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Akamai Technologies

Akamai Technologies, Unlocking The Power Of Content Delivery Network

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Among the major companies availing us the advantage of cloud service and networking, content delivery network (CDN) is rare. Many of us don’t know what does CDN actually means. In simple words, it is a content distribution system which distributes proxy serves geographically. The main aim of CDN is to provide an efficient and better quality network to the end-user. So, one of the most embarking breakthroughs in this domain was successfully achieved by Akamai Technologies.

Akamai Technologies is an American based technology conglomerate founded in 1998. The main product of the company is CDN. Currently, Akamai is in the top position for its content delivery network. The other services of Akamai are cloud service and cybersecurity.

The four co-founders of Akamai Technologies are Frank Thomson Leighton, Daniel Lewin, Randall Kaplan, and Jonathan Seelig.

About the Founders

Frank Thomson Leighton

Frank Thomson Leighton is an Electrical Engineer who acquired a B.S.E degree in 1978 from Princeton University. After his undergraduate program, Leighton went to MIT and completed his Ph.D. in Mathematics. Leighton was very much interested in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science. This passion drove him to co-establish a software company.

Apart from co-founding Akamai Technologies, Leighton served as a professor at MIT and a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT). He has bagged many awards and served as an advisor for industrial and academic organizations as well.

Daniel Lewin

Born in Denver, Lewin moved to Israel at the age of fourteen. In his early career, Lewin was highly dedicated to serving his country. Lewin served in the Israel Defense Forces for four years and served as a captain in one of the Special Forces.

Lewin started rising as a tech pro after beginning his work at IBM’s research laboratory. He developed a system that is still used as a verification tool in many companies. Lewin completed Bachelor’s and went to Cambridge for PhD at MIT. He faced a tragic death in 2001 in an airplane highjack.

Randall Kaplan

Kaplan went to the University of Michigan and later moved to Chicago to study law. He was inclined towards being an entrepreneur from an early age. Prior to co-founding Akamai, he served as the Assistant Chairman of SunAmerica.

After leaving Akamai, he started his own venture capital firm, JUMP Investors. Kaplan is also a well-known philanthropist.

Jonathan Seelig

After completing his B.Sc. from Stanford University in Physics, Seelig went to MIT Sloan School of Management. Seelig dropped out after a year and co-founded Akamai. He served as a Board Member of innumerable companies including Dotomi, Provident, oDesk, SundaySky, etc.

Seelig co-founded Ridge, an Israel based start-up in October 2018.

Challenge Accepted!

The beginning of Akamai Technologies has a very interesting story to narrate. Leighton didn’t plan to start a company until he accepted a challenge by one of his MIT colleagues.

Right after the era of the Internet started revolutionizing the world, web congestion stood in its way. This hindered the swift delivery of web content to the users. Tim Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, thus challenged everyone to find a solution to it.

After brainstorming, kudos to Leighton that he came up with a solution. Lewin started working under Leighton and they made significant progress. Leighton’s knowledge in Applied Mathematics led to developing some algorithm that solved the problem of congestion and came up with something excellent. This led to the founding of Akamai.

Setting up the business

To set up the business they needed capital and thus enrolled in the $50,000 Entrepreneurship Competition. The judges saw the immense potential in CDN and thus they received both capital and access to some of MIT’s intellectual properties. Akamai’s business started running in 1998. The commercial services of Akamai started in 1999 and it was listed on the NASDAQ Stock Market.

Success

In the same year, Akamai and Apple came into a partnership for building Apple’s new Media Network. This was followed by a strategic partnership between Akamai and Microsoft in the same year.

The success of Akamai surely surprised all its competitors. The idea and the efficiency of CDN were very unique to the company. By 2005, the company’s annual revenue summed up to $1.37 billion. Some of the biggest customers of Akamai are Al-Jazeera, Adobe, Sony, ESPN, Airbnb, etc.

The headquarters of Akamai is based on Cambridge, US. The company currently has over 7,000 employees and made more than thirty big acquisitions.

apigee

How a Simple Man from Meerut Changed the Global API Landscape?

