Q&A Wednesday :: Peer1

29. Jul, 2009 Comments

Today’s Q&A Wednesday is with Robert Miggins, Senior VP of Business Development at Peer1, who is launching an exciting new program for tech startups named CloudXcelerator.

Before we talk about CloudXcelerator, tell us a little about Peer1 as a company?
PEER 1 believes in the limitless opportunity of the Internet, and the business growth potential it provides for its more than 10,000 customers. As a global online IT hosting provider, PEER 1 offers a reliable high performance Internet network supporting scalable managed hosting, dedicated hosting through the ServerBeach brand, and co-location and networking solutions. Backed by its 100 percent uptime guarantee and 24×7x365 FirstCall Support, PEER 1 ensures customers’ online presence is always fast, always available.

We have 350 employees, 16 datacenters in North America and Europe, and about $100M in annual revenue. What that means to you is that we’re big enough and capable enough to handle just about any hosting need. However, we’re small enough to know our customers on a first name basis and won’t bog you down with process and bureaucracy.

For the right early stage companies, CloudXcelerator is an incredible opportunity. What is the right profile for a company to be in this program?
We are looking for cloud computing or SaaS enablement startups to join this program. Essentially, that means any company who is trying to help other companies take advantage of cloud computing or multi-tenancy.

What are some of the features and benefits of this program, should a company be chosen?
The program includes many great things, such as:

Discounted Hosting: Get our award-winning hosting services at significant discounts through deeply subsidized dedicated servers and bandwidth.
Discounted Storage : Get exclusive low pricing on our enterprise SAN managed backup solution designed for innovators like yourself developing and launching new applications.
Reputable Infrastructure: Get the peace-of-mind that comes with running your application on our reliable and rock-solid SuperNetwork backbone that spans across North America and Europe.
Free Publicity: Get free coverage about your company and cloud application on our website, participate in joint PR opportunities, and communication to our 10,000+ customers.
Free Lead Generation: Get in front of our entire sales team, educate them on the features and benefits of your application, and they will in turn refer you qualified leads as they encounter new sales opportunities.
Co-Marketing Funds: Receive co-marketing funds from us to help you with your pay-per-click and other advertising programs to drive awareness, leads, and sales.

Tell us about your SuperNetwork?
Our wholly-owned and operated SuperNetwork is a powerful network backbone built for customers like you who want maximum uptime and faster connections.

We have over 13,000 miles of fiber connectivity with a presence in leading carrier hotels for cost effective, Fast-Ethernet and Gigabit-Ethernet access. You don’t get that kind of speed and connectivity anywhere else. We invite you to check with other hosting providers to see for yourself. When you host at PEER 1, you get a team of IT professionals dedicated to building the strongest, most reliable and secure network on earth. Imagine hosting your online business on a network with more than a dozen data centers, 21 points-of-presence (PoPs), and over 500 peering relationships. At PEER 1, you can. Nobody else even comes close to our track record for solid uptime and performance. Not only can we deliver, but we do it better, faster, time and time again.

Do you have any early success stories from this program yet?
Absolutely. The best example is probably Apprenda (www.apprenda.com). They offer Platform as a Service solutions for .NET centric ISVs which helps them convert their businesses to a SaaS model. They are getting great response to their offering with our help. Another is 10Gen – which offers Mongo DB, an open source database perfectly suited to run in the cloud.