By Allan Maurer
CHARLOTTE, NC—Web-hosting firm ORCS Web has managed to stay in the top half of lists of the fastest growing U.S. private companies for the last two years, despite the economic downturn. The company provides managed hosting solutions to clients in more than 70 countries who deploy applications on Microsoft Windows platforms and feeds its growth by constantly staying on top of new technology, says CEO and President Brad Kingsley.
“Staying on top of new technology is one of the things that make this job great,” says Kingsley. “Our people are truly geeks who love playing with new technology and working with clients.” That differs from some companies in his previous career, he says, where a corporation would “stay with its technology until the server rusts.”
The company, which leases a dedicated caged space from Charlotte-based datacenter operator Peak 10, sells services that include shared, dedicated and webfarm hosting, with specialty in ASP.NET, SQL Server, and architecting highly scalable solutions.
Founded in 1996, the 25-employee company has managed year-over-year double digit growth without taking any venture funds. “In 2000 and 2001 we had lots of people trying to get us to take venture capital,” says Kingsley. “I’m so glad we didn’t indulge.”
Instead, the firm focused on signing clients and keeping them long term. “We don’t ramp up as fast, but we don’t have a drop-off, either,” he notes. Regarding the down economy, he says, “We’re not seeing the big growth we saw before, but we haven’t had a lot of clients jump ship for a better price. We had double-digit growth last year and we’re up this year over the previous year.”
Some of the company’s clients have been with ORCS Web for more than ten years, he adds.
The company currently hosts more than 2,000 Web sites.
The growth of the Internet itself is one reason ORCS Web continues to thrive, he says. “People have switched to using the Internet for certain types of services.” Software as a service has driven some of the growth.
But using the Internet for business means a need for more bandwidth, servers, and power. “It costs a lot to manage that in-house,” says Kingsley. “If it’s not your core business, it is essential to outsource it to remain competitive.”
ORCS Web provides the managed services layer, making sure a company’s applications stay up and running and online. Clients gain the advantage of ORCS Web’s expertise.
Kingsley says that while a lot of people in the media and financial markets have been talking a lot about the “cloud,” the general population just wants a reliable, scalable Web site. “The cloud has a bit of a buzz, but we’ve been doing scalable, redundant Web service—what most people call the cloud—in excess of seven to nine years. We’ve had a cloud type of plan available for seven years.”
One of the reasons a company needs that, he explains, is to meet sudden demand. One of ORCS Web’s clients, the Zagat restaurant guides, has to be able to handle a vast influx of traffic if it is mentioned on a morning news show, for instance.
The chief reason clients stay with ORCS Web, however, “is the customer service,” says Kingsley.
“We invest a lot of money in keeping our team top notch technically,” he says. “We focus on trying to build raving fans by going the extra mile for the customer. We do training on how to communicate with the customer in a dialog or email. We treat the customers as part of the team and a lot of them say, “Why don’t you start a cell phone company? The service there is awful.”
The truth is that good service paired with good technology is all too rare across many industries, he adds.
“That’s why this company was founded. There is a definite need for this. It’s not about just growing as rapidly as possible.”
In fact, he says, the two chief differentiators for ORCS Web are providing the top notch service and support coupled with its focus on only Microsoft platforms, which allow it to “Be the best on that one thing.”
Online: www.orcsweb.com
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