C I Host Celebrates 10th Anniversary
Fort Worth, Texas – (Website Hosting Directory) – May 3, 2007 – Web hosting and Internet infrastructure solutions company, C I Host, celebrates its tenth anniversary, reporting a solid financial foundation, and customer loyalty.
According to the company, in 2006, C I Host added more than 60,000 new clients all over the world and lowered its churn rate to 2 percent, less than half of the rate in 2005 and considered the lowest in the web hosting industry. Revenues increased more than 20 percent and profits increased more than 25 percent. The main data center in the Dallas-Fort Worth area was expanded for the ninth time in ten years and the company has purchased a 65,000 square feet of space and is in the process of constructed a new Tier-2 data center facility. All this expansion has been supported from the organic growth of the company with no use of venture capital, bank loans or outside investments.
Christopher Faulkner, CEO of C I Host remarked, ”We are extremely happy to be at this juncture in the growth of our company. The combination of a solid financial footing and a supportive customer base bodes well for our future.”
As the Internet has grown in importance as a vital business tool and essential part of life for companies, students and families, C I Host has expanded its product line and fine-tuned its services to lead the pack in the web-based world. For example, in 2006 C I Host launched a new product line called ”4×4 Hosting,” which uses proprietary technology to host client content on four unique servers in four different data centers – Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago and New York. This redundancy gives clients the added security of backups. In case of an outage on one server, the traffic to a client’s site can be switched almost instantaneously to one of the other four servers, thus eliminating any downtime.
Mr. Faulkner continued, ”We have been extremely fortunate to be able to play a major role in driving the direction of eCommerce and in keeping the Internet robust, safe and accessible for millions of people over the past ten years. To have been part of this crucial stage of wired and wireless economic development has been an incredible opportunity.”
In addition, C I Host recently launched the ”C I Family,” a program designed to help employees balance work and family, increase skills and knowledge, be healthier and participate in the global community. C I Host provides free child care services, a fully equipped workout room, an arcade and game room and a full gymasium. Employees can take courses on a variety of topics in a 30-person learning center that is staffed with instructors available throughout the day. Courses include both those related to C I Host business and others, such as Spanish, and math and science programs. C I Host also provides employee reimbursement programs for continuing education and certification programs. Periodic retreats are held on campus for the workforce to promote bonding and fun activities.
The philosophy of ”C I Host – One Company, One Team,” and the extensive programs to promote employee well-being has resulted in a loss of only two employees in 2006 and the addition of 28 new C I Family members, 20 of whom were referred by current employees. C I Host now employs 224 men and women.
Mr. Faulkner added, ”Where we are today, on our tenth anniversary, is due to the tremendous dedication and skill of our employees. We operate as a family and that is what makes all the difference.”
Over the past ten years, C I Host has incurred no long-term debt and has been able to anticipate economic changes accurately enough to successfully ride out the collapse of the dot.com bubble and even show growth during that time. In large part, that growth has occurred because C I Host has consistently put its customers at the center of its operation – using quality-controlled customer service programs, a live chat room with the CEO, customer satisfaction surveys and a ”Customers Rule” program to keep the focus on the needs of its clients.
Mr. Faulkner continued, ”We have been blessed with tremendous success, and none of it would have been possible without the support of our customers. They are truly the collective CEO of my company.”
Most recently, C I Host initiated what Mr. Faulkner calls the ”C I HOST Fever” program. Every employee from the top down, including himself, must call ten customers a day and talk to them about their C I Host experience. Mr. Faulkner explained, ”This is about reigniting the personal touch. We call more than 2,000 customers a day. I call at least ten myself and every customer I talk to is floored that the CEO is calling them to ask about their service, which may only cost about $25 a month. That is what this is all about.”
In 2004, C I Host pulled all of its customer-centered programs together into a new Customer Experience Initiative, ”Customers Rule.” To develop the program, C I Host examined every customer contact point and thought about what customers would need at those crucial times. Mr. Faulkner offered, ”Every contact made throughout the entire lifecycle of a customer’s relationship with C I Host is made with the utmost professionalism, accuracy and thoroughness. This goes for marketing, sales, billing, tech support and customer service.”
C I Host has grown with wholly-owned, state-of-the-art data centers in Dallas, Los Angeles, Chicago and Newark – and a planned opening in London. Over the past two years, C I Host has expanded its facilities, developed an anti-scam toolbar and other strategies to protect Internet users from Internet crime, and pioneered the use of web-based technology to expand the market for musicians and artists to sell their products and services and to help nonprofit organizations linked with the arts to raise funds to help those hurt by national disasters.
