Hostway

Type:	Private
Industry:	Web Hosting
Founded:	USA, 1998
Headquarters:	Hostway Corporation, 100 N Riverside, Suite 800 Chicago, IL 60606
Country:	USA
Website:	Hostway.com
Twitter:	@Hostway
Key People
Lucas Roh, President and CEO M. Jay Sinder, CFO

Hostway is a web hosting company. Founded in 1998, this multinational company is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois with 15 worldwide operations centers and major offices in the U.S., Canada, Korea, Australia, India, Germany, the U.K., and the Netherlands. Along with web hosting and web developing services, Hostway also provides internet marketing solutions, web best email and other internet related services. Hostway currently has about 600,000 customers worldwide, including Coca-Cola, Disney, McGraw-Hill, Sony/BMG, Wrigley Company, Hershey’s, Fox News Channel and Wikimedia.

History

• In 1998, Lucas Roh, John Lee, and Arnold Choi, along with two other business partners, acquired Spectronet Inc., a web hosting company that had an annual revenues of $30,000 at that time. They renamed the company Hostway Corporation and began preparations to expand its reach in the US and international markets. According to the CEO, Lucas Roh, when Hostway was founded it was one of 10,000 web hosting companies, and by 2003 it became one of the top 10.

• In April, 2002, Hostway acquired Iarna.com, a web hosting company from London.

• In August, 2003, Hostway merged with NetNation Communications, Inc. a web hosting and domain registration company from Canada; the merger resulted in one of the largest web service providers in the world. At that same time, Hostway bought another web hosting company Neutelligent from Tampa. Later that year, Hostway acquired GlobalHost, a web hosting company from Australia.

• In January, 2004, Hostway bought Enterprise Networks (EPN), a Data Center and Hosting Business based in Korea.

• In January, 2006, Hostway announced a plan to build a new data center in the Boeing building, along the west bank of the Chicago River. Hostway was later headquartered in that location.

• In April, 2007, Hostway acquired Affinity Internet Inc., a web hosting company founded in 1996 from Florida, with almost 300 employees and 200,000 customers at that time.

• In July, 2007, Hostway moved the Affinity Miami data center, which at that time had clients such as ValueWeb and Gate.com. The migration had a disastrous affect, especially on ValueWeb, leaving thousands of sites offline for almost three days. This incident was ranked #2 of the top 8 Data center Disasters of 2007 by IT Management Magazine.

• In May, 2009, Hostway sold its FL Data Center to Host.net, a Florida based Internet business company.

• In January 2012, Hostway sold its subsidiary RegistryPro to Afilias for an undisclosed amount. Hostway retained ownership of their Zip.pro collection of .pro domains, effectively becoming Registry.pro's biggest customer.

Products and Services

According to its official website, Hostway provides web solutions, virtual private servers, exchange hosting, dedicated servers, cloud hosting, etc., to small businesses or individual entities. It also provides higher priced dedicated hosting services for large-scale clientele.

Hostway also provides various service to its clients though its partners. It has partnerships with Cisco Systems®, HP, Juniper Networks, Microsoft, RedHat, Attracta, IBM, Verisign, Trend Micro, PayPal, American Express, Suntrust, First Data, Google, Real, and others.

Awards

• In 2008, Hostway won "Best Web Hosting Company of the Year", "Best Dedicated Server Package of the Year" , "Best Cloud Service of the Year" , "Best Dedicated Server Package (January)" from HostReview; "UNIX Web Hosting Award (January and February)" from FindMyHost and "#2 Windows Dedicated Server Plan" (January) from WebHostDirectory.

• In 2009, Hostway won "UNIX Web Hosting Award" for multiple months by Web Host Directory and "Reseller Hosting Award" for multiple months from the Dedicated Server Directory. It also won additional recognition from HostReview, FindmyHost, and others.

• In general, it has been honored by several web review companies like Dedicated Server Directory, FindMyHost, Web Host Directory, Top Host, Netcraft, Host Index, etc., sometimes for muliple months, or years, since its foundation in 1999.

External links

• hostway.com