The official report from the company places the combined business at 600,000 customers, with a direct presence in 11 countries and operations in 15.

"They're now a very big company relative to most anyone in the industry," says Andrew M. Schroepfer, president of Tier 1 Research (t1r.com), "with $150 million [in combined revenue]. So they are definitely more than meaningful, and they are definitely a leader now."

Playing now from a position of leadership and considerable size, Hostway can make a much bigger marketing move toward establishing its brand on a large scale, where previously neither company had made a significant effort to establish itself in the mass market.

"Affinity has been great at running out a bunch of new services and getting notoriety for it," says Schroepfer. "Hostway has been doing that as well, without getting notoriety for it. With the ability to scale this into a global operation now, with what Hostway has accomplished, I think the global expansion of a more meaningful marketing budget coupled with the collective grouping of new services - that's where this becomes a powerful transaction."

Though the company has not released the financial details, the acquisition is the largest to date for Hostway, a company that has been active in acquiring hosting businesses in recent years.

John Lee, vice president of global marketing at the company says Hostway has been incrementally increasing the size of its acquisitions, a process that has prepared the company well for the large integration task that lies ahead.

"Hostway has a lot of experience," he says, "having done acquisitions both in the United States and abroad. So we have a full integration team that's starting to do the work already."

Among the main undertakings within that integration will be delivering some of the services unique to Hostway, such as hosted Microsoft Exchange and online backup services, to existing customers on the Affinity side.

"From a customer standpoint, it's going to be seamless," says Lee. "There isn't going to be any customer impact. A lot of changes will be on the back end, so what the customer should be able to experience is more choices and more product sets and a greater reliability and service level. We intend to aggressively wrap up the integration."

While merging the service offerings of the two companies is high on the agenda, Lee says Hostway's plan is to maintain the Affinity brand, including its subsidiary brands like Gate.com (gate.com) and ValueWeb (valueweb.com). Schroepfer thinks the strategy will succeed.

"Any successful business online these days benefits from a viral marketing effect," says Schroepfer. "And if you try to go to a viral marketing campaign with just the Hostway brand name, I don't think you'd have near the success you could have with letting a couple of virtual circles run with Gate and with ValueWeb. It's not the right time yet to put those into a single brand. There will come a time when that's beneficial for one or two things. I just don't think that's yet."

Negotiations for the acquisition, says Hostway, took months to complete, but the companies, says Lee, are an excellent match in terms of their relative sizes, and the markets they serve.

But Schroepfer says some of the deal's biggest advantages for Hostway could come from the differences between the two organizations.

"I'd say Hostway almost did too many things for its size," he says, "whereas Affinity was a little more focused in trying to drive ancillary services for existing customers. I think together Hostway looks less spread out. I think they have a better ability to take advantage of their umbrella of services because of the acquisition of Affinity."