Verado Goes Black

It's always a bad sign for a web hosting firm when its web site goes dark. That's the story today at Verado, which has shown few signs of life since a terse Jan. 4 announcement that it was laying off 63 employees. The managed hosting provider said in November that its was considering a prepackaged Chapter 11 filing, and would close six of its eight data centers.

On Dec. 20, Verado said President and CEO Thomas McGrath was no longer with the company. NASDAQ continues to list its stock, which was listed yesterday on the bulletin boards at 25 cents a share.

(NOTE: On Feb. 15, two days after this article was posted, Verado acknowledged it was filing for bankrupcty as part of a liquidation agreement with creditors. Rich)

The Denver-based company, previously known as First World, lost a total of $646 million. As of November, that investment yielded 123 customers who filled just 8 percent of the firm's data center floor space. Nearly half of those customers were in data centers targeted for closure.

During the past year, Verado changed its name and shifted its focus and customer base from colocation to managed services. The company also tried to raise its visibility with with sponsorship of NPR news programming. All things considered, it appears to not have worked.