Syncplicity Blog

At the end of June, I joined the support team as a Support Guru. This role is a unique challenge for me - no existing dedicated support team, low ticket volume, but technological needs that are detailed and complex. This blog series will follow me as I build the support team and services at Syncplicity to match the needs of our users.

What are your first steps?
One of the questions asked in my interview was “What will you change here in your first 30 days?” My answer? “Nothing.” I plan on spending my first 30 days with Syncplicity learning about our users, investigating the product, and learning about support patterns and current support tools. After that 30 days, I will be able to start moving support in a direction that is in line with the Syncplicity user base and company direction - but I know the learning doesn’t stop at 30 days. It is critical to have a constant presence with the support queue and user base to make sure that we continue to grow with our user base and their needs.

What is your hypothesis for how support will grow?

• Support Ticket Tracking
  Support ticketing volume is fairly low at Syncplicity - about 20 tickets a day. However, we do have an active forum and Twitter account. Because the nature of our support interactions require more one-on-one communication, it’s time to move support into a standard tracking system rather than a public forum. To do this, we will use a highly customized version of Salesforce to handle support interactions. We will also have a dedicated support Twitter account to help troubleshoot and announce status updates to our user base.
• Support  Business Hours
  The support team should remain relatively stable for the next few months and 8×5 support should cover our bases. However, after assessing the user base, we may want to offer first 8×7 support (covering international users and east coast users), and then finally offer 24×7 support as our product becomes mission critical in an organization.
• Professional Services
  Syncplicity’s current user base is very much an early adopter group - which means they like figuring things out themselves, or turning to a community-based support model for assistance. As we acquire more customers, we may offer training, customization, and engagement services to serve the entire breadth of technological knowledge and ability of our users.
• Documentation
  One of my first tasks at Syncplicity will be to centralize our FAQs and documentation into one user manual that is easy to search, update, and collaborate on with the Syncplicity team.

So, stay tuned as I start my new role at Syncplicity. Watch the company grow along with the support and services team!

In the last week, Carbonite, a large backup vendor, was reported to have lost data for a significant number of users. In articles like this and this, journalists and users have been asking, rightly so, “How safe is data in the cloud?” If companies providing Cloud Computing are charging money to manage others’ data, we should expect them to do a better job than the average user or company. But how much safety can we reasonably expect?

As someone who uses Cloud-based services each day, I follow these discussions with interest. How much safety do I expect from using the Cloud? I expect to have full access to every bit of data I have at all times. No not having access to some of my data and not the rest, requesting a restore and waiting for an email when it’s ready, no waiting for a DVD in the mail. In a nutshell, complete and instant access. But is this a reasonable expectation for all data managed through Cloud Computing?

In my view, no. “Cloud Computing” is a type of technology, just as a “car” is a type of vehicle. While a Volvo and a Pinto are both cars, few would argue that they can expect the same level of safety. Before I buy a car, I ask basic questions to find out how many airbags there are or whether there is traction control because I know each car is different.

Cloud Computing is exactly the same. Problems that affect one Cloud Computing solution may not affect another. I reasonably expected complete and instant access because I did my homework.

Below is a basic set of questions I use to determine how safe my data is. I’ve included answers for Syncplicity as well for those curious.

1. How is the data stored?

You want at least three geo-replicated copies. If you have three copies, if something fails, during the time it takes an automated system or a human person to fix the problem, you still have multiple copies elsewhere for safety. A secondary failure happening after a first is surprisingly likely. Geo-replication means the data is stored in multiple data centers. Natural disasters, power outages, and network failures can all disable a data center. These types of problems, while rare, also typically take days to resolve.

What Syncplicity does: For a higher level of data safety, Syncplicity keeps four geo-replicated copies of all data.

2. Are verifications being done on the data?

Storing data is easy. It’s making sure you can get it back, one month, one year, or one decade later that’s hard. If you’ve ever burned a CD and found you couldn’t read it back later, you’ve experienced bit rot. You want to find out how your provider verifies your data hasn’t suffered bit rot and is still accessible.

What Syncplicity does: Syncplicity works with active data so our systems are constantly writing and reading the data stored. On each read, a verification test is performed to ensure that the data is accessible and the same as what was stored so you can be assured that your data is always available to you when you need it.

3. How is the data managed?

You want to make sure that your data is encrypted, there is strong security and access controls, and a strong privacy policy. One thing to look out for is that the privacy and data disclosure policies of many companies cover contact information, but specifically exclude your actual data. Thus, while they aren’t allowed to give your home address to anyone, they could give them your tax return. This is just plain wrong, but something to watch for.

What Syncplicity does: Data stored in Syncplicity is transferred and stored fully encrypted with the same technologies used by banks and the military for classified information. Specifically, data is transferred over 128bit SSL and stored using the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). Syncplicity’s Privacy Policy is also one of the strongest in the industry. We make it a point to explicitly extend our privacy policy to cover all stored data. Viral Tarpara and I discussed what this all means in more detail in Understanding Privacy in Cloud Computing.

