Christopher Faulkner, CEO of C I Host.
(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Often times, a business must reinvent itself or make considerable changes to its service and product portfolio in order to keep pace with a consistently growing and ever-shifting market.
Web hosting provider C I Host (www.cihost.com) has found itself in this very position. Some 13 years ago, the Bedford, Texas-based company started off as a shared web hosting provider, focused on the small and medium business market.
Over the years, the company has adapted to the changing landscape of the market through offering new services such as managed hosting, dedicated and colocation hosting.
Just a year and a half ago, C I Host CEO Christopher Faulkner and his team decided to rebrand the company, which ultimately called for the updating of its service portfolio.
It decided that in order to concentrate on the mid- and large enterprise market, it would have to let go of its shared hosting division.
It searched for a buyer that would be able to accomodate the needs of its shared hosting customers.
Eventually, the company decided that Hostopia’s X7 Hosting (www.x7hosting.com) would be its best bet, especially when considering its significant experience in the industry.
Along with this focus on mid-and large market services, C I Host plans to refine its customer services, including the introduction of dedicated sales and support teams to support the needs of customers.
The company has also signed a marketing agreement with X7 Hosting to refer new small business users interested in shared hosting and related services to the X7 Hosting service.
In an email conversation with the WHIR, Faulkner delves into the finer details of the acquisition and how it plays into the company’s overall rebranding strategy.
The WHIR: What is Cassiopeia Internet and how it is it affiliated with C I Host?
Christopher Faulkner: C I Host is a Cassiopeia Internet, Inc. brand. In the future, as the company diversifies offerings, other brands may be launched to service those offerings and market segments.
What prompted C I Host’s decision to sell off its shared hosting business?
CF: C I Host began as a shared hosting provider and has evolved in time to provide our customers with many services. Supporting the diverse services was resource-intensive and the future of our company lies in a market space where we’re able to innovate and deploy new services quickly.
Eighteen months ago we decided to rebrand our business and as we were analyzing our strengths and weaknesses, it became clear that we needed to focus our service portfolio. We recognized right away that our multiple data centers were our strongest asset, and that we could build a profitable, differentiated service portfolio around them. We could easily offer content distribution services, geographical load balancing and clustering and a host of other services that would require geographic fault tolerance. The additional asset of our Team’s experience and expertise mean that we’ll be able to offer managed colocation services as well.
To make this work, though, we’d need to place our shared hosting customers in capable hands. We decided last year that another company focusing solely on shared web hosting would be best suited to service our shared hosting client base. With Hostopia’s experience in the industry and their expertise in account migration we felt they were the best choice for our customers.
What does the company plan on doing with the proceeds of the acquisition?
CF: We are reinvesting in the company and will deliver the final phases of our rebranding effort. We are in the process of strengthening our core network infrastructure in Los Angeles and Dallas, expanding our fiber networks for additional capacity, redundancy and reliability, and doing some traditional marketing.
Can you tell us more about C I Host’s mid-market enterprise focus and the business strategy behind it?
CF: We are preparing to completely re-launch C I Host as a new brand that that is clearly aligned with our core asset base – our multiple data centers, and the needs of the modern enterprise customer. Our current mid-market customers have asked us for additional services and our new focus will allow us to implement the majority of those. We prefer not to go into too much detail on these new service offerings at this time because many will be unique to C I Host, but we are looking forward to being able to offer our clients some unique solutions.
Right now there is an increased movement toward companies outsourcing aspects of their business due to the current economic climate. We’re continuing to look for ways to keep jobs at home. We have always been a cost-effective option for businesses since our inception, and will continue that tradition with our new service portfolio.
Are there any new services or enhancements to existing services that C I Host will soon introduce as a result of this shift in focus?
CF: Besides a new site launch, we will employ an entirely new ordering process and customer service experience that we think our customers will really enjoy. We are continuing to invest significant capital in research and development to make sure our services are fully developed and supported. Expect to see all of our services focused on redundancy and fault-tolerance. We are testing and retesting. This hasn’t been a quick launch for us; we are taking our time and evaluating every cost and every benefit. Our customers’ comfort level is paramount. I think C I Hosts’ expertise in the industry will be a big part of that.
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