LeaseWeb has been provided with information by RapidSpeeds that suggests that RapidSpeeds will likely default completely. LeaseWeb regrets this turn of events and would like to offer you a solution that may assist in minimizing the impact of RapidSpeeds’ demise to your operation.

Without any obligation to do so (legal or otherwise), and without incurring or accepting any obligation or liability or offering any support service or service level guarantees, LeaseWeb will temporarily restore access to RapidSpeeds’ infrastructure, hosted with LeaseWeb. Access will be restored at 14.00 hours CET today (30th November 2011) and will be blocked again at 16.00 hours CET this Friday (2nd December 2011).

During the aforementioned timeframe you may remove your data from the servers and/or create a copy thereof. We will also gladly accept you as a customer. Should you wish to become a customer with LeaseWeb, we request that you take note of the following:

LeaseWeb has been providing RapidSpeeds with network and server capacity for over a year. If you move your servers to the LeaseWeb network you can be assured of the same network quality and speeds as before. You will also benefit from our 24/7 support staff and our state-of-the-art datacenters in both Europe and the United States.

Please note that LeaseWeb will not take over – or otherwise become a party to – your contract with RapidSpeeds. You would be entering into a new contract with LeaseWeb, on the basis of LeaseWeb’s documentation. A copy of LeaseWeb’s standard documentation can be found at http://www.leaseweb.com/en/legal. In connection herewith, we point out that LeaseWeb’s services are prepaid.

After receiving your request to become a customer with LeaseWeb, we will (i) email you a short questionnaire to gather the information needed to locate your services within RapidSpeed’s infrastructure hosted in LeaseWeb’s network, and (ii) guide you through our online order procedure, or send you a quote for your acceptance. Please note that LeaseWeb’s default solution will be to offer you LeaseWeb’s standard services, to which you can transfer the data presently stored on RapidSpeeds’ infrastructure. On a per case basis LeaseWeb may, upon request, review the possibility to transfer or migrate your RapidSpeeds’ service(s) to our network.

After the order procedure has been completed, and after receiving the requested information and payment of the first monthly installment for our service charges, we will do our best to get your service(s) online again as soon as possible. Please note that this may take longer than usual (a few days), due to the large number of customers affected by RapidSpeeds’ demise.

For the avoidance of doubt: LeaseWeb will, contrary to the information circulated by RapidSpeeds, not take over RapidSpeeds. We furthermore point out that LeaseWeb is not in any way responsible for RapidSpeeds’ demise. We also point out that LeaseWeb is not in any way liable for the (financial) damages that might occur to RapidSpeeds or RapidSpeeds’ customers. Finally, please note that we are not in the habit of dealing directly with our resellers’ customers. The fact we are offering the solution set forth above is an exception to our standard practice.

Update 2 December 2011, 12.30 CET

LeaseWeb would like to thank the former RapidSpeeds’ customers for the positive responses we received the last few days. We are happy that our efforts to minimize the impact of RapidSpeeds’ demise to your operation appear to be successful. Even some of our competitors have let us know that they were happy with LeaseWeb’s decision, because it allowed you to switch to their service.

LeaseWeb has been informed by some RapidSpeeds’ customers that not all of their data has been transferred yet. In view hereof, LeaseWeb has decided to extend the period of temporary access to RapidSpeeds’ infrastructure until 08.30 hours CET this Monday (5 December 2011). Please note that we have no obligation to do so (legal or otherwise), and that we do not incur or accept any obligation or liability, nor offer of any support service or service level guarantees.

Please also carefully note that this is the final grace period we will grant. Accordingly, on 5 December 2011 at 08.30 hours CET, LeaseWeb will block the ports and access to RapidSpeeds’ infrastructure hosted with LeaseWeb. At such time, all servers and services within RapidSpeeds’ infrastructure will be reinstalled and all data that is presently stored thereon will be wiped.

We trust that we have sufficiently informed you. Should you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us via sales@leaseweb.com.

Note: The scope and nature of the services offered by LeaseWeb are set out in the “Services Specification”. The performance parameters or service levels with respect to the services offered by LeaseWeb are set out in the “Service Level Schedule”. LeaseWeb applies general terms and conditions (the “General Conditions”) and policies with respect to the use of its Services (the “LeaseWeb Policies”). A copy of the Services Specification, the Service Level Schedule, the General Conditions and the LeaseWeb Policies have been made available to Customer and are available on the following page on our website: http://www.leaseweb.com/en/legal.