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One of the leading technologies to have burst into the scene in recent years is none other than API. Over the past decade, it has proven itself to be a defining and driving force in the IT industry. The API framework allows the software to access other software to perform a particular function or collect data.

Since their inception, API has been helping scientists transform the way applications work and communicate with each other. The growth API’s fueled was so high that a single core API structure helped Twilio and Stripe reach billion-dollar valuations. These frameworks now act as the backbone for several applications we use on a daily basis. Here’s a look at a software company that used API to grow, evolve and attract the attention of some of the biggest names in the tech industry.

What Apigee Does

Apigee is a software company that focuses on providing services related to predictive and analytical functions. The company, founded by Indian origin entrepreneurs Raj Singh and Ravi Chandra relied on API to run processes and work on data. The API development done by Apigee has helped to make communication between devices easier and more efficient. The company provides services including the creation, management, and handling of API proxies. Most of Apigee’s revenues come from subscriptions who run their analytics on the API management platform and a part of it is generated via professional services rendered to customers. Some of the added premium features the company provides is the ability to monetize APIs, traffic isolation, PCI-DSS compliance, and multi-region deployment.

About the Founders

Co-founder Raj Singh is a serial entrepreneur who has a string of successful start-ups behind him. He is the brain behind the jackpot start-up Fiberlane and also the venture capitalist firm Redwood Venture Partners. Ravi Chanda meanwhile, joined Sonoa as the COO. Prior to working for Apigee, he served as the VP of Engineering at Redback, and the company’s VP of Product Management and Engineering, Kishore Seshadri and Ravi Krishna respectively, are ex-Redback employees. The team is rounded up by CTO Vikas Deolaliker, whose impressive resume includes a stint at Sun Microsystems Inc.

Image Source – Google

Raj Singh hails from Meerut, and did his Electrical Engineering from Roorkee, before joining the Navy. He worked on INS Vikrant but found the work to be boring and so left, taking up a Masters in computer science from IIT Delhi. He followed this up by joining the University of Minnesota for an MS in computer science. Between 1981 and 1995 Raj worked for CDC, National Semiconductors, Trilogy Systems, Cirrus Logic, and Inter HDL. Then he ventured into his first startup Advancel Logic, which later became Fiberlane and Stratum One.

Raj’s Multiple Efforts

Singh led InterHDL, which worked on EDA tools for chip design, and sold it to Avant. Next, he found, Advancel Logic which went with Noise Cancellation Technologies. Raj Singh founded Fiberlane in 1996, which he then split into three parts; Cerent, Siara, and Cyras. Out of these, he sold Cerent to Cisco for $7 billion, Siara, meanwhile went to Redback for $4 billion, Cyras was taken up by the Ciena Corp. for $2 billion. He then left the company to form StratumOne, a company that built semi-conductor chips. This company as well went away to Cisco, and we are only half-way done at this point!

Following this, he created Roshnee, which split in two pieces: Inara Networks and Optovation. He then switched over to Corona Networks and worked as a CEO there before leaving to reenter the chip market. Singh and Raj Parekh took over RealChip, and steered it towards success, before unloading and moving on with other interests.

Founding Apigee

The company started out as an XML processing software-based company, working on semiconductors. The markup language was an industry favorite when it comes to operations such as transaction processing. Furthermore, most router companies used XML to switch and route traffic on their systems, in place of Ethernet and Internet Protocol.

Accelerator microchips were adept at language processing help in processing XML and HTML. Some of the early players in this field were Xambala and XaQti. It is interesting to note that Singh was an investor in Xambala, way back in 2001, indicating how interested he is in the industry. Though Sonoa started out with building such chips and engaging in research in this field, it soon changed verticals.

Sonoa Systems began as a project in Santa Clara, California, in 2004. Two years later, the company brought in Chet Kapoor to run its operations as CEO. Though initially, the company worked on creating routers for SOA governance, their priorities quickly changed. Soon enough, the company branched into cloud computing and building application platforms.

