{"id":2627,"date":"2013-09-17T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-09-17T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/otava.test\/great-ideas-win\/"},"modified":"2013-09-17T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-09-17T00:00:00","slug":"great-ideas-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.otava.com\/blog\/great-ideas-win\/","title":{"rendered":"Great Ideas Win"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Online
Online Tech Co-CEO Mike Klein<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Opportunities are all around us \u2013 and the opportunity to get distracted is boundless.<\/p>\n

One of our core values is \u201cGreat Ideas Win\u201d<\/strong> \u2013 but which great ideas should win?<\/p>\n

How do we judge what is a great idea that we should implement and what is simply a good idea \u2013 but not fit for our business?<\/p>\n

In one word \u2013 \u201cFocus.\u201d<\/p>\n

At Online Tech, our jobs as Co-CEOs is to be clear about who we are, what we do, and our target customers.\u00a0 The old adage applies – \u201cif you don\u2019t know where you\u2019re going, then any path will get you there.\u201d The same is true in the hosting business. We believe we need to articulate who we are & who we are not as a company so everyone on the team knows where we are going.<\/p>\n

If you don\u2019t know what you do, you can lose a lot of money chasing the latest opportunity that comes by your doorstep.\u00a0 On the other hand, when you know who you are & what you do, it\u2019s a lot easier to say NO<\/span> to a distraction that can take you off course. It\u2019s also easier to filter between interesting ideas and the great ideas that help further our mission, purpose and achieving our goals.<\/p>\n

In Online Tech\u2019s case, our focus is serving mid-market companies that need enterprise-level hosting solutions for their mission critical applications. We\u2019ve designed our cloud computing solutions<\/a> around those target customers \u2013 private<\/a> and managed multi-tenant cloud computing<\/a> built on enterprise-grade EMC VMAX SANs, Dell blade servers and a high performance 80 GB SAN fabric.<\/p>\n

Because many of our clients face regulatory and security issues, we\u2019ve designed our cloud to meet very stringent healthcare (HIPAA<\/a>), credit card (PCI<\/a>), financial (SSAE 16<\/a> & SOC 2<\/a>) and EU privacy (Safe Harbor) audit requirements.\u00a0 We\u2019re the first cloud hosting provider to encrypt all cloud data directly in the SAN at the hardware level, leaving no data in our clouds unencrypted.<\/p>\n

Bold choice?\u00a0 Perhaps \u2013 and perhaps not.\u00a0 By making these choices, we inherently decided to say NO<\/span> to other opportunities that distract us from who we are and the market we serve.<\/p>\n

Amazon and Rackspace have seen great growth in public clouds \u2013 delivering compute as a utility for the lowest possible cost. An interesting opportunity, but a potentially costly distraction for Online Tech. Yes, the market for low-cost public cloud is much larger than for mission-critical, compliant cloud computing<\/a> \u2013 but our target market isn\u2019t looking for cheap \u2013 they\u2019re looking for reliability, availability and security.<\/p>\n

Fortune 500 companies also continue to expand their data center<\/a> footprints, but do we want our sales team spending time chasing projects from GM and Ford? Absolutely not. Interesting opportunities \u2013 yes – but highly distracting.<\/p>\n

The value we deliver to mid-market companies with our managed hosting is so much greater than the value we can deliver by selling our entire data center inventory as wholesale colocation to Fortune 500 companies.<\/p>\n

So when our product development team suggested that we fully encrypt<\/a><\/strong> all of our cloud servers \u2013 not just provide clouds, but multi-tenant clouds as well, it was quickly recognized as a great idea.<\/p>\n

Why? Because we know who we are and the customers we serve. Encryption isn\u2019t cheap \u2013 but it solves a huge security problem that most of our clients can\u2019t afford to solve by themselves. They need encryption of data at rest with no performance penalties to meet regulatory compliance and security requirements.\u00a0 We provide this capability much more cost effectively for our entire customer base than any single client can do by themselves.<\/p>\n

Did we give up on the low-cost public cloud market by adopting this great idea?\u00a0 NO<\/span>.\u00a0 Because we weren\u2019t going there anyways.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how we set the context in which Great Ideas Win<\/strong> at Online Tech.<\/p>\n

More of Mike Klein’s CEO Voices Articles:
\n15 Minutes a Day \u2013 Our Investment in a Customer and Results-Oriented Culture<\/a>
\nAt Online Tech, the entire company starts every day with a 5-minute all-hands meeting. We review the results of the previous 24 hours, flag any outstanding customer issues and opportunities, and share critical updates across the company. The goal is \u2026 Continue reading \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n

The Journey to Articulate Online Tech\u2019s Purpose: \u201cExceptional People Delivering Exceptional Experiences\u201d<\/a>
\nAbout a year ago, we started the journey to articulate Online Tech\u2019s purpose. I\u2019m a big fan of Verne Harish and his book \u201cMastering the Rockefeller Habits\u201d and we\u2019ve been practicing most of those habits at Online Tech since I \u2026 Continue reading \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Opportunities are all around us \u2013 and the opportunity to get distracted is boundless. One of our core values is \u201cGreat Ideas Win\u201d \u2013 but which great ideas should win? How do we judge what is a great idea that we should implement and what is simply a good idea \u2013 but not fit for our business? In one word \u2013 \u201cFocus.\u201d At Online Tech, our jobs as Co-CEOs is to be clear about who we are, what we do, and our target customers.\u00a0 The old adage applies – \u201cif you don\u2019t know where you\u2019re going, then any path will get you there.\u201d The same is true in the hosting business. We believe we need to articulate who we are & who we are not as a company so everyone on the team knows where we are going. If you don\u2019t know what you do, you can lose a lot of money chasing the latest opportunity that comes by your doorstep.\u00a0 On the other hand, when you know who you are & what you do, it\u2019s a lot easier to say NO to a distraction that can take you off course. It\u2019s also easier to filter between interesting ideas and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"other_category":[],"class_list":["post-2627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nGreat Ideas Win | OTAVA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.otava.com\/blog\/great-ideas-win\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Great Ideas Win\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Opportunities are all around us \u2013 and the opportunity to get distracted is boundless. One of our core values is \u201cGreat Ideas Win\u201d \u2013 but which great ideas should win? How do we judge what is a great idea that we should implement and what is simply a good idea \u2013 but not fit for our business? In one word \u2013 \u201cFocus.\u201d At Online Tech, our jobs as Co-CEOs is to be clear about who we are, what we do, and our target customers.\u00a0 The old adage applies – \u201cif you don\u2019t know where you\u2019re going, then any path will get you there.\u201d The same is true in the hosting business. We believe we need to articulate who we are & who we are not as a company so everyone on the team knows where we are going. If you don\u2019t know what you do, you can lose a lot of money chasing the latest opportunity that comes by your doorstep.\u00a0 On the other hand, when you know who you are & what you do, it\u2019s a lot easier to say NO to a distraction that can take you off course. It\u2019s also easier to filter between interesting ideas and...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.otava.com\/blog\/great-ideas-win\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"OTAVA\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-09-17T00:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.otava.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/mike-klein-150.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Irma Brillantes\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Irma Brillantes\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" 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