                          

We surveyed over 1,300 of our German customers, who use LeaseWeb’s dedicated servers in a diverse range of industries, including online gaming, e-commerce and various other IT infrastructure intensive businesses. We were thrilled to hear back from many senior-level IT directors and CEOs. What’s more, we got some great insights from the results of the survey. Our results revealed that almost a quarter of those surveyed have experienced noticeable improvements in the level of service since our takeover from Netdirekt, whilst 70% of those surveyed reported satisfaction across all departments.

We realise, that although it’s great to receive positive feedback, it is how we address the slightly less positive feedback that is most important. So what’s next? Well, the short answer is “a lot”! Having gone through each and every response, we have come up with a number of areas in which we can make our services better than ever. Since then we’ve been developing a plan of action, with the sole objective of not just achieving but over-achieving on our customers’ needs and requirements.

An example of an area we have addressed already is to almost double the amount of employees in LeaseWeb’s admin, sales and support department. Through doing this we have been able to significantly improve our response and – more importantly – issue-resolution times. Furthermore, as of this month we will be extending our level of support in order to better address customer requests regarding more technically complex and in-depth issues. We were reminded that servers are not just required 9 – 5, and we’ve responded by implementing a brand new shift structure offering around-the-clock support. This means that if our German customers experience problems with their servers at any time of the day or night, there will be a member of the team on hand to take your calls and offer our professional advice to get you back up and running as soon as possible.

As you can see, the survey has been extremely useful already in prompting some changes – whilst paving the way for many more. We are constantly engaged in improving and upgrading the services we offer, as you may have seen from some of our previous blog posts. And we don’t intend to stop here. From now on we’ll be measuring our customers’ satisfaction through similar surveys twice a year – so you can expect to hear from us for your views very soon!

Of course, if you have any questions or comments in the meantime please do not hesitate to let us know below. You can also get in touch via our website, or tweet us @LeaseWeb.

                          

What’s new
So what changes will directly impact our customers?

• All US products are now available in dollars
• Automated credit card payments (via a new payment service provider)
• Many usability improvements to make browsing our website hassle-free

Another big part of the project was separating all LeaseWeb companies, also known as our legal entities, within our ordering system. As you may know, last year LeaseWeb successfully expanded into Germany and the United States, giving us a stronger local presence. However, when ordering services and products through the website, you would still enter into an agreement with LeaseWeb BV, the Dutch entity of LeaseWeb. This also meant that ‘officially’ you had to contact LeaseWeb Netherlands if you had a question regarding your product or service.

Now, when you place your order through Leaseweb.com or the Self Service Center (SSC), your contract will be with the LeaseWeb subsidiary that’s in the same geographical location. For instance, when you order a server located in the Netherlands, you will get a contract from LeaseWeb BV. If you order a US-based server, you will get a contract from LeaseWeb USA, inc. This new system allows us to offer more service locations, giving our customers more choice globally.

Deploying GUS2CAS
Monday last week, at the brink of midnight, it was the moment of truth. Big projects like GUS2CAS affect a lot of different company applications. To ensure minimal impact on our customers, an overnight deployment was chosen. That evening a big team of dedicated web developers, system administrators, networking experts and project managers gathered in LeaseWeb HQ to work their magic.

It was a long night, with everyone working at full speed to get the deployment up and running. At four o’clock in the morning, phase one of GUS2CAS went live. Afterwards, the whole team worked until seven o’clock to make sure everything was functioning correctly. A couple of minutes later we already had our first US client ordering through the new system – without any problems!

Tired but content, the red-eyed deployment team went to bed while a fresh team of developers came in, ready to deal with any incidents that might occur. We are very proud to say that no major incidents were reported. So all in all, the deployment went as smooth as could be!

The future
With phase one deployed, all improvements for LeaseWeb USA, inc. are implemented. In the next couple of months we will focus on getting the new features for our German counterpart live. Of course we made sure all customer information is still correctly registered in our Customer Administration System (we call it CAS for short). This, by the way, is also where the name of the project came from: Germany & USA to the Customer Administration System.

Earlier customer satisfaction survey results and feedback picked up by our customer support department were used to determine some of the basic features. Customer opinion has always been very valuable to LeaseWeb, precisely because it gives us a good indication of what to focus on. So please keep on giving your feedback to make sure we always exceed your needs! You can send your suggestions to info@leaseweb.com, tweet them to us (@LeaseWeb), or leave them below in the comments.

                          

But why are we expanding to multiple geographical locations?