4. What happens if the company disappears tomorrow?You’ll want to make sure they have a good story as to how to get your data if they go out of business or the service fails in a prolonged manner.

What Syncplicity does: Syncplicity provides data management rather than pure data storage. In the case that Syncplicity disappears tomorrow, you still have full access to your data on each computer, device, or web application that you use. What you lose is the accessibility and management functions such as access to previous versions and revision history, access to your data from your cell phone, and simple sharing.

As luck would have it, my own laptop died a horrible death this week and my faith in the clouds and Syncplicity got put to the test. I’m happy to report that all of the cloud-based services I used, from hosted e-mail to online code repositories to Syncplicity, passed with flying colors.

Times are tough and it’s no secret there’s pressure on all of us to be more efficient at work and at home. With that in mind, Syncplicity would like to help. That’s why we’re so thrilled to announce a limited time promotion: sign up for a yearly account with us and get 100GB of storage for only $99.00 for the first year! That’s right, this means you can get twice as much space for sharing, syncing, backup, and anything else you like to do with Syncplicity, and pay no more than you would for our regular 50GB account!

If you don’t already have a Syncplicity account, browse over to http://www.syncplicity.com/promo and create one now. If you already do, but you’d like to take advantage of this offer and upgrade to an annual plan, just visit https://my.syncplicity.com/promo.

Did you know Syncplicity is on Twitter? If you’d like to be the first to hear about announcements like this in the future and stay up-to-date on what’s happening with the Syncplicity team, follow us @ http://twitter.com/syncplicity.

Thanks for your support!
The Syncplicity Team

Today we are excited to announce the publicly available Syncplicity Mac Beta Client!  With this release, Syncplicity users can share files between their Windows and Mac computers with ease. Any file changes made on one computer will sync to the other computer.

For those of you coming from backup products, there is no schedule option for Syncplicity.  The client watches your files for changes and uploads the new versions immediately, it doesn’t wait a minimum of 4 hours like you may be used to.  And for those using other ‘one folder’ sync products, you do not have to move all your documents to a new folder.  Syncplicity will sync them wherever they are now.

Just like with the Windows version, any Mac folder can become a Syncplicity folder by right clicking the folder and adding it to Syncplicity.  Once it’s a Syncplicity folder, the Syncplicity client will watch the folder for changes and immediately synchronize the changes to your other computers.  New and updated files will be securely backed up by Syncplicity, past revisions will be available on the Syncplicity website, and the latest versions will be sync’ed to your other computers.

Our Windows users will immediately recognize the Syncplicity icon sitting pretty in the menu bar.  Syncplicity communicates its status through the menu icon and the grayed lines in the pop-down menu.  For the geekier users, you can find out what Syncplicity is up to by watching the trace window.

If you have a Mac, give the new beta a whirl.  As this is a beta, please send us feedback!

Happy Sync’ing!

Isaac

It was a long night back on April 15th, the day we first unveiled Syncplicity to the world as a Beta service. We’ve been working on the product for about a year at that point and releasing its Beta version was a culmination of many sleepless nights, heated feature discussions, and personal bonds we forged in making our vision a reality. We weren’t sure how things were going to turn out - no one ever does - but that only added to our excitement and drive to make Syncplicity succeed.

Fast forward about six and a half months to today, November 3rd. There are twice as many of us now and we’re still hiring (apply on our Jobs page and look out for new openings soon!). We’re fortunate to be backed by a fantastic venture firm here in San Francisco and can’t wait to use the funds to deliver an even better service to you, our users. And we’re delighted to announce that we’re leaving the Beta label behind and launching a release version Syncplicity! We’ve dedicated the last few months to making sure the service was ready for prime time - expanded our infrastructure, sped up the service, and fixed the last few bugs still lurking around. We hope you like it!

Starting today, you can also subscribe to one of Syncplicity’s paid plans. If you’ve been keeping track of our plans around this, you’ll notice a few changes we’re making - changes we think you’re going to like. Our basic paid plan is now 25% larger (starts at 50GB) and if you tell your friends about Syncplicity, we’ll add an extra 2GB to your paid account for the first three that subscribe.

Our free plan isn’t going anywhere and is getting a bit of a makeover as well. All free users start off with 2GB, but we’ve made it easy to get that number up to 5GB, and even 7GB. How? Invite three friends and we’ll add 1GB to your account for each one who signs up.

Help us spread the word about Syncplicity and we’ll make sure you and your friends are getting one of the best deals out there. That’s right - unlike before, your friends will get 4GB free accounts and extra 5GB in their paid accounts if they decide to give Syncplicity a try based on your recommendation! This is a limited time offer though, so don’t delay!

