Brent Ellis, CEO of HostMyApple.com
HostSearch interviewed Brent Ellis, CEO of HostMyApple.com - a company offering Mac hosting with high potential growth in the Mac market. Read more on how you can be benefited from the simplicity of Mac hosting.
- HOSTSEARCH: Hello Brent, thank you for talking with us today. How did you come up with the HostMyApple business model? There aren't many Mac web hosting providers out there.BRENT ELLIS: Hi, thanks for having me. I've always been interested in building a colocation and VPS business but knew that I had to separate my business from all the other colocation companies out there. After becoming more involved with Macs in recent years I realized the true potential of Mac OS X and the Server edition and decided to fill the Mac hosting niche.
- HOSTSEARCH: For customers, what are the advantages of putting their files on a Mac server?BRENT ELLIS: Well there are many advantages here. When one is considering colocation, colocating a Mac Mini can be far cheaper than colocating a standard 1U server due it's compact size. The Mac Mini is also extremely energy efficient considering the amount of processing power it has to host applications. Another reason is the operating system. Since Mac OS X is UNIX based, there are endless possibilities of customizing the host OS to be able to handle serving up file to the web, file sharing, streaming, you name it. With Mac OS X Server, you get all the power of a UNIX based OS plus an extremely user friendly interface to manage all your network services.
- HOSTSEARCH: And what are the advantages for a web hosting company like you to operate on the Mac server platform?BRENT ELLIS: Our greatest advantage is usability. We find that many common tasks are simplified by Mac OS X server. This allows us and our customers to manage our services and networks faster than others.
- HOSTSEARCH: What will you tell our readers who are using UNIX and Windows hosting to switch to use Mac hosting?BRENT ELLIS: Every year since Mac switched to Intel processors, Apple has sold more Macs, iPhones and iPads. With record breaking sales every quarter, Apple products are increasingly being worked into the Enterprise environment. Not to mention an extremely high adoption for end users. More and more people around the world are becoming increasingly familiar with Macs and how powerful, yet easy to use they really are. Our state-of-the-art data center provides high speed ping optimized data routing along with the peace of mind of redundant uninterruptible power supplies and a V8 diesel generator to ensure your Mac based hosting is backed by a highly optimized and stable environment.
- HOSTSEARCH: What do people do if they want to put their Mac Mini on your data center?BRENT ELLIS: Mac Mini colocation is simple: First, they would go to our website HostMyApple.com. They then pick the package suited for their needs. After signup we will send the user a static IP address along with instructions on how to configure the IP and screen sharing in the operating system. After configuration, the Mac Mini is then shipped to our downtown data center and connected to our high speed network and remote reboot power units. You'll be up and running fast and easy.
- HOSTSEARCH: What are the unique features that you're offering? Something that UNIX and Windows companies cannot offer.BRENT ELLIS: The most exciting product we offer is our Mac VPS systems. So far they have been an absolute hit. We have customers signing up from all around the globe. Our Mac VPS's include OS X server so it's easy to use like a Windows system, yet offers the power and flexibility of a UNIX system. One of the greatest benefits of the Mac OS X server is the ability to develop iOS games and applications, something not currently possible on a Windows or UNIX system.
- HOSTSEARCH: How does the maintenance of Mac servers differ from Windows and UNIX?BRENT ELLIS: Many common tasks such as setting up new web hosts, file sharing and other services are simplified by the Mac OS X server administrator tool. Not only does this allow you to configure services faster, but also allows a server admin to monitor, diagnose and troubleshot services faster than the competition. This excellent tool is not available on Windows or UNIX.
- HOSTSEARCH: Do you have a plan to expand the coverage of your products and services beyond Mac?BRENT ELLIS: When it comes down to hardware and software we believe Macs and Apple products such as the iPhone and iPad will continue to have an increased adoption rate by enterprise users and consumers. We plan to continue our focus on Mac products as we believe the product line will grow and we hope to provide users with a simple one-stop-shop for all of their Mac hosting needs with our excellent support and services.
- HOSTSEARCH: What can we expect to see from HostMyApple in 2011?BRENT ELLIS: In 2011 we plan to grow exponentially. The year has just begun and we have already been working hard on adding new features to our services including remote reboot capability for our colocation customers and advanced management features for our Mac VPS services. We are constantly looking for ways to make administration and monitoring of these servers easier and we can't wait to push out many new features in our custom built server control panel. We know that users love their Mac products and we know that they will equally love our Mac hosting to collaborate their personal and business ideas using Mac devices.
- HOSTSEARCH: Brent, thank you for your time. We look forward to see your success.
