush into this making threats of law suits and posting info for "competitor" web-hosting...Thats suicide... Its not as if Navi-Site does not know that they will have to compensate....Of course they know this and are already well prepared. If you rush into this without proper planning and keeping it "hush hush" Navi-Sites corporate law team will eat you alive...Your giving them ammunition!!!
Posted by: patiently waiting at November 6, 2007 9:34 PM
And here's my useless chat with a NaviSite rep (as they won't answer the phone)
System: Please wait while connecting to an operator.
You're connected to an operator - Barbara
Barbara: Hello! How can help you?
User: Hi Barbara, I have 3 sites hosted by Linuxwebhost/Alabanza that are still down.
User: Can you give me any estimate when I will get email and web services back?
Barbara: I don't have that information
Barbara: For the latest update you can go to our website at: http://www.navisite.com/sublevel.aspx?id=2017 or contact customer care at: customercare@navisite.com
Barbara: We have everyone available working to resolve this issue. We certainly appreciate your patience in this matter
User: Just a moment, let me check that link. Thanks.
User: That link gives me a response that doesn't have any timeframe for the sites to come back up. Downtime associated with this move was supposed to be Saturday only. It's now Tuesday. Who specifically can I contact to get an answer about when my hosted sites will be available?
Barbara: I don't have an answer to that ... you can continue to check the website for updates
Barbara: We have everyone available working to resolve this issue. We certainly appreciate your patience in this matter
User: Please give me a specific name with phone number or email address. The website updates aren't helpful or specific. In the meantime, my business is suffering. I can't even tell my clients how long an outage to expect.
Barbara: I don't have a specific name or phone number to give you
Barbara: We have everyone available working to resolve this issue. We certainly appreciate your patience in this matter
User: Where, then, can I get a better assessment of the situation than "We have everyone available working to resolve this issue. We certainly appreciate your patience in this matter," and the similarly unspecific statement on your referenced website?
User: There's no indication of whether the downtime will be an hour, a day, a week, a month. I need to know, as do my customers.
Barbara: I don't have that answer...I can only tell you that we are working on it
User: So the downtime could be a month?
Barbara: I would hope not but I don't have specific information to the timeframe
Barbara: We have everyone available working to resolve this issue. We certainly appreciate your patience in this matter
User: Ah, I see.
Posted by: Erik at November 6, 2007 1:51 PM
I am very interested in a class action suit against Navisite and satellite providers. Their poor planning is costing us, a public charity, thousands of dollars and undermining our service to the public. Please let me know if such an action occurs.
Posted by: m. dillon at November 6, 2007 11:59 AM
FYI:
Navisite Management
NOTE the "officer since" dates......
Andrew Ruhan Chairman of the Board
Officer Since: 09/2002 ////
Arthur P. Becker Chief Executive Officer, Director
Officer Since: 02/21/2003 ////
James W. Pluntze Chief Financial Officer
Officer Since: 2007 ////
Denis J. Martin Executive Vice President, Chief Technology Officer
Officer Since: 2007 ////
Mark Clayman Senior Vice President - Hosting Services
Officer Since: 2007 ////
Nasir Cochinwala Senior Vice President - Professional Services
Officer Since: 2007 ////
James A. Fanella Senior Vice President, Strategic Business Development
Officer Since: 11/28/2006 ////
Sumeet Sabharwal Senior Vice President - Global Delivery
Officer Since: 2007 ////
Monique Cormier Vice President, General Counsel, Secretary
Officer Since: 08/2005 ////
Rathin Sinha Chief Marketing Officer
Officer Since: 2007
Posted by: Joe D at November 6, 2007 11:16 AM
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