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The most exciting development for us is that we have once again ramped up our technical team, taking on new support and network technicians. This is the third part of our programme to build the network. Chris Andrews is now well established as our head of support and I know that many of you have already spoken to him. The team developing around Chris and Neil will complete its expansion in November, when we take on our final wave of technical staff. You can hear more on this in September@ukfast. Over the last month, I’ve analysed all the responses to the communications survey you very kindly filled out and we’ve begun implementing a number of new good practice policies as a result. The Tech Tip and Marketing minute are considered the most useful aspects and the Hot Topic is being focussed more closely on the issues of Internet Law and E-commerce – articles that directly affect you and your business on the Internet. |
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September@UKFast – Managing growth
JB: How easy has it been to find the right staff? LJ: Because we’ve been proactive, it has allowed us breathing space to be very choosy about who we employ. Our psychometric testing has also given us a great insight into building teams effectively. CA: We’ve been focussed on bringing in staff with minimum level 3 and Infrastructure support skills and we’re really pleased with the new recruits. JB: Where do the new staff fit in? LJ: When we won our first national award in 2004 it was attributed to the personal nature of our support team and the customer facing environment created. We’re determined to keep this emphasis. The new drive doesn’t put a layer in front of the high quality support it triples the existing environment. CA: As well as this, we continue to be structured by discipline (Linux/Windows) and will ensure that the right issues are directed to the right competences immediately. JB: And we’re only at stage three right now? LJ: Yes, in a month or so, we are moving into new offices, three times the current size and next week we open a new suite at MANOC2 which allows us to double the network staff based at the data centre. And over the next three months we continue to look for the brightest, energetic and knowledgeable technical staff the UK has to offer. JB: Chris, you yourself were part of the extensive recruitment policy. How are you settling in? CA: It’s good for me to have been through Lawrence’s rigorous selection process myself, which included multiple interviews and psychometric profiling, it helped me to see that his focus on team work and team fit is core to UKFast's success. It also means I’m working with the brightest and most highly motivated team, which is built on solid principals for delivering exceptional levels of service. My priority is to continue expanding the technical support capability ahead of the UKFast growth curve - ensuring that we don't become victims of our own success.  The last month has also seen the closing date for the UKFast Internet Awards. If you haven’t got your entry in then this is absolutely the last chance to do it. Whether you’re the best web designer, e-commerce or community site or an Internet entrepreneur, let us know about it now, or forever hold your peace – at least until next year anyway!
Here’s the link to the awards entry page behind the client area. Just login and away you go. Entries received before the end of Monday 2nd October will be accepted.
While our boys, Leon and Gregorio didn’t manage a victory for us, they did end up in first and third places in the championship with all to play for in the final round at Brands Hatch this coming weekend. Gregorio even found time on the final parade lap for some antics on track in front of our seats.
 Monitoring with stats  All clients hosted by UKFast can access their AW Stats and they are an excellent resource for honing a strategy. Any marketing manager will tell you that feedback is a crucial part of building a strong campaign. The Internet has made feedback available in forms that we would never have expected before.
AW Stats tell us how many unique users we’ve had each month on a website, which days in each month we had more visitors, even, which hours of the day are our busiest and by how much. In addition, you can find out the average duration of a visit, which browsers they are using and most crucially, where they are coming from. Not only this, but when you know which search engines are driving them to you, you can also see which search terms are the catalysts for this. By analysing these you can build your online marketing strategies like never before. So if you don’t already know, here’s how you access them: Resellers and shared hosting clients have access to AW Stats through their client login: Services> Domains link>Search for your domains. Dedicated server clients will have them set up on their own systems. All Linux server customers have it done automatically. When the server is installed and details are emailed out, links to the stats are included. As Windows clients you will have set them up through your control panel. But if you are unsure, visit our FAQ’s pages within your client area. Use the support tab, click on FAQ’s on the right and go to section 11: Windows Dedicated Servers. It is then FAQ 3 – How do I set up AW Stats? Vote for UKFast
For almost a year and a half, we’ve been providing The Continum Group with a major amount of premium grade bandwidth and it’s for a very good reason. Continum’s three companies are rapidly growing and highly innovative. There’s a good chance that you could benefit from at least one of their services. I’d like to throw the spotlight on one particular arm that uses its fair share of the bandwidth. Xempower provides innovative software, application hosting and development and will no doubt have made more than just enquiries about the new dotmobi top level domain. From cost effective SMS communication systems to GPRS based project diaries, they’ve got ‘communications on the move’ down to a fine art. And it doesn’t stop there, one of my favourite gadgets is the Number Washer, which scans mobile and land lines to find out which are active. It’s great for a telesales team as they can clean their lists from the outset improving their contact number rates. It’s well worth taking a look at both www.continum.co.uk and www.xempower.co.uk Internet Law – the data retention directive.
