SimpleNet History
When drafting the SimpleNet business plan, the founders envisioned themselves enjoying the San Diego surf while the virtual company ran itself. Bursting onto the scene in March of 1996, as the first specialized Internet Presence Provider (IPP) looked much easier on paper than it was in reality. Long days and even longer nights developed an uncommon corporate culture that became the cornerstone of the Internet industry. The relentless endeavors of dedicated employees helped sustain SimpleNet's explosive growth and ability to offer inexpensive, yet reliable services. Choosing to avoid the cost of dialup access faced by traditional ISPs, the company was one of the first to focus solely on domain name registration, email, and the total gamut of web hosting services from shared to co-location. SimpleNet suddenly found itself a market leader, and one that coined the term "web hosting."
The plan was to build infrastructure, solve complex engineering problems, and market technology aimed to shape the young web hosting industry. The strategy behind the plan eventually evolved from the company name. The Internet was complicated; SimpleNet created easily understandable services, products, and prices. While continually working to raise industry standards, the organization adhered to a philosophy of simplicity.
To better control its own destiny, SimpleNet began searching for an ideal location to build a data center. After several months of searching, SimpleNet negotiated space in a downtown high-rise. The build-out required utilizing one-third of the available building power, structural work that temporarily relocated other tenants, and sub-contractors in over 130 trades. Commitment to its customers prompted SimpleNet to undertake this monumental task of building a world-class facility, which became the first of its kind in San Diego. With construction in high gear, the facility was taking shape by January 1998. The notable efforts of many companies made the Access Center a reality. MFS/WorldCom trenched nearly six downtown city blocks in a phenomenal 24 hours to bring in an OC-3 fiber connection. Six months later, SimpleNet celebrated its Grand Opening in June of 1998.
On the path of continued growth, SimpleNet found itself more often in the public eye. In the spring of 1998, the company's first tradeshow appearance at Internet World Los Angeles brought SimpleNet into the limelight. Later that year, SimpleNet was recognized as one of Dun and Bradstreet/Entrepreneur Magazine's, Hot 100 Companies of 1998.
On the evening of November 16, 1998, each employee received a phone call to announce that Broadcast.com had acquired SimpleNet. While it was a new beginning, the acquisition also marked the end of an era and put the company into the large corporate world. Only a few months later, Broadcast.com was in negotiations with Yahoo!, which culminated in the multi-billion dollar purchase of the company in July of 1998.
In early 2002, SimpleNet hosted nearly 400,000 domain names and more than 75,000 web sites. New accounts were being added at a rate of several hundred per day, many of them through word-of-mouth recommendations by existing SimpleNet customers. Traffic to and from these customers' sites accounted for approximately 2% of all Internet traffic worldwide.
After several years of Yahoo! ownership, the founders that were still actively involved with SimpleNet took advantage of an opportunity to rebuild the SimpleNet experience from scratch as a privately owned company. Their premise was to leverage the personal experience that, over the years, had allowed them to create one of the most successful hosting platforms in the industry. But, to take this experience and create the next generation of stability, security, and reliability in a web host. SimpleNet is a company that is monumental in its solidarity. The core experts in software, hardware, networking, customer service, marketing, and business development today are largely the same team members that built the company's successes in the mid-nineties.
There are two aspects that differentiate SimpleNet from its competitors – reliability and support. Operating a data center and building multiple hosting platforms over the years have provided tremendous experience to the company. SimpleNet's infrastructure is unsurpassed in the web hosting world. Redundancy, at SimpleNet, is defined by: multiple web and email servers in a fully load-balanced environment, disk storage with hot spare drives, multiple Internet providers, multiple fiber providers, multiple air conditioning units, UPS, and a dedicated gas-powered generator. Reliability and redundancy to this degree means that customer web sites are faster, more secure, and more accessible.
SimpleNet also differentiates itself by providing top-of-the-line customer support. Available 24 hours per day, each customer support representative has had at least four years of experience in support of web hosting customers. SimpleNet is dedicated to solving customers' problems, even if it means handholding through a process that's not necessarily nor directly related to its own products. If SimpleNet's team is knowledgeable about a topic – they'll attempt to help their customer through it.
Throughout the course of its growth, SimpleNet has realized that being an industry leader involves assisting in the development of partner products and services. The company is proud to have assisted in the development of the Cobalt RaQ Server Appliance, the MIVA Scripting Language, Sun Apache Server Software, and several other application providers' products.
Today, running the business from the beach remains a dream, but several other dreams have been realized. The Access Center signifies the culmination of innovation, problem solving, and a pledge to excellence – all of which remain key components of the operation. Expanded service offerings for every range of customers drive SimpleNet's growth. Constantly striving to surpass client and industry expectations, SimpleNet remains a unique, ever-evolving organization dedicated to being the Internet's foremost Internet Presence Provider.
