VISI and ColdFusion Hosting: A Stable Environment for Enterprise Development

Apr 06, 2006

By Judith Dinowitz

VISI, a sponsor of this year's cf.Objective() conference and the largest privately-owned web hosting provider in Minneapolis, has a philosophy on ColdFusion upgrades that may raise some eyebrows. Gary Elfert, Sales and Marketing Director of VISI, explained that the company never upgrades their ColdFusion versions, preferring, instead, to install brand new systems for VISI's clients to support ColdFusion MX 6 and 7. "This allows customers the opportunity to migrate platforms without risking the stability of their site," said Elfert. "They can test their code for stability, and complete the move once they're comfortable with the new platform. We still have systems running ColdFusion 4."

This philosophy extends to other software products as well. "We've done the same procedure for all major upgrades, such as when upgrading from Windows 2000 to 2003 or from Frontpage 2000 to 2003. If it's not broken, don't fix it. It may seem simple but that simple philosophy has kept our environment stable for years," Elfert said. He was quick to qualify this. "That's not to say we don't stay current on minor upgrades and patches, of course!"

VISI keeps to the same philosophy for its Windows Shared Hosting packages and Linux Shared Hosting packages. "When we perform upgrades or add new services, we give customers the option to transition their site to a new server with the upgraded software," said Elfert. "This way, they can plan out the transition to ensure no downtime. The only cost to move between plans is the setup fee, which varies according to the web hosting package."

VISI's Specialty: Business-class Hosting and Support

Elfert noted that VISI specializes in business-class hosting and has many ColdFusion customers. "In fact," he added, "our own support site for our customers is written in ColdFusion." However, VISI does not promise to help you with your ColdFusion code. "Although we have some ColdFusion expertise on-staff, we focus on supporting the hardware, operating system and application servers. We leave ColdFusion development to the experts," Elfert said. "When customers need help with their development, we refer them to partners we've worked with."

When it comes to hardware support, VISI has what Elfert described as "old ideas": professional service, unquestioned integrity, and client accountability. "VISI stands out among web hosting providers for our customer support. Anyone can tell you how great his company is. The most exciting part of my job is hearing it from our customers," said Elfert.

Scott Ekman, Director of Internet Marketing of Rockler Woodworking and Hardware, agreed with Elfert's assessment. He said, "VISI/Digital North is very competent and business-oriented. As an e-commerce business, our Website uptime needs to be 99.9%. Someone has to make sure it's always up and VISI/Digital North is on top of the situation with professional, reliable and consistent service. Everything VISI/Digital North has done has been consistent."

Supporting ColdFusion in Minnesota

VISI is actually VISI/Digital North, due to a recent merger of the two companies on December 7th, 2005. Prior to the merger, VISI and Digital North had been working together for about four years, with Digital North handling all of VISI's high-end web hosting and managed servers. In addition to web hosting and dedicated servers, they offer a variety of consumer and business connectivity solutions, providing connectivity to over 10,000 residential and business customers in the Twin Cities.

VISI has been a longstanding sponsor of the Twin Cities ColdFusion User Group, and their CTO, Jason Baker, has been a regular member of the group. They first heard about cf.Objective() at the user group, and decided to sponsor the conference as a way of supporting technology in Minnesota. "We want companies to recognize that Minnesota is strong in technology and committed to staying on the cutting edge," said Elfert.

You can find out more about VISI and about their recent merger with Digital North at http://home.visi.com/mediakit.

Judith Dinowitz is Editor-in-Chief of Fusion Authority, the House of Fusion Technical Magazine. She is well-known as the CFEditor, having worked on many articles and books for other publications.

Copy This Article's Url To Clipboard

Add Comments