Jan. 9, 2001 -- Yahoo!, the Internet's busiest portal, has chosen Sprint as its new web host, dealing another blow to Exodus' hopes of retaining its marquee clients throughout its bankruptcy.
Yahoo's defection from Exodus follows a similar move by auction site eBay, which said last month it would expand in Sprint facilities. It also reinforces a flight to quality in which blue-chip players in the Internet economy are shifting to well-funded telephone companies at the expense of "pure-play" hosting companies.
Yahoo, which in September served more than 1.2 billion pages to 210 million users, said it had chosen Sprint's Silicon Valley data center to house its "newest deployment" of hosting equipment.
The announcement made no mention of whether Yahoo would retain servers at Exodus or shift them to Sprint. But Yahoo Director Operations Kevin Timmons cited the company's need for a "highly reliable" provider in choosing Sprint.
"Sprint demonstrates that it meets our requirements for the reliability, stability, expandability, and flexibility of our hosting needs,'' said Timmons.
Sprint has been one of the chief benefactors of the shift to hosts with deep pockets. The company expanded aggressively in web hosting last year, even as the data center market was undergoing a major shakeout.
"Sprint is witnessing a dramatic upswing in customers who demand quality, security, scalability and a Tier-1 brand that stands for long-term survivability," said Keith Paglusch, president, Sprint E|Solutions.
"We are very pleased to have the opportunity to provide our Internet Center services to an Internet leader like Yahoo!,'' Paglusch added. "Our Internet Centers were built with just these kinds of business needs in mind."
Several of those key customer gains have come at the expense of Exodus, which filed for bankruptcy in September and has been working desperately to retain clients while the bankruptcy court processes an $850 million acquisition bid by the Digital Island unit of Cable & Wireless.
Exodus executives have insisted their efforts to retain blue-chip customers were succeeding. But while those large clients were publicly expressing support for Exodus, they were privately seeking other providers.
As of this morning, Exodus' web site was continuing to tout Yahoo! as one of its loyal clients, touting a quote from Timmons that said Yahoo "will remain a partner."
Sprint now has E|Solutions Internet Centers in Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, New York City, Boston, Atlanta, Dallas, Kansas City, Denver, Reston, Va., and Sacramento, Calif.
With its recent growth, Sprint is seeking to capitalize on the "flight to quality" in the managed hosting and colocation space, which has been rocked by financial problems affecting numerous service providers that overexpanded during the dot-com gold rush.
Sprint has more than $23 billion in annual revenues, has 80,000 employees and serves 23 million business and residential customers in more than 70 countries.
As the first online navigational guide to the Web, Yahoo! is the leading guide in terms of traffic, advertising, household and business user reach. Yahoo! is the No. 1 Internet brand globally and reaches the largest audience worldwide. The company also provides online business and enterprise services designed to enhance the productivity and Web presence of Yahoo!'s clients.