The Cary News Thursday, November 15, 2001

Hosted Solutions gets bounce with new contract

Cary Web hoster signs multi-year contract with FortuneCity.com, one of the top 20 Internet media companies in the world.

BY MEGAN JONES
STAFF WRITER

A Cary company that provides outsourced, managed Web hosting has been awarded a multi-year, multi-million-dollar contract that will allow it to double its employee base and give it more bandwidth than any provider in Raleigh.

Hosted Solutions, owned by Chris Hanks and Rich Lee, last month signed the deal with FortuneCity.com, an international network of personal publishing, content, utility, entertainment and technology properties. According to industry analysts Media Matrix and Neilson, FortuneCity ranks as one of the top 20 largest Internet media companies in the world.

“The fact that a global company generating 20 million unique visitors per month and registering close to 4,000 new users per day selected us is a major milestone in our growth plans for the company,” said Hanks, Hosted Solutions's president.

Hosted Solutions was launched in June of this year, when Hanks and Lee, the company's CEO, acquired the local data center and key technology assets of the Triangle based Utenzi Corporation.

“When Utenzi filed for bankruptcy, we saw that as a good opportunity to take it over and turn it around,” Hanks said.

Over the last five months the two have built up Hosted Solutions - a full-service data center that provides managed, secure Web hosting for mission-critical applications - to serve more than 120 North Carolina-based companies, including Sports Endeavors.

The agreement with FortuneCity solidified the company's cash-positive position.

“It's no secret that many of the data centers around the country are battling overcapacity and huge debt loads,” Hanks said. “We are debt-free, profitable and have a simple, straightforward and sustainable business strategy - focus on one facility and one market, becoming an inch wide and a mile deep in the Triangle market.”

The FortuneCity contract will allow Hosted Solutions, which started with nine employees, to double that base within the first year. And because the agreement requires Hosted Solutions to have multiple OC3 Internet feeds in place by Jan. 1, 2002, the company will have more bandwidth than any provider in Raleigh, Hanks said.

Contact Megan Jones at 460-2608 or mjones@nando.com