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Zoho Saves the Day

by Thomas Hawk | 1 June 2007 | General | 37 Comments

We’ll a lot has been going on with Zooomr in the past few days. And while our blog has had some techinical difficulties, I wanted to write a post acknowledging some of the support that Zooomr has received.

By way of a little background, late Tuesday night Zooomr finally launched our Mark III release that Kristopher Tate, our founder and only developer, has been working hard on for 9 months. Unfortunately within 10 minutes of launching our server crashed.

This was a terribly disappointing thing for Kristopher and I and certainly one of the low points of our experience with Zooomr thus far.

Because we are a small company and don’t have a lot of resources we were in a tight bind when our server crashed. Thankfully the community responded to our situation and is helping to get Zooomr Mark III back online.

To start with, Robert Scoble posted a blog post asking the community to help Zooomr on Wednesday morning. And on Wednesday morning Zoho was the first company to respond. Zoho for those of you who don’t know them are a kick ass online application company. They were one of the first to the online app space, way ahead of Google and others. They are faster than Google and best of all they are free. If you get a chance check out their online applications. They have a whole host of applications including everything from the basics of word processing and spreadsheets to other fun type stuff like polling software for your blog.

Anyways, we spent much of Wednesday with Raju Vegesna from Zoho getting Zooomr moved over into Zoho’s data center and getting a new server that they generously offered to loan to us.

On Thursday we had more good news. Sun Microsystems sent over a loaner as well. A “Thumper,” which is a massive 42 hard drive media storage machine. The Sun guys came over to the data center and delivered it personally.

Also on Thursday Dell flew in parts to fix our failed server and had a tech personally come out and repair it for us.

Which brings us to today. Kristopher spent all night and most of today down at Zoho’s datacenter. He’s there right now with Robert Scoble working on getting Zooomr Mark III back up and running. He’s already restored service to our static images — which means that all of your blog photos are back online.

Right now Krisotpher is beefing up our system in order to best guard against us going down again. He’s adding the new servers and reinforcing our capabilities with the new hardware. Hopefully we will have the site up in the next 48 hours.

All along the way I have been overwhelmed by the positive outpouring of support from you all, the Zooomr community. This more than anything is what keeps us going at this point. Zoho’s support especially has been absolutely instrumental in our efforts to get back online.

37 Comments

  1. Pacdog said on 1 Jun 2007 at 11:35 pm:

    sweet!

    That is all I have to say..

  2. wasted said on 1 Jun 2007 at 11:45 pm:

    Excellent news!

    Thank you all!

  3. dawn said on 1 Jun 2007 at 11:48 pm:

    I’m glad to see that this blog is up and going again. That just goes to show that things are on the mend and should be working again soon. :-)

  4. Sean said on 1 Jun 2007 at 11:55 pm:

    All your hard work will pay off! =)

    Can’t wait!!

  5. hillary said on 2 Jun 2007 at 12:19 am:

    thanks for keeping us up to date. fun chatting with scoble, for a change.

    enjoy your wine, TH, and get some sleep!

  6. CJ said on 2 Jun 2007 at 12:38 am:

    That is great news.

    Good to see established companies like Zoho, Sun and Dell coming to the rescue.

    A little up front investment by them should pay them dividends in the future as there is no doubt that Zooomr is going to be a success.

    Where is the VC when you need it.

    Keep up the good work and hopefully when you launch next time, it will be firing on all cylinders (servers).

  7. mll said on 2 Jun 2007 at 12:52 am:

    Zoho, Dell, Sun… wow… How much do you account Scobble’s post to get these nice reactions?

  8. Robin Stacey said on 2 Jun 2007 at 1:24 am:

    Wow. What can I say? It’s great to see help like this coming out of the woodwork :)

    See? Everyone is rooting for you, Kris and Thomas! Keep up the good work.

    greywulf.

  9. StevieB said on 2 Jun 2007 at 1:28 am:

    Thanks for the update! If hard work and dedication get their just deserts, then Zooomr III is going to be untouchable!

    In the meantime, patience is a virtue, they say!

  10. nige said on 2 Jun 2007 at 3:03 am:

    as always, good luck gents. i’ve been watching from the sidelines in sheer amazement at how you’ve marched on through the criticism, in spite of all the good vibes from the community. i hope all of the dramas are now behind you now, and that MkIII gets up & running without further hassle. much love.

  11. nige said on 2 Jun 2007 at 3:20 am:

    i think i only needed to use the word “now” just once in that second sentence. hurrah for emphasis!

  12. celuloso said on 2 Jun 2007 at 4:11 am:

    News… very good news…I feel so lucky …lucky…lucky…lucky…:-D

    Greetings from Spain.

