Dedicated hosting provider, LeaseWeb, has made significant upgrades for its Support Department over the past six months in response to signs that the customer support experience could be improved.

Rolph Haspers, Operations Director of LeaseWeb remarked, ”Various developments caused our Support Department to become somewhat overburdened at the end of 2008.In Q4 2008, LeaseWeb experienced a tremendous growth spurt that had repercussions on the Support Department. This department was facing extra difficulties due to the unfortunate lack of engineers at that time, and the fact that it had too many lower qualified engineers. Also, we are traditionally a highly technology-oriented company, which is not always conducive to customer-friendliness and which became more apparent during this stressful period.”

The most recent semi-annual customer survey held among more than 1,300 customers showed that the measures are having a positive effect. The upgrade of LeaseWeb’s Support Department included the hiring of 20 more highly qualified engineers and the improvement of the terms of employment. In addition, all support engineers completed a series of communications training courses to improve their ability to operate in a more customer-friendly manner. These measures have resulted in an impressive 20% increase in the number of fully satisfied customers over the past six months.

More than six months ago, immediately after the disappointing support results from the previous customer survey, both short-term and long-term measures were implemented in order to provide the customers with renewed confidence in a positive support experience. Haspers: The survey results confirmed our gut feeling and we immediately took action. Our short-term measures included the temporary hiring of additional Support staff, partly from the UK. These highly experienced employees were able to relieve some of the pressure and provide effective support to less experienced staff.

For the longer term, LeaseWeb immediately started looking for more highly qualified engineers in an effort to expand its Support Department with additional permanent staff. Haspers: This expansion process is still continuing, although the current staffing of the department already has significantly improved the ability to handle peak loads. This positive effect is clearly reflected in the most recent semi-annual customer survey. In addition, six months ago, we immediately decided to relieve the burden on the Support Department in a structural manner through additional investments in automation, among other areas, and by unlinking the provisioning process, i.e. the process of making servers and other hardware available. That should also help to lighten the work load of the department and improve the quality of support.

Many of LeaseWeb’s customers are Internet professionals or specialists such as system integrators, Web developers and application developers who resell LeaseWeb’s hosting services and integrate them into a total solution. As a result of this particular customer focus, customers have a relatively extensive knowledge of hosting. Support nonetheless remains vital. Haspers: Hosting has become a commodity for these companies. They have some knowledge of hosting, but they want to have the ability to fully concentrate on the services they provide in addition to LeaseWeb’s basic hosting products. In that sense, support remains vital for them.

Are there any other needs when it comes to support? Haspers: The customer survey confirms that we are on the right track and that our quality improvement operation has been successful, but we want to optimize our support to an even further extent. Our focus for the coming six months is to further improve the response and resolution times for issues. In addition, we are continuously working on expanding our engineers’ knowledge, e.g. through additional certification processes, in order to take the customers technical support experience to yet a higher level.

LeaseWeb is an international provider of hosting solutions that is primarily geared towards the professional market. The company is among the top-20 hosting providers worldwide and its services include server virtualization, dedicated servers, collocation, streaming, webhosting, and domain name registration. LeaseWeb is the proprietor of a first-class network that offers a bandwidth of more than 750 Gbps, spanning four data centers in the Amsterdam region via major telecom carriers. LeaseWeb is also present via Internet exchanges in Amsterdam, Londen, Frankfurt, New York, Brussel, Kopenhagen, Parijs, Budapest, Boekarest, Warschau, Praag, Bratislava, Milaan, Wenen, Stockholm, Oslo, Zuumlrich and Madrid. This way, LeaseWeb enables companies around the world to create and continue their online presence in a simple and affordable manner. Since its founding in 1997, hosting provider LeaseWeb has expanded its network to include more than 22,000 servers. LeaseWeb’s clients include Royal Joh. Ensched OGD, 123Video, Jaap.nl, Relatieplanet, MijnAlbum, Starbucks, Hyves, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Twenga, Direct Wonen, Heineken, Wikipedia, and Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.

Posted by Admin on September 29th, 2009 | No Comments

Global managed hosting and colocation solutions firm, Hosting.com, is launching Cloud VPS, an enhanced version of its prior virtual private server (VPS) solutions.

