Friday, May 26, 2006

Pleth, LLC Partners with ARG...

Cotton Rohrscheib, of PLETH Networks, LLC made the Announcement on Friday that his firm had partnered with Little Rock Consulting Firm, The Angela Rogers Group. “I have known Angela for a while now, when she was with the Little Rock Convention and Visitors Bureau and she has always been a hard worker. I attended her wedding last year and her husband was in mine, we are great friends. On a professional level I can attest to her work ethic, she is a leader. That’s exactly the qualities we were looking for as a strategic partner in the Little Rock Market.” said Rohrscheib.

The Angela Rogers Group was formed when Angela decided to step down from her position with the Convention and Visitors Bureau in Little Rock where she had a hand in coordinating just about every major event that has transpired in Little Rock or Central Arkansas for the past years. These events include everything from visiting Presidents to Foreign Heads of State and even Rock Concerts and World Championship Boxing Matches, and of course Little Rock is also home to many festivals and events throughout the year.

“With Angela’s years of experience she also brings a lot of creativity and logic to our team,” added Rohrscheib. “At times we (our development team), will sometimes tend to look only at the technical functionality of a project and occasionally overlook the smaller details that an end-user might pick up on right away. Angela brings that to our team, and it has made a noticeable difference already in recent projects.”

This strategic partnership has already yielded a few noteworthy projects such as the River Market’s 10th Anniversary Website that features a full slate of upcoming events and special promotions in recognition of the River Market District’s 10th Year in existence. Plans for several other promotional projects are also on the table with announcements expected in the very near future. A number of private firms located in the Little Rock Area have also contacted Pleth Networks since the news was made public about this partnership.

“Our business is so service oriented, not only do we provide web-hosting, but we also handle about 90% of our clients development work in house so we have managed to build some personal relationships with our clients, getting to know their businesses helps us to better equip them with the tools for success on the web.” said Rohrscheib.

While the name PLETH might be a new one to many members of the business community in the state, don’t be mistaken, PLETH was actually formed when an award-winning web design firm, the Powersite Design Group decided that they wanted to go into the web-hosting business. Powersite Founder, Cotton Rohrscheib, met with then-client, Stephen Smart and his brother Greg Smart, and from it’s conception the partnership has showed tremendous growth. In only a short period of time, PLETH was able to go from a small startup tech-firm to one of the largest web-hosting providers in the United States.

“I started developing websites as a hobby along about the time that Netscape was becoming a household name, I had a fascination then with the web and a good background in graphic design, but never anticipated being able to make a living doing something I love so much. I founded Powersite back in 2001 and have managed or had an active role in over 500 projects worldwide, and in 7 different languages. These projects have included everything from small business e-commerce websites to high-level government portals. Along the way I have had the opportunity to work with an impressive list of clients including a few best-selling authors, recording artists, and NASCAR drivers like Arkansas’ very own Mark Martin, who has multiple accounts with us right now. It wasn’t until Greg and Steve came on board that I noticed somewhere along the way that the industry as a whole was no longer a hobby and it had became big business with millions of dollars worth of revenue running throughout the world. As a company we have grown past all of our expectations, in fact we now have several servers located in one of the most elite data centers in the world. Our Network is located in Dallas, Texas.” added Rohrscheib. “There are plenty of web firms in the state, but I think that the one thing that has helped us to rise to the forefront of the industry is our one on one relationship that we establish with each of our clients, and our passion to see them succeed. This is why we are so proud to have a partner firm in Little Rock now that shares the same goals and principles.”

For more information on the Angela Rogers Group, please visit their website at: www.angelarogersgroup.com , or stop by their offices located in the Little Rock River Market District inside the Museum of Discovery.

For more information regarding the Powersite Design Group or Pleth Networks, please visit their websites at: www.powersitedesign.com and www.pleth.com or call toll-free: 888-276-0848.
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Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Planet / EV1 Planning Merger

May 10, 2006 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — With a couple of quick announcements this week, the balance of power in the dedicated Web hosting market shifted, or rather coalesced, into the hands of one new, and very big, organization.

On Saturday, it was reported that investment firm GI Partners (gipartners.com) had acquired controlling interests in two of the dedicated hosting space’s most prominent players, Everyone’s Internet (ev1.net) and The Planet (theplanet.com).

Shortly thereafter, the two companies announced that they had merged, creating the largest dedicated Web hosting provider in the market, with more than 20,000 clients and 50,000 dedicated servers under management.

Executives from both companies say they don’t see the deal ushering in any big changes in the dedicated hosting market. But the significant resources, scale and stability of the new organization will likely enable the two brands, already leaders in the dedicated hosting field, to set the tone for that particular segment of the Web hosting business.

The companies have said they intend for EV1Servers and The Planet to continue to operate as separate brands, but the new potential for the sharing of intellectual property and business practices has obvious benefits for both sides.

Jeff Lowenberg, vice president of operations at EV1, and his counterpart at The Planet, chief operating officer Will Charnock, have begun discussing the ways in which the companies can share resources and ideas.

“The way that I look at it,” says Lowenberg, “we will certainly share technologies that the two companies have developed, and Will and I will be looking at different ways that each company does things, and whoever does it best we’ll start adopting that technology to the other company. But the two companies will continue to have their own identities and their own brands.”

And, in addition to sharing technologies the companies have developed, or are developing, the new organization will benefit from the potential to combine technology resources.


“There is that opportunity,” says Charnock. “And some of the things that we’re kicking around internally are some products that kind of leverage the two different physical locales for some products and things like that.”

The doubling up of engineering staff and resources has the potential to immediately impact the speed and confidence with which the post-merger organization can develop new products and bring them to market. Rather than fundamentally changing anything about the dedicated hosting market, the merger, say its participants, will have its most immediate and most profound effects on the way they do business, and their ability to do so. The significant boost in financial solidity, for instance, could be of considerable interest to customers.

“From my perspective,” says Charnock, “if there are going to be any changes, they’re going to be for the better. I think for the customer, as a whole, combined we’re a very strong company. We’ve seen some of our competitors disappear overnight. And when you look at us now, you have to know that we’re going to be around for the long haul. And you can feel secure when you take your services to us.”

There is plenty of overlap in the partnerships held by the two companies, and while the deal may not immediately create any new vendor relationships for either company, it may have the potential to change their existing relationships.

“We share many of our vendors,” says Charnock. “So it’s hard to pick Microsoft and say ‘that’s an immediate benefit,’ because we already have essentially the same relationship with Microsoft that EV1 does, I believe. So in that respect, I think the benefit is that we’re now a much larger entity, and we can leverage that into maybe having a little more input into features going forward, helping them develop some of their products to suit what our customers are asking for and things like that.”

Interestingly, given the nature of the Web hosting business, the similarity of the two companies in terms of their products and general approach to the business make it very easy for them to slip into a collaborative relationship. It is no big surprise that two companies succeeding in dedicated hosting are operating very similarly.

“We didn’t have a working relationship [prior to the acquisitions and merger],” says Lowenberg, “but it was good competition between us, as it was two of the biggest, if not the biggest in this particular section of the market. We drove each other to improve our service offerings, and we’ll continue to do so. Only now it won’t be so much one against the other. We’ll be forcing the rest of the market to keep up with us.”