At the close of 2005, C I Host joined forces with Involved, Inc., to host a New Year’s Eve webcam of the New York City and Los Angeles segments of a worldwide online auction of VIP packages linked to the top DJs and clubs in the world. Proceeds from the event, which included donated concert tickets and visits with such celebrities as the world-renowned DJs Carl Cox, Sander Kleinenberg and Sasha, went to benefit UNICEF. Mr. Faulkner explained, ”This was a way that we could engage the good will of a generation that considers both music and the Internet to be integral parts of their lives. These young men and women probably aren’t reached through traditional appeals for help, but an online auction of events they love is a perfect way to give them the opportunity to help the children of the world.”
In January, the company upgraded the free media servers that come with every account to the latest version of Real.com’s Helix Server Unlimited, a top-of-the-line multi-format, cross-platform streaming server that delivers the highest quality experience to wired and wireless devices. In 2005, C I Host opened a data center in Newark, New Jersey, a half-mile from Rutgers University and just eight miles from Manhattan. In conjunction with the other three centers, the Newark center provides C I Host’s customers opportunities for geographic content distribution and geographic load balancing. The Newark center also has a direct, private fiber connection to the planned London facility, thus enabling private data transfer between the two facilities. The London center will be in The Docklands, just a short hop from the city center. Besides its four data centers, C I Host has invested in a large, robust, redundant and reliable network – now one of the largest privately owned fiber-optic cable networks in the world.
Mr. Faulkner continued, ”We know that millions of dollars of business can be earned or lost online depending on whether the customer can navigate the site quickly. So we put a major emphasis on the quick download times that geographic load balancing provides.”
From its birth in Mr. Faulkner’s dorm room on April 26, 1997, C I Host’s core market has been small- and medium-sized companies whose owners and managers were more concerned with running their businesses than becoming techno-geeks. These companies, dubbed ”late adopters” in marketing demographics, saw the emerging technology of eCommerce as a tool to boost their bottom lines rather than as an end in itself.
Mr. Faulkner concluded, ”Our motto has always been, ‘we hold their hand every step of the way. I love the technical stuff, but I know not everyone does. So we take care of all that so our customers can run their company, whether it is a syndicated college radio show or a global conglomerate.”
C I Host’s reseller program, launched in 1996 while Mr. Faulkner was CEO of Creative Innovations, has developed into a profitable reseller network, with more than 8,500 resellers in 25 countries. C I Host has packaged its ”e-Business in a Box” with a dozen red roses for Valentine’s Day, sponsored race cars and drivers, put a 25-foot Santa on the front lawn of its headquarters in Bedford, Texas and sponsored the web site for a Miss Fort Worth contest.
C I Host, based in the Dallas/Fort Worth market, is a web hosting and Internet solutions provider, domain name registrar (DNR) and application service provider (ASP) hosting 330,000 domains in 190 countries worldwide. C I Host creates business-class web hosting solutions for the small- and medium-enterprise (SME) market, with a broad portfolio of managed hosting and value-added services. C I Host is accredited by ICANN to register domain names. C I Host is HIPAA-compliant and has passed SAS 70 Type I and II audits. C I Host has been ranked #1 in speed by the Adoloma Web Hosting Guide. C I Host has been consistently ranked among the Top 5 Web hosting companies out of 16,000 around the globe by c|net’s Ultimate Web Host List, HostPulse, WebHostsOnline.com and HostChart.com. C I Host was named among the Top 25 Web hosting companies by HostIndex.com. C I Host offers turn-key services ranging from initial domain name registration to custom dedicated servers for e-commerce on the web.
C I Host operates four data centers across the United States, with its main facility and Network Operations Center in Bedford, Texas. C I Host also has offices in Los Angeles, Chicago, Newark. All telco-grade, tier-1 data centers are wholly owned and operated by C I Host and consist of redundant diesel generator backups and a temperature-controlled secure environment with fully redundant UPS capability. All server hardware is fully tested and configured for optimal performance. Daily Web server backups and full fire protection guard against any data loss. To deliver speed and reliability, C I Host’s servers are connected to five diverse Internet backbones for a total of more than 10 Gigabits of available bandwidth.
To learn more, please visit: www.cihost.com.
August 24th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
CI host is closing it’s Newark location down on August 31, 2007.