Many are familiar with PEER 1’s hosting services - Dedicated Hosting, Managed Hosting, and Colocation. But many are not as aware about some of the key advantages of using us.

Service First

We are a service-first driven company. Period. We measure how well we are serving our customers through a Net Promoter Score (NPS), which was developed by Fred Reichheld and popularized through his book The Ultimate Question. NPS has since been used by leading organizations all over as the standard for measuring and improving customer loyalty. PEER 1 improved its NPS to 30, a 76% over last year, which we are very proud of but not satisfied. Our goal is to improve our NPS each year, and eventually reach the top 10 percentile of NPS of any industry worldwide. With our FirstCall Support™ promise, we do everything we can to resolve your issues on your first call by deploying only level 2 and level 3 system administrators with the knowledge and expertise to expedite a resolution. We also have many certified Windows and Linux experts on staff to give you top-level technical support.

Wholly-owned and Operated Network Backbone

We are one of very few providers who own and operate its network infrastructure. Our high performance network, called the SuperNetwork™, spans over 13,000 miles of fiber, connecting all of our 16 data centers across North America and Europe. We also have over 500 peering relationships with some of the largest exchanges in the world, including PAIX, AMS-IX, and LINX. Because we own and run our network, we are able to deliver greater uptime performance, minimize latency, mitigate DDoS attacks, and respond quickly with an on-premise 24×7x365 Network Operation Center (NOC). Our geographical diversity also provides unique disaster recovery opportunities and strategic hosting designs.

Choice of Data Center

Not only can you choose from any of 8 cities for Colocation, but if you need Dedicated Hosting through our division ServerBeach, you can also choose to host your server(s) in either Los Angeles CA, San Antonio TX, or Herndon VA. This lets you have even more control over your hosting experience and ensure you can be geographically close to the majority of your customers for better website and web application performance.

Choice Of Hosting

Yes, we offer Managed Hosting, Dedicated Hosting, and Colocation. But, the real value in offering these different forms of hosting is that you can easily migrate from your dedicated server to a Managed Hosting solution as your needs become greater, or combine any or all into your hosting solution as needed without having to use different hosting providers. This opens up a whole bunch of new opportunities to save money, realize synergies, and simplify your billing and account management. Use a Dedicated Hosting server for your dev environment and a Managed Hosting server for production. Or, colocate your servers on the west coast while using a Dedicated Hosting server on the east coast for disaster recovery, mirroring and backup. Many possibilities to give you the right solution.

If you’re interested in use multiple forms of hosting to your advantage, we have Solutions Engineers on staff to help you design it. Just ask.

PEER 1 Launches CloudXcelerator™ Program

PEER 1 has launched its CloudXcelerator™ program, which enables PEER 1 partners to develop, test and run their cloud applications on PEER 1’s IT hosting infrastructure. Apprenda, the creators of SaaSGrid, a powerful Cloud Application Server for rapidly building and commercializing Software as a Service (SaaS) applications, joins PEER 1 as its first CloudXcelerator partner.

In launching the CloudXcelerator program, PEER 1 helps to enable qualified cloud computing companies to achieve early success. Any company developing cloud technology that requires hosting is eligible to apply for the CloudXcelerator program. Benefits of the program include deeply subsidized hosting, co-marketing funds, exposure on PEER 1’s website and to the company’s 10,000 customers, as well as public relations exposure. The PEER 1 sales team will also support partners by learning about their applications and referring qualified leads whenever possible. With these features and the use of PEER 1’s high performance infrastructure partners can take innovations one step further.

Full Press Release.

After six years with our dedicated hosting division ServerBeach, PEER 1 was recently chosen by Serotek Corporation, to provide them with a fully managed hosting solution. Along with text-to-speech screen reader services and remote access solutions for tech professionals who are blind or suffer from low vision, Serotek operates a complete Internet service and online community specifically designed to meet the needs of visually impaired computer users. The company has received considerable interest in its low-cost solutions and interactive community, tripling the business in two years and requiring their infrastructure to expand.

“The ability for PEER 1 to be flexible and scalable is crucial for us as we have to be prepared and able to immediately handle any kind of growth hurdle,” said Mike Calvo, founder and CEO of Serotek. “Going from self-managed hosting to managed hosting was a natural growth progression for us and I applaud the service and forward-thinking we’ve witnessed from both ServerBeach and PEER 1. Partnering with PEER 1, we truly believe the sky’s the limit for our business.”

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Charnell Pugsley, Rob Kinkaid, Dave Sherman, Kevin Lee, Jim Park

Wow! We’ve returned home from the 24 Hours of Lemons event at the No Problem Raceway in Belle Rose, Louisiana. I can honestly say that we got a true taste of this race this past weekend.

