We’re glad to announce that Judith Davis is the iPad winner from our Brand Ambassador drawing. Congratulations Judith!

Judith Davis became a Hostway Brand Ambassador in January 2013 because she appreciated our services and wanted to recommend us to others. In January, she reviewed us over at Serchen with the following testimonial to let others know about her experience with Hostway:

“My website has been hosted on Hostway for over 10 years and it has been relatively easy for me. When I upgraded to a smartphone a few years ago and wanted to add my Hostway email, I had to call them and I dealt with a very nice customer service representative on the phone who was very helpful to me. He was able to fix the issue and everything is working well. This is important since I use this email quite often for my business. If you are thinking about a hosting site, give Hostway a try.”

As a long-standing customer via writerjudy.com, Davis exemplifies the Hostway experience. Her services seamlessly integrate into her business, but when she needs a little help, she can rely on our outstanding customer service. We’re honored to be a partner in Judith’s business; our decade-long relationship with her serves as an example of the importance of customer loyalty.

Davis will receive her iPad in early August. We hope it serves her and her business well.

If you aren’t familiar with the program, the Brand Ambassadors are an elite group of Hostway customers who stand behind Hostway products and services and share their experiences through social media, blogs, and review sites. As an Ambassador, Hostway will feature your business on our website. You'll also be eligible to receive special product and beta announcements reserved just for our ambassador group.

Once we reach our next landmark number of registered Brand Ambassadors, we’ll conduct a new drawing for another iPad. Don’t miss out – become a Brand Ambassador today!

Twice a year Amanda is lucky enough to get to take a much-needed escape from work and home and reconnect with the outdoors through a fabulous program called Becoming an Outdoor Woman (BOW).

She discovered this fantastic conference through a community group called Texas Outdoor Women’s Network (TOWN).

When Amanda moved to Texas in 2010, she began looking for a way to meet new people and someone suggested she join a local TOWN chapter, where groups of women meet together monthly to discuss outdoor and environmental issues and plan regular outings. It gave her a chance to connect with women who have similar interests and make new friends. Through TOWN, she learned about the BOW conference when a couple of fellow TOWNies were about to attend one. She signed up, and had no idea what a great time she was in for.

BOW is a conference hosted twice a year by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) designed to give women an opportunity to come together and try new outdoor activities in a non-threatening environment –without any men to tell you that you’re doing it wrong. 😉 For a small fee, TWPD provides food, lodging, and four classes including equipment and instructors. Imagine being at camp, but with better food and people you actually want to be around. Classes cover the gamut, so there is something for everyone: Rifle and Pistol, Fishing Basics, Geocaching, Camping, Land Navigation, Bow Hunting… the list goes on and on.

Unfortunately, with all of her travel this year, Amanda has not had time to participate in her normal TOWN meetings or activities, but she always makes time for two weekends a year to attend this fantastic conference. The women she has met are inspiring and amazing. The skills she has learned encourages her to be more active and healthy. And the memories are unforgettable.

Amanda says “For anyone who is interested, almost every state has a BOW conference. Just Google your state name and “Becoming an Outdoor Woman” to find the one in your area. For any Texas women who read this, please join us in November for the 25^th Anniversary of Texas BOW.”

Amanda is the Director of Marketing and Communications for Hostway and has been with the company for a year and a half.  Amanda has her BBA in Marketing and is an alumnus of Loyola University in New Orleans.

From June 10-13, Hostway employees had the opportunity to meet and mingle with customers, partners and cloud enthusiasts from all over the world at Cloud Expo East held at the Javits Convention Center in New York, N.Y.

Spread across four content-packed days, the convention had three interlocking themes: Big Data, Cloud Computing and Software-Defined Networking. There was a lot to see and do and not much time in which to do it: In addition to the 90,000 square feet of exposition space, there were six keynote speeches on a variety of topics. Over 190 educational sessions were held across 9 distinct tracks; 175 breakout technical and strategy sessions took place, and more than 200 expert speakers and panelists held court.

