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 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.

Read press release

A few months back I began a fun little project – exposing our customers and posted about it on our ServerBeach Blog. The goal of this project is to give your business some added exposure. It’s called “You’re on My Shirt”.

Every week I will post a picture of me wearing a client’s branded T-shirt along with a description of your business and a friendly link to your site or blog.

So what’s the catch, you ask? Nothing really. To be featured, all you have to do is be a current PEER 1 client and mail or courier me a T-shirt with your company name on the front and/or back… and that’s it! BTW, size MEDIUM please.

The PEER 1 Blog has a loyal following and is viewed daily by many online users. This new feature is a way for us to extend some love to our clients and get you some more free exposure.

You can view some of the ServerBeach “You’re On My Shirt” pictures and blog posts here: http://serverbeach.wordpress.com/?s=you%27re+on+my+shirt.

To get on my shirt, fire off an e-mail to me and I’ll reply back right away with some details and questions about your business, as well as an address to send me your T-shirt.

Be the first one to get featured!

Charnell Pugsley
Community Evangelist
cpugsley@peer1.com

PEER 1 announced today the official opening of its European headquarters in Southampton UK and the naming of industry veteran Dominic Monkhouse as managing director. There are many reasons why we have expanded to the UK including favorable exchange rates, falling real estate prices, a UK market growth of 25 percent, and the fact we currently have 500 UK and European-based customers. The opening will allow us to further support these customers while attracting new customers in the region.

The opening also includes the launch of our first UK data center, which will offer managed hosting through the PEER 1 brand and dedicated hosting through ServerBeach. As with all of our other data centers, it will be connected to our company-owned SuperNetwork which offers highly scalable and available content delivery to customers through Fast-Ethernet and Gigabit-Ethernet access over 13,000 miles of fibre connectivity.

PEER 1 will be exhibiting this week at the Internet World Expo April 28-30 at Earl’s Court, London. If you have an opportunity, please drop by for a visit. Drinks are on us! Just ask for Dom.

Official press release: http://www.peer1.com/aboutus/news.php?id=111

For more info, visit http://www.peer1.com/uk

Rajan Sodhi, VP Marketing for PEER 1 and ServerBeach

The title says it all. Rajan Sodhi, VP of Marketing and Communications for PEER 1 and ServerBeach was recently recognized for “Thinking Outside the Box“. Rajan has been called an “Everyday Customer Champion“. He spends so much time doing what he does best – being creative … and it works. Much of the creativity is humorous as you can see from the videos that he’s directed – for example “Growing Pains“. But even while it was humorous, it really hit home with many of our customers and the general public which says that he clearly understands the growing pains that many people face in business. You can find Rajan making his way in the social media scene, listening, communicating, and connecting onthe following:

Twitter – @rsodhi
LinkedIn – rajansodhi
Ning -http://peerone.ning.com/

FaceBook, and several other places around the Internet. So if you haven’t already, be sure to follow him on Twitter and while you’re at it check out his blog too “BIG Marketing for Small Business”.

Read more

April Fools Day has come and gone and we’ve seen some pretty funny pranks around the Internet. our Vancouver staff had a little fun of their own and pulled quite a prank on our President and CEO, Fabio Banducci and Executive VP and CFO, Gary Sherlock.

So what did they do? The staff put up packing peanuts, piece-by-piece against the inside glass of their shared office, locked up the doors, and added caution signs and a packing slip on the outside! Fabio came in a little early that morning and was the first to witness the potential disaster in his office. Rather than try opening his door to begin his day, he decided to wait for Gary to arrive… you know, being courteous and all… and to let him enter before him!

The prank was a success. Fabio and Gary believed their entire office was filled with these packing peanuts, when in fact, it was only an illusion. Way to go everyone! Share your comments and any other great pranks you saw or heard this past April Fools Day.

Continuing to highlight fast-growing customers as part of our recently launched “Million Hits” campaign, we would like to introduce you to LANDFLIP, who has experienced significant growth since joining PEER 1 in October 2007. PEER 1 provides LANDFLIP, a top land real estate online listings site, the scalable managed hosting solution needed for its intense online growth.

Founder, Ryan Folk, recently told us that, “The speed of the network is phenomenal, and the PEER 1 infrastructure allows access to LANDFLIP with extreme speeds from anywhere.”

In LANDFLIP’s first year with PEER 1, they experienced a 460 percent growth and now see more than 350,000 unique visitors each month! The company continues to grow, despite today’s economy, as people are looking for more tangible assets and land is an advantageous option.

A big congrats to the folks at LANDFLIP on their success and growth. For more information, please visit our Resource Center and view the LANDFLIP case study: http://www.peer1.com/resources/questions/145/LANDFLIP

Remember, if you’ve experienced, or are experiencing, sudden online growth, we want to hear about it! Tell us about your experience and we’ll share your story here.

Thank you PEER 1 customers for showing us the love. In our most recent Customer Pulse Study, you gave our Managed Hosting services a Net Promoter Score of 30, a 76 percent increase over last year. To put this score in perspective, according to Satmetrix 2009 Net Promoter Industry Reports, among Internet service providers only 3 of the 9 providers received positive scores, with AT&T topping the list at just 11. Adobe led consumer software with a high score of 46, Verizon Wireless led cellular providers at 40, and Apple led computer hardware at an incredible 77.

So, what is a Net Promoter Score (also called Net Referral Score)? It is based on the idea that every company’s customers can be divided into three categories – Promoters, Passives, and Detractors – by asking one question:

How likely is it that you would you recommend PEER 1 to a friend or colleague?

Customers respond on a 10-point rating scale and are categorized as follows:

• Promoters (score 9-10) are loyal enthusiasts who will keep buying and refer others, fueling growth.
• Passives (score 7-8) are satisfied but unenthusiastic customers who are vulnerable to competitive offerings.
• Detractors (score 0-6) are unhappy customers who can damage your brand and impede growth through negative word-of-mouth.

To calculate our Net Referral Score, the study takes the percentage of customers who are Promoters and subtracts the percentage who are Detractors. This resulted in a score of 30 for PEER 1. A strong customer focus is very important to us. We take all your feedback to heart to further improve our communications, product offerings and support. Thanks to all of you who participated in this year’s study and we won’t stop trying to win you over. That’s a promise.

See official release

We are honored to be listed on The 5 Best Vancouver Business Blogs . PEER 1 has been mentioned as having the ability to come off as personal on our blog, focusing on community-sided topics and contests as well as keeping the balance right between company announcements and posts that are just for fun.

At PEER 1 we’re always striving to continue this balance. It’s very important to us to maintain not only a professional atmosphere to show people how PEER 1 is the smart choice for business solutions, but to also include a personal presence and allow everyone to see that we are real people too.

This past weekend ServerBeach – our dedicated division, exhibited at the Interactive Festival at South by SouthWest in Austin, Texas and were listed as one of the Top 10 Companies Most Discussed on Twitter. Be sure to take a look at the pictures on Flickr that were taken at this event and follow us on Twitter for news and upcoming contests:

PEER 1 on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/peer1

PEER 1 on Twitter: @PEER1