Many factors have influenced our decision to expand from both a business and customer perspective. One of the reasons looks at performance. We are extremely customer-focused and realised quite quickly that our customers wanted more choice over the location of their infrastructures. Our multiple datacenter locations enable customers to locate closer to, and better engage, with their end-users. In addition, many of our datacenters are located close to some of the largest internet exchanges in the world, meaning reduced network latency for our customers.

Legal and regulatory reasoning. Several of our customers have specific requirements regarding where their data could be hosted, and where it could not. There was also the issue of business continuity and data backup as many of our customers’ businesses operate internationally. By listening to our customers, we understood that they wanted to locate their infrastructure over multiple geographical locations to settle concerns over potential network downtime or data loss as a result of, for example, natural disasters.

We are pleased to now have a presence across two geographical locations, with access to both sides of the globe. We previously had a solid presence in seven datacenters across Europe; in Amsterdam, Brussels and Germany, and are now excited to have a presence in Manassas in the US. For those who have no specific geographical requirement over the location, LeaseWeb is here to fully advise you on the best location to suit their business needs.

Our next step is to investigate expanding our presence across other locations, especially throughout the United States and Asia. As a result, our customers will have even greater control over where they would like their infrastructure to be hosted.

We’re excited to expand our presence beyond our two current geographies, and look forward to continue supporting your business needs. We would love to hear your feedback and where you would like our next datacenter to be located! We look forward to hearing from you.

                          

Due to popular demand, we are pleased to announce a limited time extension of this offer.
Until the 31st of July, any LeaseWeb dedicated server ordered with a Windows Server license will continue to be available with a 50% discount for the Windows Server license. No action is required by the customer when placing the order.  The system will automatically calculate the discount at the time of checkout.

This 50% discount will continue until all promotional available Microsoft Server promotional licenses are sold. So hurry and order a dedicated Windows server through LeaseWeb. You will not only receive a quality server, with excellent support and superb connectivity, but for a limited time you will continue to obtain a 50% discount of a Microsoft Windows Server license. Microsoft Server Licenses and LeaseWeb dedicated servers – two great names – now available at unbeatable pricing during this 15th Anniversary Windows Server Sale promotional period. For any questions contact LeaseWeb Sales.

                          

Very recently LeaseWeb announced the availability of 100TB hosting services. Each 100TB package includes a first quality Dell or HP server with a number of configurations, provisioned with 100 Terabytes (TB) of bandwidth per month. Offered as a monthly package, and paired with a dedicated 1 Gigabit per second (Gbps) port, LeaseWeb 100TB service assures customers the highest connectivity currently available. 1 Gbps unmetered ports are an option, available with very aggressive pricing. With no setup fee, LeaseWeb 100TB service provides superior value and quality. Substantial discount are available for long term commitments, including a 20% discount for one year contracts.

The needs of internet customers are trending towards bigger bandwidth and faster connectivity. With the increasing use of content rich and functional websites, and the current evolution to more utility-based and mobile infrastructure, high bandwidth and quality connectivity are vital for both new and our new and existing clients. Here at LeaseWeb, we ensure we are at the cutting edge of technology and aim regularly meet the needs of demanding customers, providing our clients with the highest quality hosting solutions LeaseWeb is renowned for. With cutting edge Cisco and Juniper core routers, LeaseWeb’s skilled network architects are engaged in a continuous program to refine and advance the capabilities of the LeaseWeb network.

LeaseWeb maintains interconnections to all major internet exchanges in Europe. Customers have already found LeaseWeb’s 100TB service is unique in terms of price-point, and network quality. LeaseWeb’s 100 TB service has sharply reduced the cost of hosting and transferring large amounts of data and is the ideal service for extreme bandwidth users.

100 TB servers are available in several variants of Linux, BSD, as well as Windows at slight additional cost. Right now, LeaseWeb is currently is offering a 50% discount on Windows Server licensing fees on new server orders, for the life of the server, as a result of a special LeaseWeb/Microsoft promotion, extending through 15 June, making LeaseWeb’s 100TB server packages an even better deal.

As the leader in the hosting industry since 1997, LeaseWeb’s new 100TB servers provide unparalleled value and performance. Check out the new 100 TB packages here.

                          

Many departments at LeaseWeb including our new German offices have been working extremely hard to integrate the different programs and processes. After many modifications,we are proud to launch the official German LeaseWeb website – check it out at www.leaseweb.de. In the last few days the old netdirekt website has been redirecting visitors to leaseweb.de so that all our customers are aligned to the same systems. Many new LeaseWeb.de servers will be on the standard LeaseWeb customer portal – the Self Service Center (SSC). Legacy LeaseWeb.de customers will continue to use their existing customer interface until further notice.

