Peter’s back with Swizzle
NZ Internet identity Peter Mott of 2day fame (sold to ICONZ a few years ago) is back in the market with a new hosted service based on virtualization.
Swizzle Business Model
Simple and practical
Like an ocean going yacht, we have two or more of everything that’s important, and things that are not so important don’t exist.
This means you don’t pay for unnessary frills, and what you do pay for stays running.
Core ingredients
- HP Proliant DL series servers
- VMware ESXi Hardware virtualisation
- The Swizzle web site
HP enterprise-class servers, especially with the amount of processor, memory, disk and redundant options we run in them, are often well beyond the budget of a small business.
Fortunately, with the aid of hardware virtualisation we can slice them into a number of smaller servers (virtual machines) and rent them to you at prices that fit your IT budget.
blog
Site’s down at the moment — has it been Druried?
So it’s a VPS service… What differentiates it from all the other VPS providers? The extreme high prices?
Granted, your data is kept in New Zealand (and this will be enough for a few customers), but is there any technical advantage over say, Slicehost (at one tenth the price) or any of the US based VPS solutions?
Slicehost is perhaps not the best example (though their service is actually amazing for the price - I am a very happy customer, only using them for web hosting), but VPS is literally everywhere, and this Swizzle deal just seems the same as all the rest, with an extra digit on the pricetag…
Slicehost is linux-only and uses xen on commodity hardware, which is hardly the same thing. A better question might be: why are you paying for that at all? :-)
Anyway, I think Rod’s point was more that Mott is back in the game, which usually means interesting things are about to happen.
As I mentioned, Slicehost isn’t the best example, but I didn’t have time to look around for a more direct comparison. On closer inspection, there are a ton of Windows/VMWare VPS solutions around which still make the above product look quite unappealing.
This just reads like another example of Kiwis wanking each other off for creating just-another-startup. Don’t get me wrong, there are some great tech startups coming out of NZ right now (I think Xero is absolutely brilliant, or I wouldn’t be reading this blog), but it gets tiring to constantly hear the ‘Silicon Welly’ crowd give kudos to anyone that is willing to create a half-way average company (so long as their website meets its quota of web2.0 cliches; a name like swizzle helps too).
Swizzle… I wonder if Peter Mott has brought his helpful, unassuming manner, acceptance first that the customer is right, not out of the basement service, friendly attitude to this new venture!! Price is very high - look at other NZ VPS comps who have a track record… much lower. Good luck to new customers if any. Rod … you’re right Mott is a NZ Internet identity, could be interpreted many ways.
The basement is often the best place to start a business. Ask Sam Morgan. In fact, its the folk who operate out of their home that often are the biggest threat to established business.
If you want low cost VPS web hosting, then by all means choose slicehost.com. Swizzle isn’t in that space.
Confusion about what we do is probably occurring due to my previous company being a retail web host, and folk associating my name with that sort of offering.
We can certainly improve the Swizzle site to better communicate what it is we do. It’s only one day old.
Explaining things in plain simple English is an art. I may be a little rusty after a few years playing with boats.
Thanks to all those who welcomed me back and also to those who clearly would prefer I wasn’t.
@Evan,
I think kudos should be given to anyone with the motivation to start a “half-way average company”. Some of them might even turn out to be half way decent. Anyone with the drive to start a company, giving up their own time and money they could be earning (which in IT is generally pretty good) should be congratulated for trying. Celebrated even. Not knocked just because they haven’t made a billion dollars. Succeed or fail, those guys are all going to learn valuable lessons.
Its that sort of thinking, only celebrate once we’ve achieved success, that creates mediocrity. Creating a “half-way average” company might just be someones first step to creating a great success. Starting a ’start-up’ makes you learn a whole lot of lessons, real quick.
“Kiwis wanking each other off for creating just another startup” reads like a tall poppy cutter, who will only respect success, not the trying. Just what we need.
I look forward to your further clarity on the 1 day old site… for instance what backup plans / redundancy do you have in place when your microwave oven blows the house fuses? Is the basement on a different circuit? Greg I full agree we should give kudos half-way average companies - just not half-way average personalities!
People keep saying stuff like “look at other NZ VPS comps who have a track record”. I’m open to suggestions — I’ve tried four in the last six months and they were all appallingly, laughably bad. I’m hoping Mott will get it right, because Lord knows no one else has**, at least in NZ.
Have you actually tried any of these “VPS comps”? As in spent actual money? It sounds more like you just have some noisy grudge against this particular one. :-)
** Slicehost does look slick, though. Cheers for the pointer, Evan.
For the avoidance of doubt, Swizzle is properly funded and has its first server node in Citylink’s Auckland data centre.
My previous company owned a shiny new data centre in Takapuna when I sold it.
And as for the basement, the power only feeds the lights which help me find my way to the car. And its been this way for many years now.
Rob, there is no question we will get it right. It may take a few days but we will get there.
@Greg - couldn’t agree more.
After many years working on various projects overseas I have recently returned to NZ to get a new startup off the ground. It’s not easy and there’s always something that can be done better but it’s encouraging to see that there is an active start-up community up here.
Good luck with new venture Peter!