I’m interested in your thoughts on this. After the London bombings last year, ISP’s were contacted and asked to retain an amount of email/communication data. This instance has added weight to the directive that charges UK network operators to retain consumer data “for periods not less than 6 months and not more than two years from the date of the communication.” For ISP’s we are told that this period is likely to be 6 months rather than 2 years. Public opinion is difficult to gauge on this. In a recent poll, 83% of those asked felt it was important to protect personal information. At the same time 85% were worried that their own data might be passed on to unknown organisations. So the idea of retaining data only increases this risk in their minds. We have to be clear about what is retained however. For instance, the directive does not require content of an email to be kept, just the details of who sent it, where it was sent, at what time, the type of service used, on what type of equipment and the location of this service. Also, as UKFast is a B2B supplier, there is a clouded area in the directive around how critical retention of business data is. The difficulty lies around home office connections and how you can ascertain whether communication is undertaken in a business capacity or a personal one. How much data UKFast will need to retain is therefore an ongoing discussion within the directive. I’d be interested in your opinions on data retention. Many of you have many clients of your own – especially our big ADSL resellers and would have to discuss this directive with them and take into account their concerns. Do you think we should be retaining all data for the legal term of 6 months? Do you see ways to delineate business communication and personal? Should ISP’s be compensated for the cost of storing the extra data, considering the hundreds of thousands of emails that are sent on the UKFast network every day? The political reality seems to be that data retention is here to stay and there are some excellent reasons for it, but whose responsibility do you think it is to keep the data and cover the expense for it? Do you see this affecting you directly? Get in touch with me if you would like more information on this issue. Before I go, I'd like to wish the Airwaves-Ducati team the very best for the final round of the Superbikes championship at Brands Hatch this Sunday. Here's to a stonking one two. As ever, I hope the Newsletter has provided a useful insight into UKFast. Once again, I look forward to speaking to many of you before next month. Best wishes,
For more information on the range of UKFast products and services go to http://www.ukfast.net/index.html 
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Lawrence Jones anticipated UKFast’s rate of growth as we came into 2006 and put in place a 4-part recruitment plan for our technical division in order to stay two or three steps ahead of the curve. Now, three quarters of the way through, with a raft of 5 new support staff joining the company next week, I managed to pin Lawrence and Chris Andrews down to find out more.
This month we also had the chance to offer clients a day out at Silverstone and I was lucky enough to go along myself. Dan Oliver of .Net and his wife Tanya are major motor sport fans and provided most of the knowledge for our table, which also included Clive Irons and Amy Kale of Lowi Group and Dave Bagnall of Apartments Abroad with partner Melissa Jones. Graeme and I resisted the temptation to partner up, enjoying the day regardless!
We’ve combined the tech tip and the marketing minute this month because monitoring is about both checking your usage and gaining feedback on what is working and what is not, from a marketing perspective.
Mega bandwidth for Continum
Last week I represented UKFast at the ISPA Conference, which was held at Eversheds House in Manchester. Hosted by one of the UK’s largest law firms, it was no surprise that much of the agenda covered legal issues. One of the most prevalent of these was the data retention directive which is due to come into law in September 2007.