They launched a Beta version of Apigee in 2009 giving users a platform to runs their analytics. A year later, the company switched names Apigee and began functioning as an API Management platform. Soon enough the initial application came out with several premium featured added to it.

Success and Subsequent IPO

The platform was an instant success, and soon enough attracted big-shots such as Netflix and Walgreens. In 2012 Apigee acquired Usergrid which works on Mobile API applications, and in 2014, they acquired InsightsOne, which primarily works on Predictive Analysis. The company went public in 2015, raising $87 million via its IPO on NASDAQ. Apigee along with SmartBear and IBM, after receiving backing by Linux, founded the OpenAPI initiative. In September 2016 Google acquired Apigee for $625 million in 2016, owing to the phenomenal work they were doing in the API market.

Apigee grew in a stellar fashion with several high-profile clients including 20 of the Fortune 100 companies. They have a presence in over 30 countries, making over $52.7 million in 2014. The company initially raised $173 million with the help of investors like Vilicus Ventures and Juniper Networks. The IPO gifted them another $87 million, by selling 5.1 million shares at $17 per share at a valuation of $409 million.

This stellar growth and acquisition prove how the entrepreneurial spirit thrives in spite of everything. A simple man from Meerut changed the face of the chip industry, and the world is better due to it. It will be interesting to see what Raj has up his sleeves next!

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Fastly: How This Company with The Right Values is Growing at The Speed of Light

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Data is everywhere now thanks to the Internet Age. According to studies, the amount of total data collected doubles, every two years. Everything from our Internet history to our calendar schedule forms a part of digital data that is important. Research shows that by 2020, we will be producing 1.7 MB worth of data every second! So where does all this data go? Due to Hardware constraints, all computers and mobile phones come with a stipulated storage limit. Also, external hard drives we purchase also have stringent limits on how much space they have. So how do we store the massive amounts of data we create?

Why We Need Cloud Computing

We all want to retain those videos from our first college performance, and also need quick access to our work documents. How can we come up with a system that is secure and at the same time, large enough to store everything? Well, cloud computing has helped most people deal with their storage woes by providing huge amounts of space! Not only do you get to keep your precious memories, but you also get to do so without cluttering up your home.

All your information is locked away in a vault in the sky, so you can loop up baby pictures, and schedule appointments on the go. This time around, we are going to look at one of the fastest-growing cloud computing service providers in the world!

What is Fastly Inc

Fastly Inc.’s highly efficient edge cloud platform allows users access to an extremely fast content delivery network that helps them keep all their memories. Furthermore, the company also provides security services, video streaming, and load balancing. Headquartered at San Francisco, this American juggernaut has offices in New York, London, Portland, Tokyo, and Denver.

Founding Fastly

Artur Bergman founded Fastly in 2011 because he felt the need for a fast and efficient cloud computing service. Prior to founding Fastly, Bergman worked as the VTO of Wikia. Three years into its founding, Google paired up with them to offer users CDN services. This served as a huge boost to the company, which then grew at unprecedented rates.

Image Source – Twitter

So much so, that in 2017, the company launched its own edge cloud platform that supported a ton of new features. The same year, they acquired a Texas-based content delivery network named CDN Sumo. The company helps users extend and expand their existing cloud infrastructure using their network. Furthermore, the service also includes several features such as load balancing, image optimization, and video streaming.

Software Structure

The company’s software works on Varnish, which is an open-source HTTP accelerator. Since they use an open-source product, Bergman has also made it a point to give back to the open-source community. The company supports several non-profit projects such as Hackage, Drupal and DonorsChoose.org. Varnish became the platform for Fastly because it allowed them to reverse proxy and is highly customizable. The software designers always kept performance in mind and then scaled their applications using Varnish. The particular version of Varnish used by them is optimized for large applications, due to the presence of caches.

