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WebSite Host Directory managed to catch up with Christopher Faulkner, CEO of C I Host, Inc. recently. We asked Christopher about all the headline-grabbing advertising campaigns that have put C I Host on the map, as well as the rise of C I Host to become one of the world?s largest web hosting companies.

The Company

C I Host (www.cihost.com), based in the Dallas/Fort Worth market, is a Web hosting and Internet solutions provider, domain name registrar (DNR) and application service provider (ASP) serving 205,000 individual consumers and businesses in 182 countries worldwide. C I Host creates business-class Web hosting solutions for the small- and medium-enterprise (SME) market, with the broadest portfolio of managed hosting and value-added services in the industry. C I Host is also accredited by ICANN to register domain names.

WebSite Host Directory: What are your day-to-day responsibilities within the company?

Christopher Faulkner: Well, I wear two hats I wear the COO hat overseeing the operational aspects of the company and I also wear the CEO hat acting as the visionary and the idea person.

I spend about 15 hours of my day working to coordinate the operations of the C I Host headquarters here in Dallas, and maintaining an open communication pipeline with our data centers in Los Angeles, and Chicago working with those managers and then working with our facilities crews in London who are building our fourth data center over there. ? Also overseeing the details of sales and billing and technical support. Making sure that everything is running smoothly and the way that it should be.

On the ideas side, I?m planning C I Host's future growth and where we're going to be in five years. I also examine the market market changes and shifts to make sure that we stay competitive in this highly competitive landscape.

WebSite Host Directory: Tell us about how C I Host was founded, how did the company come about?

Christopher Faulkner: In 1995 I was attending the university and designing web sites for businesses. We were targeting the early adopters that wanted to get online. Our customers wanted us to handle it all design it, maintain it, host it whatever it took. So I needed to find a hosting company - the ones we used had horrible customer service. Since I was a go-between for the hosting company and my customers, it was a poor situation. My customer would get mad at me, for issues that I had no control over as a reseller.

It became apparent that to grow the business we would have to manage our own hosting, So we launched our first web server out of Chicago in early 1997. We originally used the name Creative Innovations Host that was too long so we shortened it to C I Host. that's were the company was born.

WebSite Host Directory: Tell us about the size of your company.

Christopher Faulkner: C I Host has 205,000 clients today served by 108 employees. We have three data centers and a fourth is opening in Q1 of 2004 in London. We typically acquire 4,500-5,000 new clients per month. We did 6,100 in November, 2003 but our average is closer to 5,000. I wish we had more 6,000 client months ? but we do see some seasonality to this business.

WebSite Host Directory: Tell us about your data centers is there anything that makes them stand apart?

Christopher Faulkner: With regard to data centers, our whole business model stands apart. The reason that our model works is that we use a very conservative build-it-as-we-need-it plan. We?ll go in and acquire 10,000 square feet of data center space, with a first right of refusal on the contiguous space.

We may only build out 5,000 square feet at first, and leave 5,000 square feet raw. The raw space doesn?t get built out unless I need it. In the old Exodus or Cable and Wireless model they would build out 300,000 square feet of data center space and let it sit empty.

In the UK we're doing the same thing we have a 10,000 square foot data center space and we're leaving 5,000 square feet raw. We also have a first right of refusal on our lease on another 25,000 square feet. it's just going to be exciting to launch our first European office and data center and see where it takes us. That market is booming right now and hopefully we can get in there and make some hay.

WebSite Host Directory: In the past C I Host has been very strong in the shared hosting side of the business. More recently you have made gains in both dedicated server hosting, and collocation. What is the mandate of C I Host right now?

Christopher Faulkner: we're going to build a portfolio of services that spans from SOHO (small office / home office) to small to medium business all the way to corporate enterprise. we're going to do that by being one of the only providers still around that isn't bankrupt that has multiple data centers, that can offer enterprise services like: geographic content distribution, clustering, load-balancing across multiple platforms and multiple points of presence including now one on a different continent.

Still, we're able to offer the services and the extra hand holding that's required to meet the demands of a small to medium business who is a late adopter who is a novice. that's a still sweet spot in this market. The late adopter is a gigantic and growing market.