Matt Ferrari, Director of Infrastructure Services at Hosting.com noted, ”Hosting.com made the decision to move away from a container-based VPS platform to provide more flexibility and control from our customers.Customer feedback and requests for a more dynamic offering that could easily scale or be migrated directly lead to the development of Cloud VPS.”

The new solution will provide customers with unprecedented elasticity and control of their VPS environments. Cloud VPS will be hypervisor-based, making the virtual machines independent from one another – a feature unavailable in most container-based VPS solutions.

Cloud VPS will provide customers with high availability, scalability and flexibility inherent to cloud infrastructures. Customers will have the ability to grow and easily migrate their Cloud VPS solutions to the more robust Cloud Enterprise and Cloud Dedicated solutions offered by Hosting.com. The company selected the VMware vSphere software to build this new cloud infrastructure. Hosting.com is in the process of moving all existing VPS clients to the Cloud VPS infrastructure.

The transition to a cloud infrastructure allows Hosting.com to provide Cloud VPS at a reduced cost than traditional VPS solutions and provide clients with additional resources. The base package for the prior .Net VPS solution ($89.00/month) from Hosting.com provided 512 MB RAM, 10 GB of Virtual Disk Space, and 400 GB of monthly transfer. For $80.00/month, Cloud VPS will provide the same amount of RAM, 30 GB of Virtual Disk Space and 500 GB of monthly transfer.

Cloud VPS hosting plans are available for both Microsoft Windows and Linux at a fixed, monthly cost and can be customized based on a customer’s unique needs for space, bandwidth, and data management tools. Each plan includes preinstalled software, including ASP.NET, Adobe ColdFusion, and SQL Server on Windows and PHP, Perl, and MySQL on Linux. Additionally, Cloud VPS plans feature daily backups, 24×7x365 expert technical support, and a 100% network uptime guarantee.

Fred Strelzoff, Cloud Product Manager at Hosting.com remarked, ”Cloud VPS will introduce many companies to cloud hosting due to its performance, functionality and pricing. Cloud hosting has become a viable alternative to managed and dedicated hosting – similarly, we believe Cloud VPS will change the expectations of VPS consumers.”

Hosting.com has also changed the name of its Cloud Private solution to Cloud Dedicated to more accurately describe the solution provided to customers – a single-tenant, clustered hardware environment. Private solutions are available on both Cloud Enterprise and Cloud Dedicated.

Hosting.com provides enterprise colocation, cloud computing, dedicated hosting, managed hosting, disaster recovery, and business continuance services to a global customer base demanding a high level of security, reliability, and responsiveness. Hosting.com monitors, manages, and enhances the web-based platforms of Web 2.0 companies, software as a service (SaaS) providers, content distribution networks (CDN), and medium to large enterprises whose Web presence is crucial and high availability mandatory.

Hosting.com currently operates SAS 70 Type II certified datacenters in Irvine, CA; Louisville, KY; Newark, DE; San Francisco, CA; and is opening a datacenter in Denver, CO in September 2009. All Hosting.com products and services are supported by 24×7x365 live expert technical support through toll-free telephone, email, and online chat.

Posted by Admin on September 2nd, 2009 | No Comments

Provider of managed dedicated hosting, and on-demand virtualization/cloud computing and web services, Layered Technologies, Inc., has ranked on Inc. magazine’s third annual Inc. 5000, at the No. 622 position.

The list represents the most comprehensive look at the most important segment of the economy – America’s independent-minded entrepreneurs. Consumer electronics maker Vizio, Internet giant GoDaddy, rental car service Zipcar, and beverage maker Honest Tea are among the prominent brands featured on this year’s list.

Jim Melloan, project manager of the Inc. 5000 remarked, ”Savvy trend spotters and those who invest in private companies know that the Inc. 5000 is the best place to find out about young companies that are achieving success through a wide variety of unprecedented business models, as well as older private companies that are still expanding at an impressive rate. That’s why our list is so eagerly anticipated every year.”

Layered Tech, a global provider of managed dedicated hosting, on-demand virtualization/cloud computing and Web services, ranked in the top 12 percent of Inc.’s list because of its three-year growth rate of 441 percent. The Plano, Texas-based company invests heavily in R and D to add new technologies and services to remain a top 10 hosting provider globally. Layered Tech evolved from an emerging dedicated hosting company to a recognized Web hosting provider whose scalable infrastructure powers millions of sites and a wide array of Internet-enabled applications.

