As a customer of Exabytes, do you like and enjoy looking at the graphics in our newsletters? When you read our company blog or browse Exabytes’ newly launched InstantIT.Asia.com, are your senses ‘livened up’ by the striking Red Dragon representing InstantIT.Asia?

While some like to write, there are quite a number of artistic people who prefer to let a picture speak a thousand words! Their pen might not be as mighty as the sword, but with their Apple laptops and Photoshop skills they are certainly able to express themselves at length and influence numerous readers.

Captivating the attention of our website readers at first sight is their duty, and beautifying Exabytes’ websites, blogs, banners, etc is their enjoyment. Born to see everything in life from the artistic point of view, let’s put our hands together to welcome our Web and Graphic Designers – Vickson Tan and Alysa Lee aka The Artists of Exabytes!!!

Vickson Tan, or more warmly known as ‘sonson’ is the leader of our creative team. At first impression, you will probably see a very tall person who speaks very loudly and appears less seriously at work. This is however, just a facade!

Vickson’s rule of thumb is always treat his work as something fun, rather than some mundane and routine tasks. He believes in order to come out with something refreshing, brand new and original, a designer will need to be exposed to other good designs and genuinely enjoys his work.

During his free time, the very versatile Vickson is also a professional photographer. He takes photos at different occasions which include wedding, company function, graduation ceremony, etc. An artist by nature, Vickson has so far showcased his photography skills at more than 35 occasions. And did I mention that he is also a tutor of Web Design? A workaholic for sure, Vickson always makes us wonder how he manages to juggle so many different tasks.

On a personal level, Vickson is someone who cherishes friendship very much. As one of his friends myself, I would say he is the type of person who is willing to sacrifice a lot of things just to lend a helping hand to his friends.

Coming up next is Exabytes’ compulsive laughter (laughter → a person who laughs), Alysa Lee. A lot of us try not to tell jokes in front of her as when she laughs, it sounds exactly like a malfunctioned machine gun which never stops. Unfortunately, our efforts have been in vain as even the lamest joke told will send her laughing like a maniac. Not only that, sometimes her laughter can be heard even when we stand at the main entrance of our office, which is around 10 meters from her desk. Aih….

Professionally, Alysa believes that a good designer must always accept people’s comments and learn from there. Besides, she sees meeting different demands and requirements from different clients as the biggest challenge in her profession. As a proactive person, Alysa keeps herself motivated by constantly upgrading her skills and knowledge in the field of design.

Outside work, Alysa makes handcrafts like a pro. Her recent ‘production’, a Russian Doll Purse was sold immediately after it was uploaded to her personal website. Her other handcraft collections include a clay penholder, cloth teddy bear, Domo Kun, etc.

Our especially multitalented individuals in our creative team are always working at their best to enhance the visual effects our customers see, and constantly striving to improve the uniqueness of their design. Although they are the last department featured, their contribution is nothing less than other departments. Lastly, we would like to express our gratitude to our blog readers who follow us all this while, and we thank you for your interest in reading about our dedicated staff who work behind the scene.

With this final feature on the entire workforce of Exabytes, we are sure that our customers have now known us better, and sending in helpdesk tickets or calling in to communicate with us is definitely a friendlier experience now! 

Insight @ Exabytes!

To begin from where it was left . . .

16th October 2010 Post Lunch

To drive away the lethargy, we were drawn into some truly refreshing activities. ‘Big fish-small fish’ being the one where everyone was completely in, big fish was symbolized with hands together & small fish was hands apart, the rank opposite – this being done to achieve tandem between brain and body. The big fish small fish has been pronounced incorrectly as big “shit”, small “shit” when we are going fast in this game. Was fun all the more, we got some realllly big fishes and some very very tiny ones too!

In the end, it was only two people who were left to get it right till the finish.

Everyone are too excited in this game and no picture taken for this game. But … we have a video for you here.

