HostIndex.com, November 21, 2001

Interview: Chris Hanks - President, Hosted Solutions

The philosophy that drives Hosted Solutions is simple. “We want to be an inch wide and a mile deep,” explains Chris Hanks, president of the Cary, NC managed services provider. In other words, focusing on what makes Hosted Solutions successful, and doing those things really well.

To keep meeting the needs of current and new customers, Hosted Solutions has just signed agreements that will substantially increase the available bandwidth at its data center. HostIndex.com scoops the latest from Chris Hanks…

HostIndex.com: Hosted Solutions has just signed telecommunication services agreements with Sprint and Cable & Wireless. The agreements provide for the installation of dual OC3 pipes, each of which will provide 155 Mbps of capacity. What does this announcement mean for your hosting customers and your data center?

Chris Hanks: It means a lot. We're upping our bandwidth tremendously. We currently have two redundant DS3 connections. We're moving to two OC3 pipes. So obviously, we're moving our bandwidth up to about 310 Mbps. With our current commitments, we're only going to use about 100 - 150 Mbps, so we're going to have an overabundance of accessible bandwidth to use with our current customers as well as new customers. We don't want to hinder our growth opportunities and we're making the investments in the infrastructure.

It's the same approach as we took with our data center in Cary, NC. We purchased a carrier-grade data center and made the investment in infrastructure. We want to continue to do that with the resources and the engineers we have in place. We have about 12 full time engineers on staff 24X7. The OC3 pipes work right in line with that.

HostIndex.com: How do you walk the fine line between growing to meet the anticipated needs of new customers, and growing too quickly?

Chris Hanks: That's a good question. What we've done is looked at the growth projections for the next 6 months to the next year, as well as the growth that we've sustained over the past 5 months. It's been easy for us to forecast our growth. It made us realize that in the near future, we were going to have bottlenecks with some of the larger customers that have approached us, and we can't have any hindrances.

We really participate in the SME market, but as we move forward to the larger enterprise customers, we can't have anything to hinder our ability to offer them solid managed services. Bandwidth is one of the areas we wanted to make sure we had covered.

HostIndex.com: Cable & Wireless and Sprint are respected industry leaders. Does having those companies as providers increase the confidence level of your hosting customers?

Chris Hanks: That's correct. They are key vendors for us and they will continue to be, moving forward. There are also others. We've forged a relationship with IBM—we're deploying IBM servers—as well as Sun Microsystems.

HostIndex.com: Will having the fastest connection in the Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill Triangle allow you to migrate customers from other data centers in the area?

Chris Hanks: We hope so! Obviously, there is a little bit of history here with the data center we acquired, and we want to show these customers that my partner (Rich Lee) and I are making the investment to carry them to the next level of data center—the carrier grade data center.

HostIndex.com: Is it tough to overcome that history?

Chris Hanks: There's no question. As the name Hosted Solutions Managed Hosting reflects, we've changed the name and changed the marketing philosophies, and we're being very aggressive in this area. Again, we want to be very good at a few things, so we are really focusing on the few areas that we think we can succeed in—the managed services, the dedicated servers, the colocation facilities—and we're putting our resources toward those.

HostIndex.com: You recently signed a long-term contract with FortuneCity.com, one of the world's top 20 Internet companies. You are in final negotiations with several other companies with high bandwidth requirements. What is attracting them to Hosted Solutions Managed Hosting?

Chris Hanks: A number of things. It's kind of a new economy today. When my partner and I approached this opportunity, we wanted to come in as a low cost provider with an outstanding facility—a carrier grade facility. We've done that via the acquisition of a failing company, so the point of entry was such that the price to our customers was extremely positive, extremely aggressive. As well, my partner and I have experience running data centers. This isn't the first time we've done this. You have two proven managers as well as a number of proven operators within our staff, an entry price that's second to none and a facility that can match anybody's. To me, that's an equation for success.

HostIndex.com: You are focusing on the SME market right now. Do you want to move to the enterprise level customer?

Chris Hanks: That's the unique aspect of what we're doing. Our focus is the SME market, but we can support the enterprise level customer as FortuneCity shows you. It won't be our primary focus, to be honest with you—the SME is. But when opportunities arise, we'll continue to move forward with some of the larger enterprise customers.

HostIndex.com: Thanks, Chris! We appreciate the time you have taken to speak with us today.