Giving Back to The Community

Bergman attributes his desire to give back to his raising in a feminist environment such as Sweden. Due to their smaller power distance culture; being inclusive was a way of life rather than a magnanimity. Bergman also believes that diverse teams improve the workspace environment leading to higher productivity. The more diverse the leadership, the easier it becomes to find and encourage diverse talents. This, in turn, makes it possible to create and design diverse products that change the world.

Company Values

Furthermore, Fastly takes both employee and customer satisfaction quite seriously. Since the company works on projects that help people, employees feel great about their work. More people are happy, meaning they genuinely want to look after their users, which makes for great customer engagement and satisfaction. Over 90 employees at Fastly, which constitutes 25% of their workforce, have been there for more than four years.

This proves without a doubt, how important the company views its internal policies and values. The company’s executive team has an almost equal number of men and women. Furthermore, more than 50 percent of their engineers fall into trans, people of color and LGBTQ communities.

Resounding Success

Fastly recently added another $75 million via Series D funding, making the total money hit $130 million! After the financing round, the company named ex-VP of Netsuite, Dan Miller, their CFO. Furthermore, the company recruited ex- Apple privacy strategist, and Mozilla’s security chief to their already impressive employee roster. The company is growing at over 300% year after years, with a team that has grown to over 450 employees now. While the company pushed 40 TB a day in 2012, the data limit per day now stands at 5 PT!

The company already has several high-profile customers such as Twitter, The Guardian, Pinterest, and Wayfair. The company also helped Stripe improve their checkout time by 80%, leading to even more popularity and goodwill within the industry. The company keeps growing from strength to strength having made $144 million in 2018, with revenue growing at 37.8%! Around the world, over 3 billion people see content that served via Fastly, and this is 75% of the world’s internet users. Sure enough, there might come a day, wherein every internet user receives content through a Fastly platform!

Fortinet

Fortifying Your Networks: This Volleyball-loving 6’5 Entrepreneur Runs a $13 Billion Dollar Business

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We all rely on the Internet for most of our things. Everything from our family photos to important work details is on the Internet. Therefore, we need to be sure that they are in safe hands. So, how do we make sure that our data is safe? Well, Cybersecurity software helps us with this by using a combination of measures such as firewalls, privacy protection, and anti-virus software. Thanks to high-profile data breaches, malicious hacks, and extortion scams, maintaining good Cyber-measures has become a priority for companies. This time, we will be taking a look at one of the most prominent Cybersecurity firms in the world. Here’s how Fortinet founder Ken Xie helps to make the world wide web a safer, better place!

About the Founders

Ken Xie did his electrical engineering from Stanford and started his first Cyber-security firm named SIS while in college. One of his early ventures was bought by Juniper for $4 billion, and two decades later, his company is worth $13 billion, exceeding that of Juniper! Meanwhile, Michael Xie, who serves as the firm’s president and CTO, did his electrical engineering from the University of Manitoba. Ken is also a gifted athlete, who wanted to be a professional volleyball player while growing up. He stands tall at six feet and five inches, but his parents who worked at the Tsinghua University in China didn’t agree with his career plan. Instead, they got him interested in engineering and Xie’s life transformed.

A Family Initiative

Brothers Michael and Ken Xie founded Fortinet in 2000, by launching their first firewall Fortigate. They then added new features such as wireless access points, messaging options and sandboxing in later years. Within three years, the company raised more than $90 million in funding. Fortinet went public in 2009, after raising over $156 million through its IPO. Fortinet released its Security Fabric system in 2016, and since then, the product has added several new features such as IoT and WAN.

Earlier Efforts

Before starting Fortinet, Ken Xie founded NetScreen, while Michael Xie was as an executive at ServeGate. The duo built Appligation Inc in 2000, later renamed to ApSecure the same year, which finally became Fortinet. The pair got the idea to name their company Fortnite through the phrase Fortified Networks. While trying to raise funds for Fortinet, Ken’s earlier effort, NetScreen got acquired by Juniper Networks for around $4 billion.