  13. T said on 2 Jun 2007 at 5:17 am:

    Good on ya Zoho, Sun and Dell!

    Great to hear the good news! Looking forward to the new Zooomr! Well done Kristopher and everyone else!

  14. Zoli's Blog said on 2 Jun 2007 at 6:00 am:

    Zooomr Powered by Zoho - Coming Soon?

  15. Trevor Carpenter said on 2 Jun 2007 at 7:21 am:

    I kinda like the fact that no big media companies picked up this story.

    It keeps us on the inside track with one of the greatest things happening on the internet.

    Thanks for the updates Hawkster.

  16. boiler97 said on 2 Jun 2007 at 7:30 am:

    Well Done guys! Looking forward to it!

  17. Darren said on 2 Jun 2007 at 8:18 am:

    Great news hope it all goes well. As for me, ZOHO will be used a little more than google docs from now on and the next time I upgrade Dell will be the first place I look. This is far better for both of them than advertising… and much cheaper too. And boys, please get some rest!!!

  18. fair said on 2 Jun 2007 at 8:42 am:

    And don’t listen to the voices saying “You’re violating the rule of SaaS”, etc… I mean, you’ve been succesful because you do thing differently, and you are turning a difficult transition into the best technology reality show. That’s creatitivity. I hope the service comes back online soon, but I can wait. I used to go on zooomr once a week at best. Since last week I go every day. I’m hooked!

  19. Rich Watts (uk) said on 2 Jun 2007 at 8:54 am:

    Big thank yous to all those at Zoho, Dell and Sun.

    So close now…i thought you could, i thought you could…i know you can I know you can…choo choo!

  20. Skoot said on 2 Jun 2007 at 8:56 am:

    that which doesn’t kill us….strengthens us

    chins up people :)

    thanks to Zoho, Sun and Dell!
    and great work Kris and Thomas !

  21. Carlos said on 2 Jun 2007 at 9:07 am:

    almost there! thanks to those kindred spirits!

  22. Tom Newman (fogview) said on 2 Jun 2007 at 9:36 am:

    I’m overwhelmed by all the support for Zooomr and Kris. Thanks for all the great work and to everyone who is supporting this effort. We all are looking forward to Zooomr’s return.

  23. Charles said on 2 Jun 2007 at 9:47 am:

    Didn’t Scoble say, on the ustream feed, that the company that donated a server wanted to stay anonymous? I take it they changed their mind.

  24. Nathaniel Perales said on 2 Jun 2007 at 9:50 am:

    This really makes me feel good about the community that we are all apart of. I’m so excited. I love Zooomr and all the people helping it out so much.

  25. Zoli Erdos said on 2 Jun 2007 at 1:04 pm:

    @Charles, I think Scoble mentioned someone else, other than Zoho or Sun.

  26. Peter-Paul de Meijer said on 2 Jun 2007 at 3:14 pm:

    Great news!
    Hope the site will be running aian within 48 hours.

  27. Epay said on 2 Jun 2007 at 5:09 pm:

    God bless you!

  28. kevinlew said on 2 Jun 2007 at 6:21 pm:

    all that tech jargon is a welcome respite from waiting

  29. penny said on 2 Jun 2007 at 7:04 pm:

    happy happy joy joy!

  30. Rukasu said on 2 Jun 2007 at 7:08 pm:

    F5! F5! F5! F5! F5!

  31. YS said on 2 Jun 2007 at 10:13 pm:

    ITS UP NOW!!!!

  32. Rukasu said on 2 Jun 2007 at 10:18 pm:

    YAY!

  33. Travis L said on 2 Jun 2007 at 10:23 pm:

    Congratulations on the relaunch Zooomr!

    Thank you for all your hard work and countless sleepless nights Kris. It’s very much appreciated by me and the community as a whole.

  34. Rukasu said on 2 Jun 2007 at 10:23 pm:

    Anyone else have trouble accessing their own photos? I can’t get to my photo page

  35. YS said on 2 Jun 2007 at 10:57 pm:

    There seems to be some bugs >_>

    The server also seems to be a little slower…I guess we shall have to wait a little while more.

  36. Thomas - Technical Blogger said on 3 Jun 2007 at 10:51 pm:

    Positive Press for Zoho and Sun Microsystems - Follow Up

    I thought I would follow up to see what kind of evidence I could find to lend support to what I had mentioned in an earlier post concerning the positive press that Zoho and Sun had earned for themselves.
    I did a little research on T…

  37. Zoli's Blog said on 5 Jun 2007 at 9:45 am:

    The Zooomr Saga Continues

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Zoho Saves the Day

by Thomas Hawk | 1 June 2007 | General | No Comments


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