Apr 4, 2003 : The webhost industry: week review

📅 April 4, 2003 - This week was one of significant additions, and one major subtraction, in the Web hosting industry, as a number of organizations announced major appointments and acquisitions, and one new product, while another organization announced significant cutbacks.
On Monday, Web hosting company Verio announced that it has appointed Calvin Quan to the position of senior vice president and chief financial officer, starting on March 31. Verio says Quan brings more than 20 years of experience in the technology sector to the role, having held leadership positions at companies in the United States, Asia, Europe and Latin America. Quan will report directly to Verio's president and CEO Justin Jaschke.
On Wednesday, communications carrier Cable & Wireless announced that it has appointed Francesco Caio as the company's new chief executive officer. At the same time, the company announced that it has created a new post, chief operating officer, which will be filled by Kevin Loosemore. Both appointees, says the company, have first-hand experience in the telecommunications and technology business. Caio was CEO and founder of Netscalibur, as well as CEO of Omnitel and Merloni. Loosemore was regional president for EMEA of Motorola and CEO of IBM UK.
While some of the additions made this week came through the appointment of new executives, several others came through the announcement of acquisitions.
On Tuesday, telecommunications service provider 360networks announced that it would acquire the North American communications business of Dynegy Inc. for an undisclosed sum. Under the terms of the agreement, 360networks will acquire Dynegy's North American communications operations, including its broadband network, with 65 wholesale customers and access points in 44 US cities. 360networks says it will assume the company's existing customer base and its remaining fiber leases, as well as its colocation facilities. The transaction is expected to close in April of 2003.
Also on Tuesday, enterprise application outsourcing provider BlueStar Solutions announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire application service provider Agilera Inc. With the addition of Agilera, says BlueStar, the company now offers hosting services for a wider array of enterprise applications, including major ERP solutions and messaging solutions and technology services to support them. The combined organization, says BlueStar, will be staffing corporate data centers and technical centers in Phoenix, Arizona; Columbia, South Carolina; and Dallas, Texas.
And on Wednesday, Web and Internet reseller solutions provider Internet Labs of Nevada Inc. (ILON) announced that it had acquired hosting provider Remarkable Hosting. Through the acquisition, says ILON, the company takes on ownership of substantially all the assets of Remarkable Hosting, including its current customer base and network infrastructure, in an undisclosed stock purchase. All current members of Remarkable Hosting's staff will become employees of ILON Hosting.
While several companies announced acquisitions this week, Cable & Wireless announced that it has entered into agreements to sell all of its domestic telecommunications services in Belgium, Netherlands, Sweden, Russia, Switzerland and Northern Europe. The disposals are part of C&W's strategy, announced in November, for focusing on serving multinational enterprises and service providers in Europe. IP-eYe, backed by managers currently within Cable & Wireless's Northern European business, is buying the domestic businesses in the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden and Russia. Swiss telecommunications company Smart Telecom will buy Cable & Wireless's Swiss domestic business. C&W says the value of the businesses being sold to IP-eYE are approximately 2 million Euro. The value of the assets sold to Smart Telecom is about 300,000 Euro.
And, while a number of companies made their additions through acquisitions and appointments, Web hosting automation software provider SWsoft made an addition to its line of sever virtualization software solutions. The company announced on Tuesday that it has released the 64-bit version of Virtuozzo for Itanium, the first 64-bit virtualization suite for servers using Intel's Itanium chip. Virtuozzo for Itanium, says SWsoft, brings mainframe-like partitioning to Intel's server architecture, allowing low-cost access to 64-bit virtual private servers with functionality equal to that of a dedicated Intel server.
With the notable exception of Cable & Wireless, this week many of the providers operating in the Web hosting industry made significant additions to their businesses, in their operations, executive teams or product lines. News from this week, and other recent weeks, might indicate that the troubles faced by some of the industry's largest providers are affording mid-sized operators an opportunity to develop more competitive offerings.