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Vortech Inc. Interview
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HOSTSEARCH: Can you reveal a little about yourself and your role with VortechHosting? CRAIG SMITH: I co-founded Vortech, Inc. with our president and CEO Brad Pugh. My role is primarily as sales manager, but I also oversee all customer service issues, employee retention, human resources and all other activities pertaining to our sales, support and billing offices. I also help out in support whenever possible to keep up on our ever-changing technology. HOSTSEARCH: Can you give us a brief historical run through of VortechHosting.Com development since its establishment? CRAIG SMITH: I met Brad Pugh in late 1999 at another local hosting provider. His expert technical knowledge combined with my sales performance resulted in what we see as an excellent partnership in this industry. Management prevented us from growing the company and maintaining the high level of service we felt was necessary for success. So, in the summer of 2000, we decided a change was in order and that change resulted in Vortech, Inc. We started on a very small scale with Windows-based shared hosting, [but] soon expanded into UNIX, co-located and dedicated services, and finally, reseller hosting, which has been our primary focus for the last two years. In the past year alone we have grown in every area. As a debt-free company, we are proud to report annual revenue which doubled from 2002 to 2003. We anticipate an even better 2004! HOSTSEARCH: How do you differentiate your company and products in a highly competitive industry? CRAIG SMITH: I personally feel the industry is not as competitive as it appears on the surface. There are a lot of false promises, unrealistic overselling and poor service hiding behind slick web site designs and sales pitches. We continually differentiate ourselves by being a very real and very accessible company which focuses on what we do best: hosting. We do not split our services into ISP, programming, development or design services nor do we hide behind an unrealistic or exaggerated corporate front. We regularly give NOC and office tours here in Orlando, and maintain a close personal first-name basis relationship with most of our clients. We welcome scrutiny of our network, offices, personnel and overall service, and [we] strive to improve these things on a daily basis. HOSTSEARCH: Not many players offer a service level agreement (SLA) like yours. VortechHosting promises 100% uptime--you even say on your web site: "100% Uptime SLA - Not 99.9%, 99.99% or even 99.999%! We promise 100% network availability to your equipment, guaranteed in writing." How can you guarantee this? CRAIG SMITH: Because we take a very proactive stand with our network and power--without power, there is no network. Everything is redundant from our firewalls down to the last switch. This also goes for outside our network, we use carriers like Level(3), Epik, Cogent, Qwest and Time-Warner giving us full BGP. The redundancy carries over to our power system--we have dual backup diesel generators for the entire facility, along with dual UPS power. HOSTSEARCH: As the hosting industry becomes more and more competitive, how do you plan to cope with this challenge? CRAIG SMITH: I believe if we continue to offer a great product at great prices while maintaining our current high level of service, we will be in good shape. Expanding our network, level of redundancy and in-house staff will only strengthen the solid hold we have in the market today. HOSTSEARCH: What's your best-selling product? CRAIG SMITH: Our Cypher Reseller Plan is by far our top selling product. This plan is extremely flexible and priced to sell with plenty of room to grow and expand your reseller/hosting business. Since our plans allow for seamless upgrades, starting with the Cypher Plan is even more attractive to prospective clients who anticipate future growth. HOSTSEARCH: Who do you see as your major competitors? CRAIG SMITH: There are many fly-by-night hosting outfits that seem to come and go every day. According to our research--and the people who develop H-Sphere--we have the largest H-Sphere cluster out there. That said, we don't have any close competitors in our direct market. In the dedicated server market I think it would be very hard to compete with someone like Rackshack.net. For this reason we have concentrated more on reselling and co-location. HOSTSEARCH: Do you think the size of the web hosting company matters? Is bigger always better? CRAIG SMITH: Size only matters in relation to the number of clients versus [the number of] employees. A small company with four skilled technicians could easily outservice a much larger company [that has a] higher employee turnover rate and lower technician-to-customer ratio. Keeping our company balanced and even-staffed is an important reason why we have not outgrown ourselves. HOSTSEARCH: In your view what characteristics turn a good hosting site into a great one? CRAIG SMITH: Documentation and accessibility. Make it easy for the end-user to acquire any and all support documentation. Have technicians help out with technical writing and expanding your FAQs. Make it easy for your customers or potential customers to find your support personnel, sales contacts, phone numbers, e-mail and snail mail address etc. Integrate an open forum for potential clients and existing clients to communicate and discuss your services good or bad. The feedback you obtain will improve your service in the long run. HOSTSEARCH: What is the first web site you visit when you turn on your computer? CRAIG SMITH: That's an easy one--http://vortechsupport.com! I love to help out my techs with support tickets and keep an eye on things as much as possible. |
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