Have you heard of Comet Server and seen the changes we’ve been making? Basically, Comet Server is the heart of the system that directs and manages the flow data from your customers. Recently we’ve been making a few changes to the server, in terms of appearance and refining the layout.
If you're familiar with the server, things will look a bit different. As with everything, we’re always looking for ways to improve and make things better. This is done through an approach of continuous refinement which is also referred to as ‘Kaizen’ in Japanese and famously popular with auto manufacturer Nissan. So what you’re seeing isn’t a final product, its instead but one of many steps forward.
Originally it was a very raw interface with minimal design, so we’ve improved the previous navigation, put things in more obvious places, inserted page titles so that you knew where you were, etc.
We wanted it to feel like a modern, slicker UI with better coherence building on our initial design, which we recognised could be made more friendly. Don’t get me wrong, nothing about the previous design is bad, but it lacked the warm intuitive element we wanted.
We’ve also made it more consistent with our overall Comet branding. Also now there’s visual configuration options in the web interface to configure storage vaults, protected items and the server itself.
Like all good design, you probably won’t notice the design and thought has gone into it in the first place. This is exemplified with the advent of many smartphones that do not come with instruction manuals.
What’s your take on intuitive design? Is it important or do we place too much emphasis on it?
What's the difference between Comet's Stable and Voyager releases?
Here at Comet, we keep things easy for you, offering two streams of our software to keep headaches at a minimum. We call these our STABLE and VOYAGER releases, both offering the same great service, but each with a different purpose.
So which is right for you? Let us explain it just a little bit more.
If you’re a business that values security and stability in your backup service, then our STABLE stream is for you. We spend a lot of our time fine-tuning our software, addressing any problems and making sure you get the best experience from Comet, which is why we call this the STABLE stream. Its only goal is providing a superb, stable service, and we only make quarterly updates as to keep your service running as efficiently and issue free as possible.
Now, if you’re a firm or a developer seeking a service that is just as innovative and up to speed as you are, we’ve got you covered! The VOYAGER stream, named after our favourite satellite, Voyager-1 is where we test new features and updates. It does also, however, offer its own potential problems, but as anyone involved in the software or technology industry knows, that’s unavoidable when you’re creating actively developing your product.
So, which is right for you? It really depends on what you’re looking for. If you’re a business which is typically risk averse, then using the STABLE stream would be the best option for you. This release stream only updates when the features are fully tested and the service is at its best. If you require more frequent updates for functionality and features, VOYAGER is definitely what we would recommend.
Consider this scenario for just a moment: You’re working hard on your next product update or your service when one of the tools you use is given a brand new, major update, which requires some support and updates on our end. Now you have a choice, you can either choose to remain on the STABLE stream and avoid any issues, which could stop you from updating the software until the next version of the stream is released. VOYAGER, however, would get those updates quickly, which would help with your functionality, but also some of the features are not final product.
Regardless of which release you choose, you’re completely supported 24/7 … no matter what. If you want to let us know about any feature ideas, complaints or any other form of feedback, we encourage you to get in touch.
Feedback is a wonderful gift. Whether it’s good or bad, it is absolutely crucial to business.
Throughout the development of MyClient and Comet, we’ve always taken on board feedback because it’s helped shape the final product. We may think we know everything about our product but nobody knows better about it than the ones who are actually using it. You’ve gotta trust these people; your clients. And let’s face it, if they’ve taken the time to offer feedback, the least we can do is to take it on board.
We’ve taken the time to understand their problems, needs and wants..so that what we’re building is relevant to them from their perspective, not just what we thought they needed. This is an important distinction.
In other words, we didn’t build a product and tried to find an audience (which is how many products and services are built), we found an audience and then designed a product specifically for them.
It’d be fair to say that some of the conversations have been tough and sometimes not entirely pleasant. Let’s face it, not many people enjoy hearing criticism about their work. But we don't look at it as criticism, rather a stepping stone on the path to creating best product we can.