Big Fish Small Fish

Then began what was possibly the most engaging, mentally challenging and possibly the defining activity of the entire two day event. This was called “Make Your Own Money” where the four groups which had already been formed took up individual departments too, there was the Sales & Marketing department, Customer Service, Technical support and Finance department. All the department were given charts for this. We had to call out “X” or “Y” and then would win or lose money depending on the combination of “X” or “Y” received, departments would make millions or lose millions. To begin with, the technical support team led the pack till the 4th round, in the 5th round, stakes were doubled where you lose double money or win double money, the 8th round was triple money, 10th round was five times money.

It was all going well till the 5th round where stakes multiplied, some departments were making millions, some losing millions, not very good for the company. In true team-building spirit of co-operation, the department heads and members came together and decided to flash the same cards from round 8 to ensure the company made handsome profits across all departments! There was such a lot of discussions, arguments, division and also co-operation, it symbolized and truly encapsulated the entire two day event. In the end, the company was the winner, as it should always be!

Everyone was so excited getting the graduation certificate for this fruitful team building.

Group Photo time for everyone that attended this ExaBee Langkawi Team Building.

Follow by Individual team photo.

Dinner on Saturday was “steam-boat” and lot of spirits too (we were in Langkawi, how can we let go this opportunity! ). It was fun, merry-making, lot of healthy banter too. Thus ended Friday & Saturday.

17th October 2010

An early breakfast gathering at 08.00 took place at the hotel lobby. We all had checked out and converged for breakfast and a sort of tour around Langkawi.

Even here, true to our “Customer First” motto, we had our support personnel on duty from the hotel. They were to join us later and some of the members who had been part of the morning batch would take up duty in the noon.

Post breakfast, we departed to experience the cable-car ride, a 30 minute drive from the hotel.

It was a truly amazing, stomach-churning experience for some, but wonderfully riveted with nature. From level zero to 850 meters above sea-level in just about 15 to 20 minutes is an uplifting (pun intended) feeling! After reaching the topmost station, we walked towards the cable bridge and walk-way put up for tourists and visitors to literally walk through heavens, such was the mist and haze here. At that height, it was so breezy, we had hairs going around everywhere, some people being pushed by the wind and some of us enjoying 100Plus! Below are some pictures from there, just see the panoramic views and nature in its purest form.

We came down from there and proceeded for lunch at KFC where our morning support shift personnel joined in. Post lunch was leisure for an hour where all of us did what we wanted. Some went bowling, some played pool, some were just window shopping. At 3.30. PM we all gathered back at the bus station to leave for the duty free shopping spree everyone was waiting. We were taken to the Teow Soon Huat super-market for the poisons of our life – chocolates, spirits, alcohol and cigarettes. We all bought bagfuls.

Langkawi airport saw all of us together at 5 PM. We checked in and waited for our Firefly flight back to Penang. Some snacks water and drinks helped spend an hour. We also were upto Facebook updates, twitter updates, mail updates – the internet faithful and addicts that we are . We took off from Langkawi at precisely 06.20 PM having collected for ourselves a lifetime of memories, learning, education, spirit of co-operation and more importantly fun filled camaraderie.

We landed in Penang at 06.55 PM. Off we went to our houses and pads. Monday morning was never more refreshing at 1-18 Suntech@cybercity!

Insight @ Exabytes! Langkawi, Team Building

And so we all went to Langkawi, the land of the Eagle & Red Limestone. Every Exabee was there, along with their spouse or partner or single as the case maybe!

15th October 2010

Friday being a weekday, the office had to be open to welcome our guests and customers, so we all left in groups, four in all, scattered across the day, dividing work equally amongst all ourselves. Keeping true to our motto of customer first, we had our support team and sales team working from Langkawi too in turns Our customers would never suffer from lack of attention!

Below is some pictures of how the OneHotel Helang Langkawi where we had our team building. This hotel is just right beside Langkawi airport. It is 5 minutes walking distance from Langkawi Airport to our hotel, but the Hotel do send van to carry all of us from airport to hotel.

