Gartner predicts that “hybrid cloud is the foundation of digital business.” Further, they estimate that spend in the hybrid cloud market will reach $209 billion in 2019, growing to $317 billion by 2022. We decided to merge Hostway and Hosting to capitalize on this exact trend. This merger represents an opportunity for a “re-founding” moment for both Hostway and Hosting with opportunities to reach the mission our companies embarked on 20 years ago. We wanted to create a combined company that offers complex managed cloud solutions spanning the entire lifecycle of customers’ digital transformation with the highest reputation for security and customer experience.
It is said that the journey is sometimes more rewarding than the destination. The process of merging two companies towards a unified vision proves this every day. Together, Hostway and Hosting are forging a new history, driven by customer needs of building something unique. I am thrilled about this new future and all the benefits it will yield for customers, partners, and employees alike.
Expansion Meets Shifting Needs
Modern technology needs are rarely (if ever) met by just one service or another—it’s a complex mix of solutions. Rising to the forefront of this industry shift towards hybrid, Hostway and Hosting merged at the end of 2018 to create one of the largest managed cloud services platforms in the world. Our merged company is now an industry leader in building and managing complex cloud environments with highly available and secure solutions that span public and private cloud. Our unmatched portfolio features a multitude of managed options, including private cloud, VMware, AWS, Azure, and hybrid cloud solutions with a full suite of security, compliance, database management, DevOps, and business intelligence services. Hostway now stands out as a global powerhouse with 14 state-of-the-art data centers around the world.
Customer Needs Are Shifting
The combination of Hostway and Hosting creates a leading independent platform positioned to thrive in a rapidly consolidating market. To understand all the benefits the merger brings, it’s important to understand the IT environment that businesses work in today. It’s predicted that that 83% of enterprise workloads will be in the cloud by 2020, and while the public cloud approach used to be considered the natural answer for outgrowing old IT methods, public cloud alone is proving to be an incomplete solution. Concerns of cost, compliance, and security are driving the prevalence of more hybrid, custom, and multi-cloud options. As noted by 451 Research, “Using both public and private infrastructure…[is] the endgame for most organizations today. This approach avoids vendor lock-in and enables enterprises to leverage the best attributes of each platform.”
Setting a Strong Foundation
Our expectations for the integration of these companies are constantly being surpassed. We are making excellent progress thanks to the hard work and amazing professionalism of our teams. In a very short period of time we have seamlessly merged our operations, systems, and teams, all united in our goals of providing a great customer experience. We’ve also delivered growth of available services to customers, as well as increased career growth opportunities for team members.
In February, we held our first integrated Sales Kickoff in Denver, bringing together our entire global sales team under one roof to meet and learn about our new portfolio of service, partnerships, and clients. Joining in these many conversations reminded me again just how complex IT management has become and why the time was right to come together and join forces. Bringing our teams, services, and collective knowledge together is more important now than ever to bring the most innovative and comprehensive solutions to our customers.
Strong Team Alignment
Technology and systems are certainly important during mergers, but it’s the people behind the merger that complete the winning formula. From day one of the merger, there was a lot to do in so many areas. Suddenly, we became a much larger global company with expanded services, growing teams, new locations, and more. After visits to new offices around the world, I witnessed firsthand the alignment between both companies’ core values, commitment to integrity, and customer focus. As a combined team, our employees immediately engaged and collaborated to solve customer problems. Watching our teams work together, you would think these companies have been merged for years, not just a few weeks!
These early integration efforts are already being recognized by industry-leading reviews and reports. In the first two months of Q1, Hostway was named one of the major key players of the most recent Market Report by Global Managed Servers Market Forecast (2019-2023) and one of the Top Colocation Services Vendors by FeaturedCustomers, in addition to receiving the Best Managed Hosting Service Award by HostReview.
Benefits to Customers
Our customers are the true focus of all of this work. The expanded portfolio addresses core businesses challenges and provides comprehensive solutions for our customer needs. We have already begun serving customers with our expanded service set, and our internal account teams are proactively assessing and identifying ways to optimize and improve outcomes for current customers. Hostway is excited to fully complete the merger in the weeks to come, unveiling changes across our website and our products.
As a quick example of the increase in services available to customers, now Hosting customers can have a global presence by accessing Hostway’s international Data Centers in Germany, Korea, and Canada. Additionally, Hosting customers now have access to the full suite of business-class Office 365 services from Hostway, as well as in the in-depth Azure expertise that the Hostway team brings. Similarly, Hostway customers can now benefit from Hosting’s experience and technical processes for database management brought by the Ntirety Hosting team, in depth AWS Management and automation, and Compliance as Service offerings. Hosting’s previous focus on Monitoring Insights, DevOps automation, management, and protection across services will be a valuable addition to Hostway’s customer solutions.
We are also proud to have introduced the industry’s first Guidance Level Agreements (GLAs), providing organizations that work with Hostway’s with actionable recommendations, providing benefits for all of our customers. These in-depth recommendations are delivered quarterly and tied to customer’s individual business achievement.
Collectively, the organization is now better positioned to address the entirety of enterprise IT challenges and deliver more comprehensive solutions to risk, cost, and agility in the ever-changing technology landscape.
We’re Coming to You
Combining our expertise, our united teams are traveling to meet with IT professionals and hear about their challenges at executive dinners and TechTalks in cities across the country. Some of our best and brightest will be listening and learning about these industry issues to understand and share how our combined company can help these growing customer needs. Those interested but unable to make of our in-person events are encouraged to join us during our series of webinars. We are excited to connect and share our expanded knowledge sets.
As Hostway continues to unite, customers and partners will get the benefit of more than twice the experience, technical expertise, and services to help every step of the way on the journey to hybrid cloud environments, with greater protection against ever-emerging threats. Learn about what twice the benefits means for your organization in our X2 webinar series. With similar company cultures and determination, we are successfully building a stronger team that will build careers within our organization and reinforce our mission towards personal, company, and customer success. The Executive Team, along with the entire company, are thrilled to be on the front lines of this exciting evolution and look forward to further accelerate our customer’s success in the coming months.
What do you think of this merger? How do you think it will benefit customers? Please let us know your comments by emailing esayegh@hostway.com.