The 2009 Inc. 5000, unveiled today on Inc.com, serves as a unique report card on the U.S. economy. Despite the ongoing recession, aggregate revenue among the companies on the list actually increased to $214 billion, up $29 billion from last year, with a median three-year growth rate of 126 percent. The Inc. 5000 are responsible for creating more than 1 million jobs since their founding, making the list perhaps the best example of the impact private, fast-growing companies can have on the economy. Complete results of the Inc. 5000, including company profiles and an interactive database that can be sorted by industry, region, and other criteria, can be found on Inc.com.

This year’s list also offers a preview of which industries are poised for growth in coming years. With an average growth rate of 667 percent, Insurance ranked as the top industry overall. Government Services was the top industry gainer with 252 companies on this year’s list, up from 135 last year. Health is the top industry by both total revenue ($22.7 billion) and total employment (156,223 jobs).

Once again, California tops the Inc. 5000 with the most companies of any state with 612. The Golden State is followed by Texas (393), New York (316), Florida (263), and Virginia (261). All 50 states, plus Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, are represented on this year’s list.

New York boasts 371 Inc. 5000 companies, making it the top metropolitan area, followed by Washington, D.C. (317), Los Angeles (253), Atlanta (209), and Chicago (203).

Bolstered by this year’s No. 1 company, Northern Capital Insurance, Insurance emerged as the top industry, with an average growth rate of 667 percent. Other strong performers include Energy (523 percent) and Government Services (491 percent).

In total, the companies on the Inc. 5000 have created more than 1 million jobs. Health is the top employer with 156,223 jobs, followed by Business Products and Services (122,911), IT Services (89,632), Food and Beverage (86,572), and Construction (65,494).

IT Services had the most companies on this year’s list with 658, followed by Business Products and Services (502), Advertising and Marketing (398), Construction (354), and Manufacturing (342).

Topping this year’s list is Northern Capital Insurance, a Miami-based firm that is helping to revolutionize Florida’s ailing insurance industry. The company generated $95 million in revenue in 2008 and an impressive three-year growth rate of 19,812 percent.

The top woman-owned company is P3S (No. 17 overall), a San Antonio – based firm that provides IT network security and physical security services, mostly to the Defense Department. P3S, owned by Mary Ellen Trevino, recorded revenue of $13.5 million in 2008 and a three-year growth rate of 5,898 percent. The top minority-owned company is Harley Stanfield (No. 3 overall), a Washington, D.C. – based real estate investment firm that buys existing properties, makes them energy efficient, and then resells them as investment properties. Harley Stanfield, founded by Cedric Franklin, posted revenue of $38.4 million in 2008 and a three-year growth rate of 13,350 percent.

The Inc. 5000 posted an aggregate revenue of $214 billion in 2008, up nearly 16 percent from the previous year. The top five industries by total revenue include Health ($22.7 billion), Business Products and Services ($19.6 billion), Construction ($18.8 billion), Energy ($14.7 billion), and IT Services ($13.2 billion).

The Inc. 5000 is ranked according to percentage revenue growth from 2005 through 2008. To qualify, companies must have been founded and generating revenue by the first week of 2005, and therefore able to show four full calendar years of sales. Additionally, they have to be U.S.-based, privately held, for profit, and independent — not subsidiaries or divisions of other companies — as of December 31, 2008. Revenue in 2005 must have been at least $200,000, and revenue in 2008 must have been at least $2 million. The top 10 percent of companies on the list comprise the Inc. 500, now in its 28th year.

Founded in 1979 and acquired in 2005 by Mansueto Ventures LLC, Inc. (www.inc.com) is the only major business magazine dedicated exclusively to owners and managers of growing private companies that delivers real solutions for today’s innovative company builders. With a total paid circulation of 712,961, Inc. provides hands-on tools and market-tested strategies for managing people, finances, sales, marketing, and technology. Visit us online at Inc.com.

Each year, Inc. and Inc.com celebrate the remarkable achievements of today’s entrepreneurial superstars – the privately held small businesses that drive our economy. The Inc. 500|5000 Conference and Awards Ceremony brings together members of the Inc. 5000 community, both a new class of Inc. 5000 honorees and the list’s alumni, for three days of powerful networking, inspired learning, and momentous celebration. Please join us September 23 – 25, 2009, at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland. For more information about the 2009 Inc. 500|5000 Conference and Awards Ceremony, and to register, visit www.Inc5000event.com. Stay connected with Inc. Events by following @IncEvents on Twitter.

