December 9, 2002

Local Companies Powered By Hosted Solutions Run Smoothly During The Triangle's Worst Ice Storm In Years

dBusinessNews.com

Hosted Solutions also provides critical office space and support to clients whose livelihood depends on having power and Internet access.

Cary - Hosted Solutions, the leading North Carolina based Data Center and Web Hosting company, today reports that they had no downtime throughout the recent ice storm that crippled North Carolina, running business as usual even though most businesses were closed due to the loss of power and phone lines.

Last week, while Triangle area businesses were left wondering when power and phone lines would be restored, and when the streets would be safe for employees to return to normal working conditions, Hosted Solutions's 160+ business customers knew their online business infrastructure was safe and secure.

While thousands of Triangle businesses lost out on hours of productivity and sales opportunities, the mission critical web sites, applications and intranets of Hosted Solutions's business customers ran completely uninterrupted.

Several customers even used Hosted Solutions's Network Operations Center as a Disaster Recovery Center to keep their business moving forward.

“The staff at Hosted Solutions went above and beyond by providing our staff with emergency space needed to serve our clients without interruption,” said David Morken, President at Durham based Bandwidth.com. “The fact that every promise made by Hosted Solutions was kept during this hundred-year storm has earned the undying loyalty of our firm. Without Hosted Solutions, we would have been devastated.”

According to Phillip Hall, General Manager of Cary's iEntertainment, “As an online gaming business, we've got hundreds of thousands of customers around the world who pay to play - if the website is down we're literally out of business. And like most every business in Cary and RTP, our offices have been without power and Internet access. With one phone call we were operating our business out of the Hosted Solutions facility the same day - that's what happens when you partner with a locally owned and operated company.”

“Even if the situation had escalated to where the Triangle area had a complete power blackout, Hosted Solutions's customers would have been up and running due to a Premier Power Program agreement with Progress Energy,” said Rich Lee, CEO of Hosted Solutions. “Progress Energy remained in contact with us throughout the storm to update us on generator operation and fuel status.”

“During the blackout, we monitored the operation of the backup generator that supports their Data Center and Network Operation Center, and even refueled it at the height of the storm, stated Bill Green,” Manager of Power Protection Solutions for Progress Energy.

At Hosted Solutions's Cary facility, monitoring equipment detected the loss of commercial power at 3:30 AM Thursday morning and switched to battery power. Within seconds, Hosted Solutions's 900 KVa Caterpillar diesel generator came to life, keeping the facility running without incident.

“During any power outage, our facility is designed to stay on the generator until the power has been restored and has stabilized for 30 minutes,” said Jack Tackett, Data Center Operations Manager at Hosted Solutions. “All in all, we ran off the generator for about 24 hours. We keep 2,900 gallons of fuel on site, which will allow the facility to run for 72 to 96 hours without refueling, depending on the load.”

That's one of the reasons companies chose to outsource to us, said President Chris Hanks. “Once a week, we simulate a power failure and run all facilities off of our diesel generators to ensure that our power systems will continue to operate seamlessly.”