Early Years

Their first product came out only two years later, after stringent research and development. Between the years of 2000 and 2003, the company was able to raise over $13 million through private funding. By August of 2003, they brought in another $30 million, while they added an additional $50 million in 2004. In 2003, they launched their first channel program and began distribution in Canada the same year, via Westcon Canada. They expanded to the UK through Norwood Adam in 2004 through Norwood Adam. They also expanded to other countries and had set up other international offices in Europe, Asia, and North America by 2004.

Profits and Early Growth

The company turned cash positive in 2008 and acquired database security firm IPLocks the same year. All 28 employees of the company were extended job opportunities by Fortinite, as a very thoughtful gesture. A year later, they acquired the Ethernet-based company, Woven Systems. By the end of 2009, Fortnite commanded almost 15% of the total market, making them an industry stalwart. CRN Magazine also named them first in security hardware, a huge improvement from the seventh pace they got the year before.

IPO and Huge Success

The company sold 5.8 million shares and raised $52.4 million through its IPO in 2009. Another 6 million shares were sold by stockholders, leading to an increase in the share price from $9 to $12.50. By the end of that one single day, the company had raised over $156 million in financing. Fast forward two years, Fortinet was making $324 million a year, commanding the largest share in the market. In 2013, they launched monthly subscription options for customers with less capital. The company also acquired XDN, Coyote Point, Meru Networks and AccelOps between 2012 and 2016.

New Initiatives

They expanded to new ventures in 2014 by launching a technical certification named Network Security Expert. Two years later, the company found a way to fill Cybersecurity vacancies by launching the Network Security Academy. Through this program, the donated equipment and helped Universities train students for jobs. Furthermore, in 2016 they launched a program that encouraged military veterans to try their hand at Cyber-security, named FortiVet.

They expanded to new ventures in 2014 by launching a technical certification named Network Security Expert. Two years later, the company found a way to fill Cybersecurity vacancies by launching the Network Security Academy. Through this program, the donated equipment and helped Universities train students for jobs. Furthermore, in 2016 they launched a program that encouraged military veterans to try their hand at Cyber-security, named FortiVet.

Research Results

Research predicts that the Cyber-security market will grow 10 percent every year till 2023, and so things look good for this multi-million-dollar enterprise. Furthermore, Fortinet is growing at 20%, being valued at a staggering $13 billion in 2018. Their shares now stand around the $81 mark, which is six times more than their initial listing of $9.

Fortinet headquartered Sunnyvale, California is helping revolutionize the Cyber-security industry, and is now an industry giant. The company continues to grow at over 15%, raking in $416.7 million last year. With over 467 patents and another 291 pending, it is safe to say that the future looks safe and secure for Fortinet; much like how the Cyber-space is, thanks to them!

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This Entrepreneur Built a Million-Dollar Web-Hosting Company While in College

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Hosting websites like HostGator on the internet is a great business because nowadays everyone is on the internet! With the dot com bubble being bigger than ever before, companies are fighting it out to grow their online presence. Since most of the customers have migrated to the digital market, companies had to follow suit as well, and soon enough digital marketing took shape. Having a great online presence ensures a steady stream of customers. But with so many companies out there, how do companies ensure that they make a mark? Web hosting services help companies provide quality service, and create unique designs, at the same time. This time, we will be taking a look at one such hosting service, that is making its presence felt. Here’s how a company formed in freshman year of college, is now taking over the digital space.

Creating HostGator

The idea for HostGator came to Brent Oxley when he was in college. Brian joined Florida Atlantic University, knowing he had to make it big. Since it was the first time in years, he had free time, he spent the first few months just making friends and socializing. However, he soon realized that though he was having a great time, he was also wasting his time. Therefore, Brent switched lanes and started thinking of ideas to get out of college and start his own thing.

Since he had only a few thousand dollars as savings, he knew he had to look for something internet-based, as they require less capital. Brent had been noticing for a while that the advertising market was quite unstable, to say the least. Since he required a recurring revenue source, he chose to try his hand at web hosting. That’s how the idea of HostGator came to be.

