Shaking the bankruptcy bug in 2001, the management team of Savvis stayed committed to the business plan and ploughed on full steam ahead. True, the global network provider whose network spans 112 cities in 48 countries, thankfully accepted US$ 158.1 million in equity funding from investment firm Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe in March 2002. But growing the customer base in its IP VPN and Managed Hosting operations by 247 per cent in 2001 amid the turmoil, showed tremendous poise and resilience in the management team.

"From day one the team has been focused. We stayed together. We believed in our strategy and the products we had in place and went out selling to new customers and sticking to the plan in a challenging environment. Only one senior manager was lost in 2001," said Brad Hokamp, Executive Vice President of Product Management and Sales.

Revenues in Managed Hosting have been steadily growing since the launch of 'Intelligent Hosting' services in the fourth quarter of 2000. Managed Hosting revenues for the full year of 2001 totaled $10.8 million and the company has almost made half of that in the first quarter of 2002 with $5.1 million. Though hosting and Internet access account for just 15 per cent of the company's revenues at present, these figures have helped the company step foot in the cash flow positive territory.

Hokamp says the mid-market is the most rapidly growing segment not only for Managed Hosting but IP VPNs, which bodes well for future success. In 2001, seventy per cent of new customer acquisitions for Savvis were mid-market businesses. Companies can connect their offices, partners and remote employees over an affordable private network and can also integrate Savvis' managed hosting services, explained Hokamp.

Savvis, which commenced operations in 1996, provides services to approximately 1,500 customers worldwide. Included is complex hosting with an a-la-carte service offering, as well as pre-packaged solutions for Web, enterprise and database applications that can be installed in a few as five days.

In an effort to boost hosting revenues even further, Savvis launched its Fast Pack hosting solution in May 2002 specifically aimed at the SME market. Savvis has differentiated its offering by making available a standard firewall with three versions to choose from, full back up and recovery services and a dedicated connection with bandwidth up to 1Mbps of continuous traffic.

"We have more than five years' experience in managing over 25,000 servers for the financial services industry. We are convinced we can service the SME marketplace. We want to be the customer's complete operations department with infrastructure, OS platform management, and monitoring the applications. And we can streamline with standard platform designs, mix and match different components so customers can automate order entry provisioning and support," noted Dale Bender, Director of Hosting.

Added Bender, "We don't measure bandwidth based upon transfer rate, customers are given a full 1Mbps of bandwidth to utilize. This result is a substantial increase in the amount of data delivered at no additional cost. Those customers who wish to scale up from shared packages can make a move at an affordable price point."

Fast Pack will be geared towards the North American market initially. Customers will be serviced primarily from the company's largest data center —worth upwards of $50 million— in St. Louis, Missouri. Other data centers in Toronto and San Francisco may also be utilized as the customer base ramps up. Europe and Asia Pacific are future target markets as the company gradually increases its sales presence in these regions. Existing data centers in Singapore and London will no doubt bolster marketing efforts.

The Savvis data communications network which reaches Canada and the US as well as Latin America, Europe, The Middle East, Asia and The Pacific Rim has been dubbed "the Network that Powers Wall Street."

More than 4,700 financial institutions including the 75 of the top 100 worldwide banks and 45 of the top fifty brokerage firms are connected to the Savvis Network. The New York Stock Exchange, The Montreal Derivatives Exchange, The Merchants Exchange, Reuters, MoneyLine Telerate, Bonds of Asia and Travelocity are a few of the company's customers.

Hokamp is quick to point out that the network has been ranked at or near the top in performance since 1997 by Keynote Systems, an independent ISP auditor.

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Article courtesy of Tophosts.com

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