Thanks to everyone who stopped by our booth to talk with us, especially those who  took the time to complete our three-question survey. The survey dealt with security, scalability and performance of public cloud versus in-house solutions. We were interested in attendees’ opinions on cloud usage for web servers, database servers, email services, CRM, and additional collaboration software. The results will be published in an infographic and available on our website after it’s published. Want more info on the survey? Email media@hostway.com. In the meantime, you can read more about the survey.

Those who completed the survey were given a chance to win Xbox 360 with Kinect; the two lucky winners were Stephen Bornholtz (left) from MON Designs and Saurabh Gupta (right) from WebSpiders.

Hostway would like to thank its partners for taking time out from their busy conference schedules to meet with us! It’s always a pleasure to sit down face-to-face and talk about how to strengthen and enhance our partnerships. We’re better together, and collectively, we can help our customers’ businesses grow and thrive.

Be sure to watch this space for the results of the survey, and we hope to see you again next year at Cloud Expo East 2014!

March Madness brings American sports fans one of the most anticipated events of the year: the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship. This year, Hostway got in on the action with a contest for fans and followers on Facebook and Twitter.

The contest had two elements: a daily trivia contest and a bracket challenge. For the daily trivia contest, the first person to correctly answer a trivia question posted on Facebook or Twitter won a $10 Starbucks gift card.

For the second part of the contest, participants had to create a tournament bracket populated with their picks for the winners of the 63 games that made up the 2013 Men’s Tournament. Those predictions were submitted to Hostway’s private Yahoo! Group, and the person whose bracket scored highest won $1,000 from Hostway.

As the tournament progressed, contestants were eliminated based of the performance of the teams they selected, but all could still vie for the daily $10 gift certificates. The final winner of the bracket competition was Neil Peller from Oakland, N.J.

After winning, we had the opportunity to ask Neil, of AW Peller, some questions about the game and his relationship with Hostway.

Q: How did you first hear about Hostway?
A: We first heard about Hostway through their partnership with Costco a number of years ago. As a small business, we were looking for economical solutions to launch a new website. We used Hostway for web design, hosting, and getting proper certificates.

Q: Aside from winning, what was the best part of the contest?
A: Contests are a great way to connect with a vendor. It gives you a personal connection that you may not have had otherwise. I have filled out brackets for the past 20 years, and I have never even been close.

Q: Would you recommend Hostway to a friend looking for hosted solutions?
A: Yes. I have called customer service for various issues over the years, and I have always achieved a resolution to the problem.

Q: What kind of fun thing would you like to see Hostway do next?
A: Any sports contests. NFL football would be great.

Well Neil, Hostway can’t make any promises about the NFL, but we can say for sure that we’ve got some more events coming up that we’re sure you won’t want to miss!

Are you a customer or partner of Hostway? Eager to share your experience with others? Just email media@hostway.com to become a guest blogger.

Hostway isn’t just a company; it’s also a member of the communities in which we do business. Furthermore, we’re a member of the global community.  As a result, we couldn’t help but be moved by the suffering we saw when Hurricane Sandy hit the Eastern seaboard of the United States back in October 2012. During the holiday season, Hostway normally sends its partners and customers small holiday gifts. This year, in light of the devastation caused by the hurricane, we decided to do something different.

Hostway took the money normally allocated for holiday gifts and donated it to Hurricane Sandy relief efforts through the American Red Cross.  On April 2, 2013, Hostway presented a check in the amount of $10,000 to the Red Cross’ San Antonio chapter to help those who continue to be affected by the aftermath of the superstorm.

Contributions to Superstorm Sandy efforts will continue to support people with long term needs such as housing and community assistance clean-up and repair items, physical and mental health services, and distribution of food and water. Hostway’s contribution will boost the continuing effort to support our neighbors on the East coast.

“Like so many others watching the devastation unfold on television, our hearts were broken for the thousands of residents affected by Superstorm Sandy,” said John Martis, Hostway President and CEO. “Motivated to make a meaningful impact to aid recovery efforts, we decided to make this contribution to the Red Cross in lieu of our usual holiday corporate gifts, and we encouraged other businesses to do the same. Many of our clients expressed how grateful they were that we’d decided to put that money to good use helping people get back on their feet, rather than sending them some over-commercialized trinket.”

