One of north America’s biggest web hosting companies has opened UK headquarters to front a European expansion programme.
Peer 1 Network Inc, which claims to be the top hosting company in its native Canada and is said to be among the top five US web service providers, already has a customer base in Europe and has Points of Presence in London and Amsterdam since 2005. But a new Euro business arm will be formerly launched at Internet World in London at the end of the month.
Dominic Monkhouse, UK MD who joins the company from Rackspace, told us “By the end of 2009 the aim is to have a staff of 50 or so, and we are just about to finalise the location for our data centres.”
To date Peer 1 has 15 data centers worldwide. The service provider targets small and medium size businesses with an offering that goes from managed hosting and support services, to dedicated hosting through its ServerBeach brand.
Organisations tend to use Peer 1 to host their e-commerce services, to underpin on-line data capture operations, or to serve online application service, Monkhouse commented.
In the UK he said the company will compete against the likes of hosting providers UKFast and NetBenefit at one end of the market, and Savvis UK Ltd on the managed services front.
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Sales in the region currently contribute around £3 million to a top line that should see Peer 1 clear $100 million this year, Monkhouse claimed.
“We already have 200 customers in the UK, and another 350 in the rest of Europe. We have invested heavily in infrastructure and in automation with an aim to be highly competitive, both on price and on service.”
The company will offer businesses a choice of data centres, a range of hardware with the options of online configuration, and backup and support is there if it is needed, Monkhouse said.
“We want to be completely transparent, and a customer can choose to disaggregate hosting, managed service and support so that they can get exactly what they want and pay for just what they need.”