In my last post, I mentioned the PEER 1 road trip that started off on the wrong foot with an incompatible wire harness from RV to car trailer which left us with no working lights. Then the car trailer coming off of the hitch to the RV that left us stuck in rush hour traffic in Atlanta. Definitely not the way we wanted to start our road trip. Nonetheless, we made it to the event and all was well. Sort of.

After we finally passed tech and were allowed to race, the first day of racing started off great. The PEER 1 car and drivers (Team PEER Pressure) handled well and then the problems began. First we had an overheating problem due to a stuck

PEER 1 Car Overheating

thermostat.  We pulled the thermostat to run the coolant at full flow all the time.  Apparently, that causes the car to overheat almost instantly.  We drilled the thermostat, but the car would still overheat so we had to run a few laps, come off of the track to let it cool and do it all over again. By the end of the first day, we weren’t confident the PEER 1 car would make it for the next days race.

We started off Sunday replacing the water pump and thermostat with new units. I asked Kevin Lee, our racing team lead what exactly happened and he said:

After a few runs, we never got the car to the point where it wouldn’t overheat and started seeing oil in the cooling system.  This could be an indication of blown head gasket or cracked heads and we suspect that something may have broken off in the block that is possibly blocking the flow of water.

By the end of the race, the PEER 1 car just couldn’t make another lap around the track. We ended up finishing in 42nd place (which by the way matched our car - #42 and we all know 42 = answer to life, the Universe, everything :-)) After all of the long hours our team spent wrenching and welding, getting sunburned and dehydrated, we still had a damned good time and we’re looking forward to doing it again. Maybe we’ll get to go head-to-head with other hosting providers the next time, if they’re up to the challenge.

PEER 1's Mercedes race car at 24 Hours of Lemons

View our pictures from the 24 Hours of Lemons on our PEER 1 Flickr here: http://tinyurl.com/lbzet5

View all of the pictures (over 7000!) that we took at the event here: http://tinyurl.com/mk2bud

Charnell Pugsley
PEER 1 Community Evangelist

PEER 1's 1981 Turbo Mercedes Diesel Race Car

If you’re following us on Twitter, you’ll know that some of our staff from our Atlanta and San Antonio offices hit the road this past Friday for the 24 Hours of Lemons.

I flew in from San Antonio to Atlanta the night before to cover the event and to join our Atlanta racers on their RV ride pulling the PEER 1 race car from the rear. We left early morning to start our long journey, take pictures, call one other for location updates, and post it all on my personal Twitter account. Members from both offices traveled to meet in the middle at the No Problem Raceway in Belle Rose, Louisiana.

The road trip for our racers traveling from Atlanta wasn’t an easy one. The plan was to leave Atlanta at 7 AM in order to make it to the event in time for tech which closed at 5:00pm. Due to an incompatible trailer wire harness, the trailer was coming off the RV’s hitch, so we weren’t able to leave Atlanta until 9 AM. Our racers were worried that they wouldn’t make it to the track on time to check in for tech and would get disqualified. This would mean turning right around and heading back to Atlanta.

Our San Antonio racers made it to the track with a couple of hours to spare, and let the 24 Hours of Lemons staff know the rest of the PEER 1 racers and car were on their way. At 4:55 PM, our RV pulling the PEER 1 race car made it… with five minutes to spare! We had just enough time to get through the gate of the event and hit tech. Now the problem was tech didn’t go so well. Our PEER 1 car made it halfway through tech, before we learned that there were a lot of things that needed to be done to the car before they would let our crew drive it in the race. Our racers spent most of the night wrenching and welding the PEER 1 car. On Saturday morning at 8:30 AM, I’m happy to say we passed tech and were given permission to race! Stay tuned for an update on our first day of racing at the 24 Hours of Lemons in Belle Rose, Louisiana.

We’ve mentioned previously on our blog that we’re headed to the track again for the 24 Hours of Lemons and we’ve challenged you to a race. Will we see you there?

Last year PEER 1 participated in the 24 Hours of Lemons event that took place in

PEER 1 at 24 Hours of Lemons - Kershaw, South Carolina 2008

Kershaw, South Carolina. We posted pictures and a video interview with Jay Lamm, “The Chief Perpetrator”of the event and we’ll be at it again this year at the “Laissez Les Crapheaps Roulez New Orleans” on June 6-7, 2009.

We’ll have employees from two of our office locations participating - PEER 1 Atlanta and ServerBeach San Antonio. PEER 1’s system administrator Kevin Lee will be leading the team again this year. Last year, we quoted him saying, “I spent so much time at junkyards, I never want to see another one again”. Well, this year he was back at it hitting the junkyards getting the PEER 1 1981 Turbo Diesel Mercedes ready for this years race.

To remind everyone what the 24 Hour of Lemons is all about:

Nasty. Brutish. Not Short Enough.

The crowd. The spectacle. The pall of blue smoke and roasted clutch discs. In all motorsport, no event captures the universal human need to whale on old crapcans and hoover down greasy barbecue like the 24 Hours of LeMons.