At Hostway, we are dedicated to being good corporate citizens, and know that there’s more to being a good company than just making money.  We do good work, but we believe in doing works of good as well.

Partner Program has been rated as a 5-Star program by CRN for two years in a row (read the press release here). What does that mean for you? It means that if you join our partner program, you’re embarking on a rock-solid relationship that will help you nurture your business.

Hostway’s partner program is for Value Added Resellers (VARs), Developers, Ad and Marketing Agencies, and Independent Software Venders (ISVs).  It is for anyone looking to capitalize on the fast-growing cloud environment with the ability to influence which hosting company your customers choose.  So why partner with Hostway? What’s in it for you?

For one thing, we can help your cloud business thrive. It’s been shown that solid, strategic partnerships can help businesses grow.  (See this white paper for more information.)  You will benefit by getting aggressive incentives and deep volume discounts, and receive new recurring revenue streams. In addition, you can expand your business because by being a Hostway Partner, you’ll have access to our 600,000 customers!  You’ll be able to drive new business by participating in joint strategic sales and marketing activities. You’ll be able to leverage a trusted technology infrastructure that is second to none, and deliver direct value-added products and services to your customers.

If you refer your customers to Hostway, they will appreciate all of the benefits of being a Hostway customer. With flexible pricing structures designed to fit their needs, Hostway provides a variety of solutions ranging from simple domain-name hosting to complex hybrid-cloud hosting in virtualized environments. Perfect for the SMB market, Hostway helps business owners focus on what they do best – running their business – and takes the worry out of IT. Your customer gets great hosting services and remembers you as the one that provided them with the referral. It’s a win-win-win.

 

Laura is a Lead Generation Manager here at Hostway and a former cheerleader for the San Antonio Spurs – but her passions for cheerleading and technology have far-reaching effects beyond her own satisfaction. She’s also helping the community and furthering science at the same time! Laura is what’s known as a Science Cheerleader, and what she does is literally out of this world!

The Science Cheerleaders are current and former cheerleaders and dancers for professional sports franchises who have an interest in and passion for science. They engage in a variety of citizen-sponsored scientific projects around the United States. The goal of Science Cheerleaders is to challenge stereotypes about professional dancers and encourage young women to consider careers in science, technology, engineering and math. For Laura, participating in this event was a natural extension of her lifelong love of learning and community outreach. Science Cheerleaders also work to bring science into the lives of everyday citizens, working for a more informed public. In addition to promoting formal research projects, Science Cheerleaders collaborated with NBC Sports, NBC Learn, the NFL and the National Science Foundation to produce an Emmy -winning video series titled The Science of NFL Football. Their notable first performance was at the U.S.A. Science and Engineering Festival in Washington, D.C., in October, 2010, a presentation made possible by the support of the Burroughs Welcome Fund.

As a San Antonio Spurs Silver Dancer for eight years, Laura participated in many city-wide appearances with various non-profit groups to help support and raise awareness for various causes and promote education. She found these charitable events as a Silver Dancer rewarding as a chance to give back to the community, and she continues to enjoy participating in anything related to higher education.

Her opportunity to join Science Cheerleaders came not too long ago when she participated in a pro dance workshop. “I was introduced to the organization’s founder who was seeking a former or current pro dancer/cheerleader in the San Antonio and Austin area. I really liked the idea of the Science Cheerleaders.” And the rest is history. Or more appropriately, science.

In San Antonio, the Science Cheerleaders have teamed up with SciStarter, UC Davis and the National Science Teachers Association to help with Project Merccuri to study microbes in space! On April 12, 2013, they gathered microbes from a San Antonio Spurs game; one sample is going to be sent to the International Space Station for further study – a truly out-of-this-world endeavor.

In a recent interview with Laura, she stated that the best advice she would give to herself as a 12-year-old was to not lose sight of the importance of education. While being involved with sports and activities that you enjoy is important, it’s also important to keep your studies at the forefront as well.

Laura has a BA in Communications, Marketing and Public Relations from the University of Texas at San Antonio, and because of her work at Hostway, she is able to use that degree in a technology-related field.