Intelliracks acquires Factors of i

Did you know I ran a Coldfusion Hosting Company? No? Neither did anyone else.

The Announcement

Intelliracks Managed Hosting is pleased to announce the acquisition of Factors Of i, a Dallas, Texas based hosting company that specializes in providing ColdFusion hosting to business and enterprise-level clients. With this acquisition, Intelliracks continues to grow and increases its customer base, product and service offerings, and continues to gain market share in the business and enterprise hosting markets.

Intelliracks will continue Factors of i’s well-earned reputation for providing solid, reliable ColdFusion hosting solutions to strengthen our product and services portfolio and will continue to serve its growing customer base in the Dallas market.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions, concerns or for additional information regarding this acquisition.

Kind Regards,
Chad Russell
President
Intelliracks, Inc.
chad.russell@intelliracks.com

www.intelliracks.com

History of Factors of i, Inc.

I originally had a web development company called North Texas Web Design when I was living in Denton, TX and attending UNT. While working at a large company in 2000, my friend Anthony and I decided to try the hosting business starting with a single shared server over at RackSpace. We invited some clients of the ISP that was our former employer and very quickly had enough clients to cover our costs including our a copy of ColdFusion Server 4.5 for Linux.

The first year went pretty well, but eventually our needs went beyond what a single shared server could provide. Anthony happened to find a auction site that was managing the sale of all the original Napster servers and office equipment. We had enough credit to buy a stack of servers and found a co-lo facility in Dallas to store them. The cost of the co-lo was not much more than a single shared server at RackSpace at the time, so our monthly overhead didn’t change much.

We tried to build our own Control Panel instead of paying for CP or Plesk. We envisioned building a competing software product, but since we both had full-time jobs in addition to the hosting company, there wasn’t much time for large projects like that. After searching for a while, we found HSphere, which essentially did everything we had planned to build ourselves. Since it was based on Java and had a plug-in system we felt that we could work on software to add to or enhance its currently functionality. So we implemented it and very quickly proved that its low cost was no reflection of quality.

Our clients took to HSphere very quickly. A few now had the ability to start setting up their own clients’ site in a matter of minutes. This process helped increase our overall customer base in a short amount of time. Now, the problem with having an increase in clients is that you also have an increase in the amount of invoices to create, print, mail and collect. This also meant more servers to manage as well.

As things with our hosting company progressed, so did our individual careers. Anthony had become a lead Java Software Architect at a major travel company and I had taken a position as a lead ColdFusion Software Architect for a major 401k plan provider. Most of our clients found us through word of mouth and the demands of our existing full time jobs made it harder to market and build Factors of i, Inc. into something we could do full time instead.

Anthony was recently promoted to a position at his company that required him to move to Australia. This brought on discussions of moving to a managed hosting facility. On top of the major hosting providers that support ColdFusion, we talked with some long-time friends of mine from the HiveMinds forums.

Years ago, Chad had approached us with a merger proposal. We turned it down since we had plans that went outside hosting sites. In the years since then, Chad made his hosting company his only business. Through some other acquisitions and mergers and with a new partner his company evolved into Intelliracks Managed Hosting.

A new ColdFusion host on the rise

With the acquisition of Factors of i, Inc., Intelliracks has taken over our ColdFusion licenses. While we were only at version 6.1, they plan to upgrade to ColdFusion 8 early next year.

A big thanks to our (former) clients

Anthony and I want to thank all of our clients and most especially those that helped us get our business started so many years ago. It has been our pleasure working with you all.

What now?

Now that my free time is mine again, I hope to spend more time on the Primers I have on this site in addition to a couple of projects that have languished for quite some time. I’ll also be spending more time in the gym working on my health.

Anthony has been having a blast in Australia, as well as a few other countries that he’s been sent to by his full time job. I’m sure he’s got some projects to work on as well, If not, he’ll be spending more time on the beach out there, I’m sure.