Handling College

Soon after, Brent Oxley sat in his dorm room working away on his keyboard, searching for the aptest name for his service. Most of the domain names he had in mind were already taken, and he ended up trying over a hundred names. Finally, he ended up with Hostgator.com., while hostlion.com. also made it to the last round of selection. He then went on to register his domain as HostGator in 2002. However, his dorm room wasn’t the best place to work in, with loud roommates, bad AC and internet connection playing spoil-sport. He ended up speaking to the IT Manager almost every day, regarding the multi-hour outages. However, college life went on, with the dorm room serving as the headquarters for HostGator. Brent would go to class, and then complete all his homework and work from previous classes over there, so that he had more time for Hostgator. Thanks to his effort, by the end of the first semester, the business started to take off. It then became very difficult to juggle classes and his start-up. Finally, mid-way through the second semester, it got to a point wherein he was awake at night making support and sales calls!

Education vs Start-up

Brent pulled through the first year and then got the entire summer for himself to focus on HG. The business started to thrive and Brian invested $1,000 of his into the startup. When summer drew to a close, Brent had two options; either drop out or shut his business! Brent felt confident enough to go with the former, though he faced strict resistance from home. Most of his extended family and friends believed that this would be the worst mistake of his life. However, eventually, they all came around, and Brent dropped out to focus on his business. In 2003, Brent’s venture had 112 active customers, and one year later, that number multiplied to become 1,031 active customers.

Figuring Things Out

HG launched a reseller hosting along with shared hosting and took a couple of years to get their dedicated hosting services online. Brent hated reseller hosting initially, as the resellers kept asking him for technical support. However, once he started experimenting with advertising, he fell in love with the concept, and since then, has invested in this market-space. HG started their advertising campaigns on Yahoo with a $1,200 campaign that yielded no results. However, the process taught Brian that he could convert resellers to customers for $80 a piece. HG then became one of the first services to invest in unlimited domains, and quickly the company exploded!

Brent also recalls how in the first two years of starting HG, he was always on the phone providing support and making sales calls. Three years later, most of his responsibilities included expansion, deals and doing sales. Now that the company has established itself, the CEO finds himself focusing on customer satisfaction and HR. Since the early days, the business has grown exponentially and now has over 400,000 customers. Over the years, the company has also paid a lot of attention to its reputation. The follow all social media handles carefully, and always apologizes if any customer had a bad experience. They are also very keen on making things right, and this has helped them make promoters out of bashers!

Expansion and Hiring

In 2006, the company’s Ontario office opened, making it their first international office. The same year, the company outgrew its modest 2,000 square foot office in Boca Raton and moved to a much bigger 25,000 square foot building in Texas. Along with the company, forty of the company’s fifty Florida employees also made the move, marking a huge shift in their operations. The company also branched into the field of SEO Hosting a couple of years earlier, and the business is doing phenomenal. Seohosting.com contributes a significant amount to the company’s revenue. The company launched its own blog in 2007, coming out with its first post on May 4th,2007. The blog officially called Gator Crossing has become wildly successful due to its relevant and concise posts on web-hosting and digital marketing. That same year, the company opened its second international office in Santa Catarina, Brazil.

Fast Growth and Acquisition

Fast forward two years, the company hit 200,000 customers, having reached their first 100,000 in mid-2008! The company kept growing at an unprecedented rate, and by 2010 outgrew its Houston office. They again looked West, and soon moved into a massive 100,000 square foot office in Texas. Brent moved to the post of Chairman the same year. Due to them growing in leaps and bounds, the company was also pushing an aggressive HR policy, trying to employ as many talented professionals as possible. In 2011, they hit the 500 employee mark, and hasn’t stopped growing since! In the same years, they received their 5,000,000th LiveChat. Such fast growth rates and impressive revenue generation led to the Endurance International Group acquiring HostGator in 2012. Two years later, the company expanded to include Chinese and Russian markets as well, beginning operations in Mexico, the following year!