Our special thanks go to all of our existing Beta users who have given us their invaluable feedback in the form of suggestions, bug reports, and even the occasional crash report. We appreciate it! As a small token of our gratitude, we’ll start your free accounts at 5GB and paid accounts at 60GB if you subscribe by the end of the year. Note that we’ll also keep your accounts unlimited until November 17th in order to give you plenty of time to make a decision as to which plan to choose.

As always, we’re looking forward to your feedback and working with you to make Syncplicity even better!

The Syncplicity Team

At 5 PM PDT on Tuesday, September 23rd, Syncplicity will be performing a major scheduled upgrade.  Given the size and complexity of the change, we expect the transition to take about seven hours. During this time, your computer will be unable to synchronize with Syncplicity and my.syncplicity.com will be unavailable.  www.syncplicity.com and blog.syncplicity.com will continue to be available.

You can leave your client running during this time — it will automatically reconnect and resume synchronizing when we are back up.  And of course, your data and account information will be kept safe & secure throughout the process.

Our team will be working throughout the night until this migration is complete — we will be twittering updates (http://twitter.com/syncplicity) along the way.  Feel free to say hi if you’re online too.

For those of you wondering what we’re up to, here’s the scoop:

Behind the scenes, Syncplicity runs on some pretty serious hardware.  Part of my job is to keep it running smoothly and plan for future growth.

The Syncplicity servers handle millions of requests every day.  During the past few months, Syncplicity has been growing quickly and our servers have been under an increasingly high load.  Even with several hardware upgrades, we’ve still had some brownouts during which some of you were unable to get the instant synchronization we built into the service.  Like you, we notice when our tray icon turns gray.

A month ago, we embarked on a plan to perform a major refresh of our infrastructure to eliminate these problems and ensure ample room to grow.  We’ve invested heavily in new servers and a new architecture that we’re finally ready to unveil.  Our server count is tripling. Individual servers will be more powerful.

For example, as part of the upgrade, all our database servers will be moving to quad-proc, quad-core servers.  Watching 16 cores in action is intense.  We’re also scaling out to increase redundancy and improve reliability and scalability.  This translates into a better experience for all users and as a small bonus, I know I’ll be sleeping better at night.

Thanks,
Isaac

VP of Technology

PC World has just published the results of its synchronization, backup, and sharing product shootout (available at PC World and published in the September ‘08 issue).

“With its breadth of features, ease of use, and added bonuses such as version control, Syncplicity is my top pick among sync services.” - Scott Dunn, PC World

Needless to say, we’re ecstatic that PC World has chosen Syncplicity as the number one choice over others in the area, especially against such established competitors!

We’ve always been huge believers in listening closely to users and delivering the best experience we could that everyone, from our moms to the geekiest of geeks, could use. It’s great to hear such strong validation from such a respected source. Time for some champagne!

Cheers!

Leonard, Ondrej, and Isaac

We’re honored! Lifehacker, “an award-winning, daily blog that features tips, shortcuts, and downloads that help you get things done smarter and more efficiently”, is running its popular Hive Five feature series on File Synchronization tools this week and Syncplicity is in the Top 5!

Syncplicity made the list after a few days of “qualifiers” when Lifehacker readers had a chance to root for their favorite tool. Now anyone can vote for any of the five contenders in a real poll and we hope you vote for Syncplicity!

Read all about it and vote at http://lifehacker.com/398696/five-best-file-syncing-tools. If you end up voting for someone else, be sure to let us know why in the Forums - we care about your feedback more than anything else!

Thanks for voting!

The Syncplicity Team

Update @ 8pm PST: Everything is back up and the service is running normally. Send an e-mail to support@syncplicity.com if you’re running into any problems.

A cluster of servers hosted at Rackspace got knocked offline due to a power failure at Rackspace. Included in this cluster are the Syncplicity web servers as well as the main Syncplicity database servers. We’re waiting on Rackspace to stabilize our rack and are working with Rackspace right now to make sure everything comes back online normally. We’ll post updates as we hear them.

Last update from Rackspace:

July 9th 2008 — At approximately 5:00 P.M. CDT, our DFW data center experienced a brief loss of utility power that caused a transfer over to generator as designed. During this transition, some of the chillers did not start up correctly and temperatures within certain areas of the DC began to rise to the 90’s. The issue has been isolated and temperatures are decreasing steadily. We are investigating this issue and will provide future updates as they come available.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you or your customers.

Today, we’re excited to announce that all the files you’re backing up & sync’ing with Syncplicity are available from your iPhone!  We made an optimized version of our website just for our iPhone (and iPod Touch) users.  The website currently lets you view documents, photos, and hear your mp3s.

If you have an iPhone, here’s what you’ll see when you login and try to open the San Francisco Muni Map PDF:

To view the site, navigate to https://m.syncplicity.com on your iPhone.  The https://my.syncplicity.com site redirects if it detects you’re on an iPhone.  And, be sure to add it to your home screen for easier access by clicking the plus icon and clicking “Add to Home Screen”.

Let us know if you’re using it and how you’d like to see it extended.

Cheers,
Isaac