C I Host Earns Prestigious Fast Tech 50 Award From Deloitte & Touche

Phenomenal Growth Places Internet Pioneer On List Of Texas' Rising Stars

HostReview.com
Tuesday, September 16, 2003; 12:00 AM

Bedford, TX - C I Host, which has experienced a 690-percent growth rate in the last two years, has been singled out as one of the fastest-growing technology companies in Texas by Deloitte & Touche LLP.

The Fast 50 awards ranks technology companies based on revenue growth over a three-year period.

Christopher Faulkner, CEO of CI Host, said: "Hard work and successful strategies have fueled our fast growth, first during the Internet's boom times and especially now as the economy is showing signs of new momentum."

The Texas Crescent Technology Fast 50 is an awards program that ranks technology companies throughout Texas and is run by Deloitte & Touche, in association with Haynes and Boone. Winners of the Fast 50 awards are eligible to compete in the North America Technology Fast 500.

"In an era where technology companies come and go, making the Deloitte & Touche Fast 50 is a testament to a company's vision to create growth over three years," said Donna Epps, chair, 2003 Texas Crescent Technology Fast 50, Deloitte & Touche. "CI Host's leadership has the right stuff for growth, and Deloitte & Touche salutes its accomplishments."

During the first three quarters of 2003, C I Host has solidified its lead in the Web hosting SMB market and has made inroads into the higher end dedicated market. The firm now hosts more than 5,000 dedicated servers.

To qualify for the Technology Fast 50, companies must have had operating revenues of at least $50,000 in 1998 and $1,000,000 in 2002, and must be public or private companies headquartered in North America. Such companies must also be "technology companies," defined as owning proprietary technology that contributes to a significant portion of the company's operation revenues and devoting a significant proportion of revenues to research and development of technology.

Even as much of the Web hosting industry struggled with a two-year downward slide - during which time competing Web hosts faltered, laid off workers, closed data centers, and filed for bankruptcy - C I Host continued to grow in revenue and numbers of clients.

C I Host now has more than 200,000 clients in 182 countries and 190 employees in four locations. It is adding 4,000 new customers a month and has one of the lowest churn rates in the industry.

In 2003, C I Host expanded its Texas and Los Angeles data centers, opened a new data center in Chicago and plans to open a London data center before the end of the year.

"Our growth is due to being on a sound financial footing and always putting our customers first," Faulkner said. "We recently surveyed our customers and the more than 30,000 who responded gave us an average 5.2 rating on a 6.0 scale." In that survey, "5" meant "satisfied" and "6" meant "extremely satisfied."

In 2001, C I Host also received a FastTech 50 award from Arthur Anderson for ranking 32 out of 4,000 companies in the Dallas/Fort Worth area for revenue growth in 2000.

About C I Host

C I Host (www.cihost.com), based in the Dallas/Fort Worth market, is a Web hosting and Internet solutions provider, domain name registrar (DNR) and application service provider (ASP), serving 200,000 individual consumers and businesses in 182 countries worldwide. The company creates business-class Web hosting solutions for the small- and medium-enterprise (SME) market,
with the broadest portfolio of managed hosting and value-added services in the industry. C I Host has been consistently ranked among the Top 5 Web hosting companies out of 16,000 around the globe. C I Host's turn-key services range from initial domain name registration to custom dedicated servers for e-commerce. C I Host is headquartered from its main facility and Network Operations Center in Bedford, Texas, and the company operates three
diverse data centers in Los Angeles, New York City and Chicago.

Editorial Contact: D. Kent Pingel Public Relations Director C I Host 888-868-9931 ext. 7006 kentp@cihost.com