Layered Technologies is a leading global provider of managed dedicated hosting, on-demand virtualization/cloud computing and Web services. By providing high-quality technology, infrastructure and support, Layered Tech enables customers to eliminate capital expenses and save on operating costs while focusing on core business issues. Layered Tech’s scalable infrastructure powers millions of sites and Internet-enabled applications including e-commerce, software as a service (SaaS), content distribution and more. Our clients range from leading-edge Web 2.0 startups, successful mid-sized enterprises and some the world’s largest consultancy and integration firms.

Posted by Admin on August 22nd, 2009 | No Comments

The Planet privately held dedicated hosting company, was a recent Silver Sponsor of SaaScon 2009, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, California, showcasing IT infrastructure solutions with Flip Video MinoHD camcorder giveaways.

Steve Kahan, vice president of marketing and product management at The Planet remarked, ”SaaS and Web 2.0 companies make up a rapidly growing segment of our customer base. For these businesses, high-performance and scalability for their Web sites and applications are critical priorities. With our enterprise-class network and data centers in the U.S. and London, customers rely on us to meet their IT requirements. We expect to meet with new and existing customers to expand on how they can leverage the power of The Planet to enable the success of their Web and SaaS applications.”

Produced by Computerworld, the conference is the world’s premier event for business services technologies. Conference topics include cloud computing and SaaS (Software as a Service); on-demand business and information services; and essential building-block technologies for SaaS.

Ultimately, The Planet endeavors to provide the following:

  • High level of network capacity and speed to deliver peak performance
  • Instant scalability to handle even the largest spikes in network traffic
  • Parallel, redundant, multi-tiered network routing and switching architecture to assure reliability and stability
  • Multiple layer network security that prevents Delayed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks from harming businesses
  • Knowledgeable experts with a passion for excellence and a commitment to operate the best networks in the business

The Planet is the leading provider of On Demand IT Infrastructure solutions, hosting more than 25,000 small- and medium-size businesses and 14.5 million Web sites worldwide. Customers have the power to choose from the broadest range of hosting solutions in the industry, from dedicated servers, Alpha Professional Managed Dedicated Servers, Northstar Managed Hosting and data center colocation, all backed by 24×7x365 support. With the best choice of servers, software tools and world-class service, backed by state-of-the-art data centers and an enterprise-class network, The Planet turns IT into a powerful competitive advantage that enables customers to grow their businesses.

Posted by Admin on April 3rd, 2009 | No Comments

When it comes to web hosting, most people are only familiar with personal web hosting, which is also called shared hosting. Although shared hosting is the cheapest form of web hosting, it is also the least efficient because several domains are hosted on the same account. This is where VPS and dedicated become much more useful because they allow you to dedicate resources specifically for your website. In this article, we will talk about the benefits of each and what the differences between the two of them are.

The great thing about both dedicated and VPS hosting are that they are much faster and much more efficient than shared hosting. They are both relatively expensive compared to shared hosting, but this is because they have more resources and storage dedicated to them.

Dedicated Hosting
Dedicated hosting is the term used to describe the situation in which you have 1 server dedicated to 1 website. It is the most expensive form of web hosting, but it is also the fastest and most efficient. When you have a dedicated web host, your uptime is practically guaranteed and you will have a huge amount of storage and bandwidth specifically dedicated to your website. As opposed to share hosting, which shares the storage and bandwidth of a server, dedicated hosting devotes an entire server’s resources to your website.

VPS Hosting
VPS hosting differs from dedicated hosting in that it is a form of shared hosting, being that several sites are still hosted on a single server. The difference between VPS and shared hosting is that every site on a VPS server has dedicated resources, including bandwidth, memory, and hard drive storage. With VPS servers, the web hosts sets up an individual system environment on a server that is cut-off from the other sites on the server. As a result, even though the sites are on a shared server, there are individual resources allocated for each website, which boosts speed and efficiency.

Although VPS is slightly cheaper than dedicated hosting, it might be worth your while to purchase dedicated hosting if you have a popular business or e-commerce website. If you don’t need a dedicated server, then VPS hosting might be perfect for your situation.

Posted by Admin on March 11th, 2009 | 14 Comments