The entire staff assembled for dinner in the evening which was followed by a session of team-building exercise. It was the start of what was to be an eventful next couple of days. It all started in right earnest with each of us formally introducing ourself – mentioning our name, home-town and favourite animal and soon enough it was time for us to unwind and then rewind to become kids! It was the game where we were divided equally, partitioned by a curtain and then had to guess the other person’s favourite animal by memory! It was fun all the more. You could trust exabees to have some weird faves, we did not disappoint, out came from the closets of our mind favourites like cockroach, pokemon, godzilla, dinosaur! One of us had ‘human being” as favourite animal!!!

Having broken our inhibitions so to say, we got down to some work (fun work). We formed in all four teams comprising an average of 9 exabees namely – Team ’9 King Coconut’, Team ‘The Cube’, Team ‘Tarzan’, Team ‘Wonder Blue’ with respective captains, war-cry, flag and a logo too!!! Friday comprised of very sober happenings, like the proverbial lull before the storm so to say.

16th October 2010

Saturday morning was breakfast followed with stretching exercises it should always be the other way round, but then you know that at Exabytes we do things “differently”, pun intended. It was a new way of exercise, one which was intended at making us all relax and really get into fun mode and frolic. Stretching was followed by a game of follow the leader kind of thing. We discovered new terms like “whoosh‘ – a pseudo for pushing the onus on your neighbor, ‘Hantu”, which would mean we all change our places in the big circle and run to another place – we did not spare the CEO either in this, and sporting that he was, he also did not let a misbehaving spine meddle in the fun.

The first serious activity of team building in-room activity began with a game about togetherness, we were given a few ice-cream sticks and asked to make a triangle of it without using glue. Once done, next challenge was to put up a star with 15 sticks without breaking.

Time was then for jig-saw puzzle with 6 pieces being given and told to form an A-4 size perfect rectangle.

Further bonding was forged when all of us put together had to pass on a stick to each other without letting it drop even once on the ground from any person. Doing it with 2 or 4 people is a tough nut to crack, try picturizing this being done by 36 people all in co-ordination, in rapt attention and concentrating. We were all pushing each other for this, and lo and behold, we managed to pass the stick around 9 times to each other i.e. a total of 324 passes without a miss – Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United cant do it!!! The purpose of the entire team building exercise was being realised there itself.

It was 90 minutes before lunch. Time for the “Amazing Team Building Race”. It was upto the teams to visit 14 locations within the resort, click team photographs as proof of visit (sabotaging was allowed too!). Points were awarded based on who came first to the training hall after visiting all 14 places. A further twist was to resolve 5 separate puzzles – a combination of brain & brawn with subtlety.

Picture below is one of the spot given by our instructor.

and picture below is picture of “The Cube” team took at this spot.

It was time for lunch on Saturday and so do we also rest the team building update here. There is plenty still coming up in our next update, as always we promise bags full of fun, games, activity but more importantly teaming with each other. Part II follows . . .

Insight @ Exabytes! Langkawi, Team Building

As we march into the month of October, it feels that September has left us in the blink of an eye. As usual, everyone at Exabytes seems to be engrossed in his/her new challenges, new performance target and so forth. And in the midst of hectic daily work and numerous meetings, someone in the office has made a history in the month of September.

With self-sacrificing spirit, an outstanding employee in our Technical Team has managed to impress our ever critical judges of EOTM! In fact, choosing the EOTM is never an easy task for our panel of judges, as almost everyone in the office deserves compliments in terms of their hard work and dedication.

But in last September, someone has stood up among others, and here we are delighted to present to you our EOTM of September, System Engineer MR JY Teh!!!

For the last 4 years of his service, JY Teh has never stopped to impress us with his great sense of responsibility and high level of initiative. This time, he is again voted as our EOTM because:

• Good follow-ups in server alert notification ~ mail spool monitoring
• Assists to check server alert even it’s not within the scope of his monitoring task
• Sense of responsibility
• Understands clients’ enquiries very well

Congratulations JY Teh! This is not the first time you’ve made it, and we salute your self-sacrifice.