Each LeMons race is for cars purchased, fixed up, and track-prepped for a total of 500 dollars or less. But before reaching the grid, you’ll have to survive trials like the Personal-Injury-Lawyer Anti-Slalom, the Marxist-Valet Parking Challenge, and the Wide Open Throttle Rodthrowapalooza. Twelve hours into the race, the car voted People’s Choice is called in and awarded a cash prize; simultaneously, the car voted People’s Curse is called in and summarily destroyed. At the end of 24 hours, a gala awards ceremony plies the survivors with trophies, plaques, and four-figure purses in canvas bags full of nickels. What’s not to like? — 24 Hours of Lemons Website

For requirements, rules, and fees, visit http://www.24hoursoflemons.com. For track information and location, please visit http://www.24hoursoflemons.com/events/noproblem09/

For more information on the PEER 1 race challenge, or if you’re in the neighborhood and would like to say hello, please contact:

Charnell Pugsley
PEER 1 Community Evangelist
cpugsley@peer1.com
210-798-4413

We’ve partnered with Lisa Sabin-Wilson, celebrity blogger and author of “WordPress for Dummies”, to offer free premium blog templates, valued at $1,200 each, designed exclusively for PEER 1 and ServerBeach.

With an estimated 133 million blogs worldwide and growing, social networking and blogging has become the fourth most popular activity on the Internet, surpassing even e-mail.* For those looking to join the fast-growing blogging community, or just wanting to spice up current blogs, PEER 1 is offering five free custom-designed WordPress themes as a download to anyone who visits the PEER 1 or ServerBeach Web site.

The templates won’t be around for long, available for download only until June 30. To view the different designs and download a favorite, visit the PEER 1 Web site http://www.peer1.com/resources/wordpress_themes.php or the ServerBeach Web site http://www.serverbeach.com/resources/wordpress_themes.php.

To view the full press release, please visit http://www.peer1.com/aboutus/news.php?id=118

We’ve just recently launched SmartMonitoring^TM, a full suite of advanced monitoring solutions now available for our managed hosting customers. Utilizing the platform of partner, Absolute Performance Inc., SmartMonitoring provides in-depth data and analysis to better anticipate IT needs for business success. This offering, which will be expanded to all product lines later this year, represents strategic momentum in working together with best-of-breed companies to provide PEER 1 customers a valuable range of products and services.

“With the launch of SmartMonitoring, we are offering the best monitoring services available, while continuing to provide the advanced hosting services that are in greatest demand by our customers,” said Tim Varma, director of product management for PEER 1. “SmartMonitoring will help our customers increase efficiency and maximize IT resources, which is especially vital in today’s economy. With our fully scalable hosting solutions and services, PEER 1 adjusts to customers’ needs and helps them be more cost effective, to keep their businesses running smoothly.”

With SmartMonitoring, PEER 1 customers can choose the services and features, from basic to highly complex, that are most vital to their business success. These services are available through SmartMonitoring’s on-demand platform interface, which provides anyone in the organization, from CEO to system engineer, understandable, information on how application and system components are working together. This real-time data gives insight into potential issues so they can be proactively addressed in the most efficient and timely way.

For more information and full press release, please see http://www.peer1.com/aboutus/news.php?id=117

PEER 1 announced today that we are building out on a 41,000 square foot green data center in the Toronto area. Our new facility will implement some of the most efficient products and technologies on the market, including the use of a local well for primary water supply with redundant connection to the city water system to reduce overall carbon footprint and provide lower energy consumption. The first stage is scheduled for completion in early 2010, and will include 7,500 square feet of data center space, and 8,000 square feet of office and staging area. The remaining 25,500 square feet will be dedicated to additional data center space and infrastructure which will be built out in three future phases.

We also announced our membership in The Green Grid. The Green Grid is a global consortium dedicated to advancing energy efficiency in data centers and business computing ecosystems. The Green Grid seeks to provide industry-wide recommendations on best practices, metrics and technologies that will improve overall data center and business computing energy efficiencies. By joining The Green Grid, we’re trying to do our part in helping influence both developers and end users of data center technology.

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For the second straight year, PEER 1 is the proud headline sponsor of GigaOM’s Structure 09 event taking place on June 25. Structure 09 will bring industry experts together at San Francisco’s Mission Bay Conference Center to explore the Cloud Computing model and innovations of Internet infrastructure. PEER 1 is also hosting a workshop that focuses on the role of hardware within the cloud and the benefits of testing and incubation of technologies through our new CloudXcelerator Program.

The founder of Structure 09 and GigaOM networks, Om Malik, had this to say about our involvement:

“I am so very pleased to have PEER 1 with us again as a lead sponsor. PEER 1 espouses the same core values we have at Structure, thus making them an ideal partner for our flagship event. The last year has seen much progress in Cloud Computing and PEER 1 has become a vital part of that industry.”

We hope you will attend and participate.

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