Hostway

In the Beginning

In 1998, University of Chicago alumni Lucas Roh, John Lee, and Arnold Choi, along with two other business partners, acquired Spectronet Inc., a Web hosting company with annual revenues of $30,000. They renamed the company Hostway Corporation and began preparations to expand its reach in the US and international markets.

Roh previously served as a computer scientist at Argonne National Laboratory, conducting pioneering research in the emerging field of "automatic differentiation.” He also worked for six years as a software and hardware engineer at Tektronics and Hewlett-Packard.

Roh currently serves as president and CEO of Hostway. Cofounders Lee and Choi also remain with Hostway in executive positions focusing on various entrepreneurial and technological projects.

Globalization

After building up the company’s customer base in the Chicago area and throughout the United States, Hostway expanded to South Korea. This proved an ideal starting point to increase Hostway’s business since Roh was raised and educated in South Korea and was very familiar with Korean business culture and processes. Hostway Korea served as the beginning of a much larger push towards Hostway’s globalization of Web hosting and Internet services.

Hostway has remained a privately held company throughout its expansion, which includes opening data centers and offices in North America (Chicago, Tampa, Austin, Vancouver) Europe (United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany)

in addition to Australia, India and Korea. Profitable since its inception, Hostway’s global expansion occurred without external venture capital funding.

Acquisitions

Over the years, Hostway has been party to various mergers and acquisitions to increase its client base and build its product portfolio in the dedicated server/managed hosting and domain name registration markets. The first significant acquisition was the 2003 merger with Canada’s NetNation Communications with approximately US $10 million paid in cash to NetNation stockholders.

In June 2006, Hostway announced the opening of its new corporate headquarters, located in the landmark Boeing Building, overlooking the Chicago River. This location currently boasts the largest commercially operated data center in downtown Chicago.

In April 2007, Hostway acquired Affinity Internet, Inc. A formidable competitor and high-profile industry player, Affinity was headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, with approximately 300 employees, and had been operating since 1996. With this acquisition, Hostway became one of the largest hosting companies in the world.

The cumulative result of mergers, acquisitions and targeted brand development, Hostway maintains a number of high-profile global brands, including Affinity Media, DomainPeople, DiscountDomains, Gate.com, NetNation, PowerMedium, RegistryPro and ValueWeb.

A Broad Array of Products and Services

Hostway provides individuals, small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and large enterprises with a robust menu of products and services, ranging from individual retail offerings to complex wholesale SaaS packages.

As Domain Name Registration (DNR), Ecommerce and Email Hosting became more commoditized and competitive, Hostway continued to expand its value-added services and product offerings, which include Hosted Microsoft® Exchange and SharePoint, Colocation and Managed Dedicated Hosting, Custom Web Design, Online Marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Services.

Additionally, Hostway has been exceptionally successful developing and marketing numerous home-grown solutions, such as Online Data Backup, Wrong URL Redirect Monetization (WURM), Domain Monetization, VoIP, Fax over Email and Content Delivery Network technology.

Hostway has also pursued and won numerous major contracts for Private Label Web Hosting and Online Services, including notable agreements with Verizon, Comcast and Brighthouse Networks.

By the Numbers

Hostway’s dominance is substantiated by the sheer volume of Internet business it commands.

• Over 76 Million Emails Processed Every Day
• Over 27 Billion Emails Processed Each Year
• Over 600,000 Domain Names Served
• Over 2 Million Web Sites Served
• Over $1 Billion in Online Sales Conducted Each Year by Hostway Customers
• Over 10,000 Servers in Operation Worldwide
• Nearly 500,000 Square Feet of Data Center Space
• An Average of 20GB of Sustained Web Traffic Served Every Second
• Approximately 90 PETABYTES of Data Transmitted Every Year
• Nearly 4 Megawatts Required Per Hour

Hostway’s Global 24/7/365 Network Operations Centers are located in North America in Chicago, Austin, Tampa and Vancouver, and abroad in London, Seoul, Frankfurt and Sydney. Utilizing state-of-the-art, industry-leading technologies, and employing end-to-end fault tolerance, clustered server architecture, multi-homed LANs and redundant backbone connections, Hostway delivers above-the-bar reliability.

All of Hostway’s operation hubs are supported by experienced industry professionals, including over 300 developers, engineers and systems administrators worldwide. Skilled teams provide services ranging from Custom Web Design to Search Engine Optimization and Online Advertising Programs.

Round-the-clock Technical Support and Customer Service teams in two hemispheres ensure customers’ success by assisting with everything from transferring domain names to customizing complex dedicated server configurations. Hostway utilizes the latest in support technologies, including online chat, KnowledgeBase, automated call-back systems, and robust ticketing and reporting applications. Hostway call centers handle on par of 17,000 calls per week, with an average 85% satisfaction rating per incident.

Partnering for Success

Hostway has long been an aggressive industry force, pursuing and winning partnerships with Fortune 500 companies and other significant brands such as Verizon, Costco, AOL/Time Warner, Best Buy, JP Morgan Chase & Company, Pepsico, Walt Disney, Comcast, Coca-Cola, Qwest Communications, Google, Yahoo!, EBay, Campbell’s Soup, McGraw Hill, Cablevision, Tribune, Hershey, Wrigley, Intuit, Toshiba, Brighthouse Networks, Fox News, CableOne, Sony, Infinity Radio, JVC, Bank of Montreal and Wikimedia, to list just a few.

Technology and strategic partners include IBM, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Cisco Systems, VeriSign, Intel, Macromedia, Hewlett Packard, Juniper Networks, RedHat, SunTrust, American Express, Visa, Miva, Chase, PayPal and Urchin.