We’ve learnt that soliciting feedback (from both clients and fellow staff members) serves two purposes:
you receive actionable feedback to improve your product or service
if it’s a complaint, you can guarantee the the complainer will feel better, especially if you acknowledge them and their concerns.
we’re in this to make the best backup product on the market
This is why we thank people for their feedback, acknowledge the situation and then consider and action change (if necessary). Communication is a two-way-street and for us at Comet, we like to leave the door wide open and communicate as often and as regular as possible; whether it’s good or bad news we want to hear about it because we’re in this to make the best backup product on the market.
This week we sat down with Josh Flores about his approach to communication and why speaking as opposed to emailing is the standard for Comet.
One of the best things about my job is dealing with people. Some might think is unusual, given that we develop software for the backup industry … but it’s true. Whilst it’s very easy to fall into the stereotype of hiding behind emails and acting inaccessible to our clients, the reverse is proving to be rather successful.
In this day and age of automation and e-commerce, it is far to easy to not be seen by clients. Here at Comet, we have adopted a hands-on, overly-communicative approach. Why? Because our clients have requested it. It’s a fact that people to business with people, not faceless companies. So we try to be as people-orientated as much as possible.
“But what if I don’t want to talk with a person?”, I hear you cry? In my experience, people don’t want to deal with other people if it is a transactional relationship involving the purchase of a commodity. For example, if I am buying a chocolate bar, I’m likely to have done my research. I know what I want, and I therefore don’t need to hear from a customer service manager. It’s a chocolate bar. Sure, I’ll exchange pleasantries with the shopkeeper, but I don’t need to receive a brochure from the manufacturer of the chocolate bar, nor do I wish to engage in a conversation about the variety of other flavours available.
But what if I’m purchasing a somewhat complicated product or service? What if I have questions before I buy? What if I have questions after I buy? What if I need some clarification? What if I need some support? If I am the customer then I expect someone to make themselves available to solve my issue. This is our perspective here at Comet; people do business with people, not companies. Sure, we have ticket support available but where ever possible we’ll always pick up the phone.
From our point-of-view, it’s easier to pick up the phone and solve issues there and then, rather than sending emails back and forward. We do use email, but we use them reiterate and summarise the conversation. Some companies even ban emails and have become more productive as a result (https://hbr.org/2016/06/some-companies-are-banning-email-and-getting-more-done)
The reason we do all of this is because we want satisfied customers. If you’re a satisfied customer you’re more likely to recommend the product or service to others. As a startup, we value this greatly. Hence, we’re all about overly communicating, and doing everything we can to ensure customer satisfaction. So if you’re a customer of ours, or you’d like to be, let us know how we can help. We’re here for you. Always.
Curious about how backup started? We sat down with backup enthusiast and lead developer behind Comet, Mason Giles
Where it all began... tape anyone?
Back in the 60s, computers were called "mainframes" and typically took up most of the space in a room - and even back then, data backup was an issue. Information was stored up on tapes, and the process of backing up and retrieving data was laborious. This was even highlighted in the show "Some Mothers do 'Ave Em" with accident-prone Frank Spencer destroying tapes and eventually the computer itself:
Tape backup was a plausible option for many businesses right through until the mid ‘90s, and magnetic "tape drives" were commercially available for your computers and servers. The usual approach was to buy 5 tapes (one for each day of the working week); and every day you'd bring in last week's tape and record the day's work over it.
But despite a reasonable per-tape cost, it quickly became expensive to scale the concept beyond more than a few days of history – and when you needed something back, you'd have to "play back" the entire tape onto your computer - a long process if you only need to recover a single file!
It was a simple enough solution at the time. Tape drives offered high storage capacity and LTO tapes continue this tradition today. But the era of tape backup will be remembered mostly as being inconvenient to restore data, cumbersome to verify, and - easy to forget!
Fast forward (pardon the pun) a few decades to the arrival of something called incremental backup. Instead of taking a full copy of each file, it became possible to determine exactly what had changed since yesterday, and only back up the difference. This reduced the amount of data needed to store each successive backup, making it feasible to send your data to hard drives and network accounts instead of tape - and with a trend of increasing internet speeds worldwide, online backup was born.
This process of backing up to a device or the cloud was certainly more efficient than using tapes. The largest benefit was in automation - no longer did someone have to remember to change the tapes every day. But critically, it became complicated to restore your data. Right when you need it most, recovery now involves restoring the very original file and then applying every modification on top of it. This could require lots of overhead, processing, figuring which pieces fit where - and if one modification is lost or damaged, then the whole system falls down.
