EV1 Bags A Bowl

Houston-based Everyone's Internet made several big moves last week to raise its profile and consolidate its branding. The regional Internet access and hosting provider purchased naming rights to the Houston Bowl, which becomes the EV1.net Bowl. It also renamed its fast-growing dedicated server company, Rackshack, which will now be EV1Servers.net. Company CEO and "Head Surfer" Robert Marsh also revealed that EV1 has acquired another data center in Houston to accomodate growth. "We are behind schedule (on the acquisition) but are declining to discuss specifics at this time," Marsh said this week in Rackshack's user forum. "There could be good news before the end of the week."

The data center expansion was driven by the explosive growth of Rackshack/EV1Servers, which now houses more than 17,000 servers and 400,000 individual web sites. In recent months it has been selling approximately 2,000 dedicated servers per month, and recently began selling domain names for $5 a year.

That growth has maxed out the power available from the local electric utility, a scenario that was widely discussed in the dot-com heyday but rarely seen in the real world. Marsh says the company is "exploring options with the local power utility on ways to bring new power from a different segment."

The purchase of naming rights for the EV1.net bowl may also summon memories of the Internet boom (Remember PSINet Stadium?). But Everyone's Internet is instead an example of a more retro success story: the regional provider that bootstraps its way to profitability and expands on the cheap in a consolidating market. Back in 2001 the company bought a 28,000 square foot data center for $1 million from distressed provider Verado, which spent $10.5 million building the facility.

While EV1 has built incredible momentum in the discount server market, Marsh made it clear that its ambitions extend beyond that niche. "While Rackshack.net was well known in 'Internet' circles, that brand was not well known within our local community and those not directly in the hosting business," he said.

Everyone's Internet has also been busy in the past year buying up hosting-related web properties, including Web Hosting Talk discussion forum, and Hosting Tech.