This success story proves without a doubt, how sometimes the best things happen to people who take risks. Things would have turned out very differently for Brent if he had chosen to stay on in college. By choosing to follow his dream, Brent established a company that has now become an industry standard. The one-man hosting company has now become an industry stalwart with over 500 employees, and 5 million domain names thanks to his efforts and hard work.

Bluehost logo

How Bluehost Evolved to Become the Perfect Host

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Since companies shifted their services and business online, web hosting services have been having a great business. With the Internet Age being in full force, such companies that help other companies in maintaining websites have been seeing tremendous growth. One such company, which was able to make use of the internet boom to capture a large market share is Bluehost. Here’s a look at how this web hosting company grew to be one of the biggest players in the market.

Founding Bluehost

Matt Heaton, is in no way a stranger to cyberspace, being a serial entrepreneur with a love for all things cyber-related. He opened Computer Warehouse at the age of 21, then moved on to Free50, and HostMonster, before adding Bluehost to his resume. Matt Heaton began Bluehost as a free service named 0catch.com. But soon enough the service became so popular that he could upgrade it to a paid service.

Therefore, he renamed the company and re-launched it as a shared-hosting service in 2003. Very affordable plans, great customer service, and unique features helped propel the brand as they became a standard in the industry. One of the biggest selling points of the company was the fact that it provided different price points. Hence, everyone from an individual running a business to a multi-national conglomerate could find what they were looking for on Bluehost.

Early Years and Growth

The company invested in research and did pioneering work in the field of server hosting. In 2009, they launched CPU throttling, which helped in reducing CPU usage whenever a user pulled too many resources. Whenever a user took up too much of the server resources the software drastically reduced their usage, shutting down their sites. This innovative method that helped prevent CPU burnout, also helped the company keep its resources in play effectively. Furthermore, it also served as a great warning to other users from doing the same thing, helping substantially to improve the hosting platform’s performance.

Another feature that helped Bluehost stand a class apart from competitors was the fact that their service was easy to use. The company used templates that even less technologically-savvy can navigate and figure out. Throughout their growth and expansion strategies, the company has stuck to its principle of making their layouts as simple as possible. By providing plug and play website templates, the company makes setting up and running your own website an easy affair. Moreover, Bluehost was also the first to advertise their uptime record, which helped build a feeling of reliability for their brand.

Sustained Growth and Success

Endurance International acquired Bluehost in 2010, due to its stellar performance in the years following its founding. Even after the acquisition by Endurance International Group, the company made it clear that BlueHost would continue to work under its own name. Some of the other holdings that Endurance International has to include FatCow, Hostgator, JustHost, and Mojo Marketplace.

A year later, CEO Matt Heaton stepped down to work on the platform’s structure and COO Dan Handy took over. Bluehost introduced their own VPS and dedicated hosting in 2013, further expanding their business, and acquiring a larger share of the market. The company provides various services now, such as shared, VPS, dedicated, cloud and WordPress hosting. Most of their servers run on PHP 7 and HTTP/2 caching. In 2015, Mike Olson took over as the CEO, while Handy moved to the field of mobile and application development for small-scale businesses.

The company ran into trouble in 2009, when they censored websites hosted by citizens of countries the US considered rogue states. Furthermore, in 2011, they had to take down a religious website they hosted for making insensitive comments on minorities. But quick thinking, good crisis recovery methods, and smart branding have helped them navigate through such controversies and maintain a great brand image.

Bluehost is one of the largest web hosts in the world, with over 2 million domains. They also play a major role in the working of their sister concerns, iPage, HostMonster, and FastDomain. Headquartered in a massive 50,000 square feet server facility in Utah with HostMonster, Bluehost has over 700 employees in that facility alone. They are pioneers in the field of hosting, having been one of the earliest analyzers of collaborative virtual learning programs. BlueHost has grown to become one of the most recognized names in the field of Webhosting with decades’ worth of experience and by utilizing smart business acumen.