Many vendors attempted to paper over some flaws in this basic concept, each taking a step forward but two steps back – don’t get us started on the serious drawbacks of differential backup, in-file diffs, consolidated images, hardlink backup, synthetic full images, or reverse / fast-forward chains...
Comet is the next generation in backup strategy. In fact, you might say that it's a fundamental change in how backup works. Instead of looking at the differences between one day and the next, Comet looks deep into file contents to identify time-invariant chunks.
What's the benefit? Our technology dramatically reduces processing overhead. It minimizes the amount of data transfer and storage for both initial and successive jobs, intelligently handling already-stored content within files, across renames, and variable-length insertions simply as a matter of course. It offers equally fast access to both your latest version and the oldest historical data, without ever needing roll-up operations, meaning encryption and cloud storage work correctly - even with an arbitrary history length.
So, if it's speed you're after, then why not give Comet a try. The only thing restricting you is the speed of your computer and your internet connection. We're really proud of the quick time it takes to install the server and the super-fast time it takes create a backup.
We sat down with Peter Thomas, CEO of Comet to understand the internal culture he has established within Comet and his decision why to undertake this new venture.
What if you had the chance to build something that helped other SMEs grow? would you do it? Would you take the entrepreneurial risk and start again from scratch?
That’s exactly what we’ve done here at Comet. This company is a bit different from other companies I’ve built in that Comet is about letting others drive the business. I’m letting it grow organically and although I’m sitting in the big chair, I’m listening to the team and letting them drive the ship.
In order to “let go” and let others contribute, we here at Comet work in a culture of sharing ideas. This usually involves lots of debate, which is a good thing. When people hear the word debate, their first thought is that of arguing.
Some people don’t like to debate; they feel it’s too confrontational and they don’t want to offend anyone.
The reality couldn’t be further from the truth. With debate comes the proactive discussion of ideas … and every time we do it we end up in a better place for it.
I have a saying that I encourage the team to adopt: “Fight your corner”. If you believe something needs to be done, for goodness sake say something. If you disagree with a particular direction we’re heading, then speak up. This open culture of allowing everyone from developers to customers service staff contribute, has done wonders. It’d be fair to say that we wouldn’t have made the progress we have without operating in this style of environment.
It’s given us new ideas, it’s helped change the direction a few times and refocused some of our priorities. And it’s nice to be able to listen to the team, and let them have their say. They feel like they’re making a contribution and they are effectively steering the ship.
This concept of listening is something that we’re pretty passionate about here at Comet. Comet started because in the backup space we felt as if many SMEs had been let down by some of their service providers. They weren’t being listened to. Some of the backup companies had bypassed the MSPs they’d dealt with and decided to go straight to the end user; a betrayal of the people who had helped build the backup companies.
Witnessing this first hand, through our involvement with MyClient Global, we listened and we decided that action needed to be taken. It seems like a lifetime ago but now here we are with Comet - a backup solution that will help MSPs and SMEs get what they need. It seems pretty simple: Listen to your customer and don’t try bypass them and sell to their customers!
In building Comet I basically want to give back to the SMEs what they had - the ability to sell a service under their own brand without competing with their own supplier, on their own terms.
This is very significant, especially if you’ve ever been involved in an SME. We all know that SMEs are the lifeblood of any community or economy, and that SMEs can often deliver a service far superior to any corporate. So it only makes sense to give back and help.
So to that end, if you’ve any ideas, thoughts, or you simply want to have your say, follow us on Twitter, and get involved in the conversations. We need your help to shape Comet.
This is our brand new platform where we will be sharing our ideas, thoughts and other tid-bits on everything backup, MSP and Comet related.
Communication and keeping the conversation flowing is paramount to what we do here at Comet, so get involved - the comment section will always be open on our articles so let us know what you think.
It’s also the platform where we can go into a bit more depth about Comet, and be slightly more opinionated :)
If it’s Comet updates you’re after, head on over to the Changelog.
But we're looking forward to having a more flexible medium to share and engage with you on.