Employee of the Month

August is an important month for Malaysians, as our Independence Day falls on 31 of August every year. But at Exabytes, August also makes us cherish…, cherish the hard word and dedication of a special person who manages to shine and make himself proud in the entire office.

That’s right! It’s again the moment of truth, and we are here to announce our EOTM of August!!

But before we reveal his/her name, let’s divulge some hints about this important person.

This person is a Martian, not only that, he is the tallest Martian in the office. A social being, he has no problem making friend with a stranger. Socializing is his weapon, impress a person after just a few minutes of conversation is his second nature. If these aren’t enough hints for you to guess it right, this August person has recently applied to be transferred to Exabytes’ Business Development Department – International Division.

Yeah… let’s put our hands together, for our August’s EOTM – MR Arren Tan!!

Reasons Arren was chosen as the star of the month are:

• High sense of initiative – initiative to test on InstantAlert and Plog.my
• Quick responsiveness – prompt response on Helpdesk
• Dedicated, highly committed to team work.
• Able to work independently and is very resourceful

A cheerful person by nature, Arren is dedicated and unselfish when it concerns work. And in August, Arren had made himself and all of us at Exabytes proud!

Congratulations, Arren, and keep up the good work!

Employee of the Month

Ever wonder who are the people who work behind the scene providing you with prompt response whenever you send in a technical related helpdesk ticket to Exabytes? Featuring the department with the most number of staff, and handles the most crucial duty not only to Exabytes, but to its 30,000+ customers – The technical wizards of Exabytes – Penang Team.

While our KL technical team is always occupied with the task of monitoring the servers, our technical wizards in Penang are responsible for answering all the technical questions our clients might have, and most importantly finding solutions for technical problems arise as well as carrying out Exabytes’ standard follow-ups until the problems are solved.

Not only that, our techies in the department also handle server migration, ensure and maintain reserve/network uptime, network/server security, etc.

Read more…

Insight @ Exabytes!

“1domain1 tree! 1domain1tree!“ That’s the slogan we have been shouting in our office recently.

Time flies, in a blink of an eye Exabytes has already served its clients for more than 9 years. In the process of gaining the reputation as the biggest web hosting provider in Malaysia, we have made and gained many friends and loyal customers in the supporting community.

In this special 9th Anniversary, we want to give back to the supporting community and contribute to the efforts of making the world a better place.

Come join the joy of this October, as Exabytes will be planting a tree for every single purchase made at Exabytes. It doesn’t matter if you only renew your domain or register for a new domain with us, one tree will still be planted. More trees will be planted if you sign up for a hosting plan, a VPS or a Dedicated Server.

Wondering how many trees can you help to plant? Check out the TREE TABLE below:

We have set our target to contribute 2000 TREES in this program which will be running for 1-month time.

HELP PROMOTE A GREENER EARTH by spreading the news to your friends and family via social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter OR fill in your friends’ email addresses at the URL below:

URL: http://1domain1tree.my

WAIT NO MORE! Pick up your mouse and plant a tree TODAY!

Community Events

BlogFest.Asia 2010 is in town! This year’s blogger festival doesn’t only attract fellow participants from Cambodia, Myanmar, Vietnam Indonesia Taiwan, Hongkong, Singapore, but bloggers from the United States as well! This invaluable get-together is the very first time our beloved city – Unesco Heritage Site, Georgetown hosts such a grand-scale event for bloggers, and we at Exabytes are absolutely thrilled to be a part of this!

While we are extremely honored to be one of the sponsors for this momentous event, we are also elated that our overseas participating bloggers are in for an exciting visit to this historic island.

The 2010 BlogFest.Asia kick started on 1^st Oct with a city tour around our Unesco Heritage Site, Georgetown which brought us around its well known historic tourist spots such as Chew Jetty, Cheong Fatt Sze Mansion, Khoo Kongsi. At the end of the tour, our curious bloggers were treated to the mouth-watering Penang local delicacies at New World Park, Jalan Burmah.

Check out some of the snapshots taken during the city tour:

Read more…

Community Events