All German speaking customers now have access to special LeaseWeb offers that were previously only available in the Dutch and English language. All customers can choose which datacenter they want their hardware to be housed in – Germany, Netherlands or the United States. LeaseWeb offers customers the flexibility to meet specific geographic and business requirements. We are working on a number of exciting improvements to the LeaseWeb website, including multi-currency payment options.

                          

The unbiased and comprehensive Twenga shopping search engine allows consumers to compare over 400 million offerings in 200,000 various online shops. My longtime friend, Cédric Anes of Twenga welcomed us and provided the LeaseWeb team with a great video case study interview describing the many benefits Twenga has received from hosting with LeaseWeb.

It is good to get out and visit our clients on a regular basis. Many of our enterprise customers started with LeaseWeb when they were very small. Utilizing LeaseWeb’s superior connectivity, first class infrastructure and excellent technical support, these clients received the quality servers and service they needed to be successful in the marketplace.

When you have a chance — take a look at the LeaseWeb case video studies detailing how our clients have utilized the LeaseWeb infrastructure to successfully develop their businesses. We constantly welcome new customers to LeaseWeb and provide them with the same great products and services we provisioned for Twenga. Contact us at sales@leaseweb.com and let our trained professionals meet your organization’s hosting and data infrastructure requirements the LeaseWeb way!

                          

The success LeaseWeb experienced happened with several hosting providers this past decade. The proliferation of web applications has caused a surge in the demand for datacenter space and services. LeaseWeb is one of the providers that have been able to successfully predict this rapid groth in customer demand coupled with a commitment to serving clients with high quality service and support.

Moving forward – what will the next 15 years look like for us? The move to more content rich and functional websites will not be an issue for quality hosting providers like LeaseWeb, but the move to more utility-based and mobile infrastructure will change datacenter economics. Today the price of hosting is very much dependent on the resources a customer signs up to use at the beginning of the contract. In the future the charges will be based on actual usage (down to hourly usage). Customers will have access to a highly scalable hosting infrastructure often spread among multiple POP’s for redundancy and global coverage.

Together, LeaseWeb and Microsoft are investing in this space and in the months ahead customers will see new offers created to capture the needs of tomorrow’s hosting, based on Microsoft’s Dynamic Datacenter framework.

To celebrate our 15th year of partnership LeaseWeb and Microsoft have agreed to offer our joint customers with a very special “one time’’ offer. The price for a virtual private server, with the following specifications: 1 Core, 1GB RAM, 60GB Storage and 1TB Traffic, will be 19 Euro per month (ex VAT) for every customer that signs up between now and the 15th of June.

Additionally, LeaseWeb and Microsoft recognize customers with dedicated server needs, and the need of virtualizing their own estate. For all new customers signing up a dedicated server, in the period between now and 15th of June, a 50% discount applies on the windows server licensing fees.

                          

We’ve uploaded new informational videos about our products and services to our YouTube Channel. Lawton Cheney, Business Development Manager at LeaseWeb is talking you through every single one of the videos. Please find a short interview with our newborn movie star about a hot day in the studio – and of course – don’t miss the making of and blooper clip;)

‘So Lawton, how did you enjoy the day?’

Lawton: ‘I was looking forward to it but a bit nervous as I had not done this kind of thing before Needless to say, it was impossible to memorize all the information so I got to use a teleprompt the way a newscaster would – even though I ended up improvising a lot!’

‘What do you think we will accomplish with the videos?

Lawton: ‘They will definitely help us get closer to our customers, and most importantly, our customers will save a lot of valuable time and effort by having the information at their finger tips. Now their answer is only one click away by watching a short video that will hopefully get them the information they need.’

They say pictures speak louder than a thousand words, what do you think?

Lawton: ‘Well in our case, one video might be saying more than 10 emails.. ;)’

‘What was the most fun thing about making these videos?’

Lawton: ‘When I got to slip in some of my own language. With all these different products and terms you get confused sometimes, especially when you have been in the studio for a few hours in front of a green screen. As I have worked closely with these products over a number of years it was great being able to explain them in depth, as the customer would like to hear about them. At the end of the day it all got a bit silly, with lots of laughter as we moved closer to the end knowing we had done a good day’s work!’

“A good day’s work indeed Lawton, great job!”