WebSite Host Directory: Are you running any special offers right now?

Christopher Faulkner: We have a refugee offer which We've had that has been very competitive and compelling to a lot of companies. If you switch from a competitor we will give you three months of hosting. We aren't currently waiving our setup fees and we don't need to. We've seen a pick up in new accounts not a slowdown. If we needed to do special offers, we would do them. We just don't need to do them right now.

WebSite Host Directory: You are known as a leader in shared business hosting are you working on any other initiatives right now?

Christopher Faulkner: We've launched a subsidiary dedicated to online game hosting and now sponsor a gaming clan who travel with us to gaming competitions. The company is called GameVault (www.gamevault.com). it's a separate company, but it's a wholly owned subsidiary of C I Host. We offer dedicated gaming servers for per-player use so the gamers can play together. Game Vault is a way of drilling down into our current profit centers to come up with new revenue. This new revenue center was low hanging fruit for us.

WebSite Host Directory: How do you view the current state of the hosting market?

Christopher Faulkner: I think hosting is infantile. I think that the market space is still very young and it's growing. I don't see any slowdown until 2005 or 2006 from what I can see in my predictions. We've got at least two or three years of good solid growth ? and I think it's going to be a wild, fun ride up! I don't think we're going to change anything in our model or slow down any at all.

WebSite Host Directory: What do you consider to be your strongest asset from a customer's perspective?

Christopher Faulkner: That would be CI Host acting upon our core values of reliability and customer service. In the past We've made mistakes in customer service and had some slip ups and screw ups like everyone else growing up has but I think it's how you deal with those that makes a company great and determines how long you?re going to survive. Our customers know if there's a mistake or the service level isn't there we're going to give a refund or offer compensation.

We've increased our SLA from 99 percent to 99.9 percent - now to 100 percent. We've increased our redundancy. We've moved over to Juniper as our core switching gear from Cisco so we can take on DOS (denial of service) attacks better. In December we took on a 400 megabit/second DOS attack ? and there were no network issues, and the Juniper routers handled it and stopped it ? and we have 2.6 Gigabits of bandwidth ? so we had plenty of overhead. A few years ago we didn't have all of that.

In dedicated and collocation We've rolled out live caller and toll-free support. there's no wait when you call in, we answer the phone live, and you talk to the NOC (network operations center). You don't talk to level one techs people are paying a premium we recognize that, and we're going to offer them the best support.

WebSite Host Directory: Who are your ideal customers? How does a business know if they will be a good fit with C I Host?

Christopher Faulkner: There are two core market segments that C I Host serves: one is the SOHO, webmaster, or small- to medium-business market under 15 employees. That is one of our core competencies. We built a business from 1995 to today within that segment. That is also were the bulk of our new customers come in from. We know that business very, very well.

Four years ago we branched out and went towards enterprises or large businesses ? directing our energies at dedicated servers and people who want more freedom, the highest reliability and are willing to pay a little more. So now we have four years of expertise under our belts, so I'm thinking that now we can call ourselves an expert in that market segment as well.

WebSite Host Directory: What do you see happening in the future for web hosting?

Christopher Faulkner: Shared hosting will continue to be profitable. There are some firms getting out of it which leaves more room for people like me who are going to stay in it. I believe that late adopters will overcome their fear of the technology and set up shop on the Internet. I see folks using e-commerce to buy gifts, to buy services and products for everyday life and starting to really hammer on that convenience factor that e-commerce was born for.

E-commerce is catching on in Europe. I also think that Latin America is going to be a huge emerging market for us ? we?ll be getting in there quick.

I see a great future in dedicated servers and collocation. Prices won't fall too far below $99. I feel that outsourcing is going to increase. I still believe that folks will be sending jobs to India ? but they may rethink that and start pulling jobs back in after 12 to 16 months because of the loss of goodwill and the negative customer perceptions.

I hope that the pricing pressure will slow down on shared servers and customers will realize that you get what you pay for.

I predict that wireless everywhere will be huge in a few years. It is going to impact hosting and it's going to impact the way we do business and the way we work. More people will be surfing the web with wireless devices than with wired within five years.

Editor's Note: To learn more about C I Host or to sign up visit: www.cihost.com.