Interviewed on 9 Jun 08
Gavin Thirlwall, Technical Director
Network EQ is a specialist UK-based hosted web services company, offering premium services from a Docklands-based network with off-site backup facilities. From an initial start in shared and reseller web hosting, we have expanded rapidly, taking advantage of new technology and features. Most recently, our adoption of XenSource (later acquired by Citrix) on our HP blade server environment, has enabled us to offer enterprise levels of performance and reliability to all kinds of customers for significantly less outlay than a traditional dedicated solution. Rapid in-house adoption of new technologies and a very high level of experience from our team means that when customers are ready to deploy a solution we are ready.
Our customers enjoy a very personal service, where we are happy to manage their whole environment for them or take a hands-off approach and let the customer tune things to their requirements if they have the in-house skills.
What unique selling points do you offer?
Personal level of support, flexibility to customise solutions for our customers and a true enterprise-grade network.
Describe the services you offer?
Web hosting for our clients ranges from a single site on a shared web server, up to multi-server solutions for advanced internet, intranet and extranet applications that form part of the customer’s internal network. Web applications are increasingly becoming critical to how our customers run their businesses, so our services try to reflect that.
Describe your target market?
UK-based companies and developers looking for greater flexibility and better support for their hosted services.
How is your company planning for the future?
At the moment the development of internet services is advancing rapidly, and we believe that companies who continue to stick with networks that get more and more complex whilst becoming less efficient as they grow are not well placed for the future. Especially with power consumption and rack space becoming ever more expensive, linear growth of equipment with customers is not a good strategy.
The adoption of technologies such as blades and virtualisation has already helped us to become a more dynamic and responsive solution provider, and the next stage will be increased virtualisation of network services such as load balancing and secure remote access, enabling us to extend the cost advantages of shared equipment to network services as well as servers whilst giving our customers more control.
What benefits can you offer your customers?
We believe we provide an attractive choice, offering a combination of an enterprise-grade network built without compromise and a very personal and friendly level of support, whilst being prepared to customise our offerings exactly to the customers’ requirements. We don’t oversell and have deliberately chosen a more sustainable growth model, which pays long-term dividends for both our clients and us.
How do you support your customers?
We offer email and phone support to all our clients, offering either full management including pro-active monitoring, server administration and reporting, to a hands-off approach for clients who prefer to take charge of their own environment.
