Interview with Make Mine a Million $ Business Awardee Miracle Wenzo on Data Backup
Business data and technology are wonderful until they are suddenly not there. Then you and your business suffer as you scramble to deal with the fallout.
Miracle Wanzo owns and operates Hipundies.com, an online retailer of contemporary designer lingerie, loungewear and sleepwear, carrying both established and up and coming brands. Hipundies.com focuses on fun and functional undergarments to complement the stylish woman’s wardrobe.
She recently had an experience with a failed server that taught her some things about disaster planning and recovery.
Miracle Wanzo is a Make Mine a Million $ Business Program Awardee.
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Interview with Miracle Wanzo, Hipundies.com
Q: You had an issue where your server went down, right during the Christmas peak. Tell us about that experience.
I should say, first, we're on a dedicated server, so we're on a machine where the only thing on it is our stuff. It's not the typical hosting plan that's a few dollars a month, where you're on a server with many sites. There are plusses and minuses to being on a dedicated server and the big minus, which I found out the hard way, is that your hardware can fail and no one may tell you about it. I don't know what happens on shared servers because I'm not on one.
In any case, the hardware failed and because of the level of access on the server, we don't have the capability to monitor it to know that failure is imminent. This is something the hosting company should have been providing, but that's water under the bridge. It was at that point I was told I needed to get a new server, which they would do, and it would take a few weeks.
So we made it through the holiday season. But three months later, we were still on the old server, which failed several times, sometimes for days. I won't go into details about why the migration didn’t occur sooner, because that's a whole other can of worms that just has a lot to do with the reality that sometimes referrals are actually not referrals to dependable people.
We hobbled along with an interim solution waiting for the migration to be complete, and we were losing sales. It was not a fun time.
Q: So what has been the biggest lesson you’ve learned from this experience?
Well, I share this because there are some other women business owners who are involved in ecommerce like me. Whether you derive nearly all your income from ecommerce, or whether it's just a part of your strategy, I cannot stress just how important it is to think very far ahead about what your business will need to grow and scale. I think this is a cautionary tale for anyone, especially those who are involved in e-commerce.
When you develop your data backup and security plan, you have to think not only what are your needs today, but what will they be when you grow. It can be very difficult and painful to address those things in mid-stream.
Q: Do you have any specific observations to share?
First, cheap software programs don't scale. We thought we had a pretty decent solution when we invested three years ago, but better and more affordable options have developed since then. You need to select e-commerce and related security programs that are flexible, customizable, and can grow with you.
Second, cheap hardware doesn't scale. Again, we were on a dedicated server, so we weren't being cheap, but I learned the hard way about making sure that the actual server itself is constantly upgraded to meet new needs and growth. Honestly, I thought the hosting company would "take care of that". I really did. It's their machine; we just "rent" it.
That brings me to a third point. Make sure your hosting company is contractually obligated to be responsive, and that it takes that responsibility seriously. One time our server failed was over a weekend, and the tech support people on that shift were completely unhelpful and dragged their feet. That’s the main reason we’re moving to a new company because we need more monitoring and technical hands-on to balance the traffic when necessary, whether that means distributing traffic across multiple servers, or whatever they do, I am not a techie!
Fourth, think about scale from the beginning. Don't get into something "for now" and grow into something else. Moving ecommerce platforms is a pain. Data migration can be a hassle, learning a new system isn't easy, and can be risky in terms of data security. It’s important to think about growth long before you need to. A lot of people get into low cost solutions and have a hard time moving up from that.
Fifth, take extra precautions for security of confidential data, like credit card information. If you're using something like Volusion, or Yahoo store, or another ASP ecommerce program, it's not really an issue. We don’t store credit card data. We never have. You're not supposed to unless your software is PCI compliant. But there are tens of thousands of small merchants, running software that's bundled with hosting (like OS commerce), without security patches or updates, who may store credit card details, because they don't know any better, and their data is vulnerable.
Q: Any final thoughts about growth and data security you can offer other women business owners?
It doesn't take a whole lot to outgrow what you're using (hardware or software). It's not like we're making money hand over fist, or having a billion visitors daily. It's just that adding something on top of something, on top of something can really stress your "system".
For us, adding customer support software last year was probably what started to stress the system and the database server, not so much the site traffic itself. People don't think of scale until things start to fall apart at the seams and when I share this with other ecommerce friends, it's always "I'm not there yet" or "But, your business is soooo different than mine" or whatever the excuse.
As for our own company, it's going to get worse, a whole lot worse, before it gets better, but I am sharing my story with you so that you can think about growth, change and scale, long before your system gets pushed to its limit.
