Blogs: M&M’s --- Part I - This stands for Marketing and Money
Blogs: Sometimes not making money is ok....
News: SaaS Software Licensing with Insight
News: Managed Email Security Services Trends with eleven and Variomedia
April 9, 2008 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Web hosting provider Hosted Solutions (hostedsolutions.com) announced on Tuesday that the company has been acquired by media and communications private equity firm ABRY Partners (abry.com) for $140 million.
"After seven years it's obviously something I can't do on my own," said Lee in a phone interview. "It's a culmination of efforts of a lot of dedicated and talented employees here at Hosted Solutions that have helped me achieve this."
Hosted Solutions says there will be no changes made to the company and customers will experience the same quality of service and pricing as before. The company's management team, headed by founder and CEO Rich Lee, will continue to lead Hosted Solutions from its Raleigh, North Carolina headquarters.
Founded in June 2001, Hosted Solutions provide a range of services, including dedicated hosting, managed hosting, collocation and backup services. The 80-employee company says it has revenues in the $35 million to $50 million range.
Hosted Solutions currently operates five data centers in the markets of Charlotte, Raleigh, Cary and Boston, which are all interconnected by a fully redundant private network. "We've had numerous opportunities and been approached by numerous firms," said Lee. "But after meeting with ABRY and talking to them and finding out their vision and knowledge of this sector -- which is probably the most important thing to me -- I decided to hitch my wagon to these guys."
Since 1989, ABRY has completed over $21 billion of transactions and other private equity and mezzanine investments, representing investments in more than 500 media and business properties. More recently, the firm purchased colocation and data center operator CyrusOne last July. "ABRY believes in buying management teams and letting them operate," said Lee. "They can achieve great returns by leaving the business alone and helping in any way they see fit. I think they can help with potential expansion of footprint and consolidation opportunities in the sector and I think we can have the opportunity here to turn this company into something special." Hosted Solutions was exclusively represented by DH Capital (dhcapital.com), an investment banking firm that serves the data center and managed hosting industries.
Read Back Issues of WHIR Magazine
October 2009 - Web Hosting's All Star Team
This has been, for us, one of the most interesting, exciting and challenging build-ups to an issue of the magazine yet, Web Hosting's All Star Team. The balloting process was our first experiment with a kind of user participation we're planning to do a lot more with in the months to come. We had thousands of ballots submitted, with hundreds of write-in suggestions and a demonstration of user engagement that has us feeling super positive about the project.
About This Issue | Read Digital Edition
July 2009 - What am I Worth?
One of the interesting luxuries of working on a project like the printed WHIR magazine is that it allows us to play with things like our point of view from one issue to the next. In recent months we've been giving added attention to the kind of practical and applicable advice aimed at smaller hosts and resellers. This issue carries on with that point of view, asking, in our cover story, "what am I worth?" It's a complicated question without a clear-cut answer.
About This Issue | Read Digital Edition
May 2009 - The Blueprint for a Small Web Host
I was a little surprised by how difficult it became to see this idea through. We set out to assemble a blueprint for a small hosting business, but butted up pretty quickly against the general impossibility of covering all the territory that was out there to be covered. The basic constraints of a printed magazine, and the less-than-infinite amount of time we had available forced us to face the fact that we could never produce an exhaustive guide to starting a hosting company.
About This Issue | Read Digital Edition
Comment anonymously or log into your WHIR account
Logging in allows enhanced commenting features (such as external linking) in news, features, blogs and more.
Comment by Anonymous on Thursday, April 10, 2008
It appears that multiples may be rising again for hosting companies if this deal is any indication. Too bad they don't disclose the real revenues for comparison but it looks like at least 2.5 times to as much as 4 times. That's more like it.