An exclusive interview with Adam Stern, CEO of Infinitely Virtual
CEO of Infinitely Virtual
HostReview.com had the opportunity to interview Adam Stern, CEO of Infinitely Virtual - a rapidly expanding provider of high quality and affordable virtual server technology. Enjoy!
HostReview: Thank you for an opportunity to talk with you. Would you tell us in a few words about yourself and your professional background? How long have you been involved in the web hosting industry?
Adam Stern: Thank you for having me. I began my career in the Information Technology business in 1991. As a network engineer in the 1990s, I largely worked for customers that industry insiders would later call SMEs or Small and Medium Enterprises. Working with them daily, I had the opportunity to learn about the challenges average businesses face. Later, working for 3Com and eventually starting Altay Corporation, I was able to extend my experience to the large enterprise. By 2007, Altay Corporation was a part of the VMware virtualization boom, designing, installing, and maintaining large VMware environments.
HostReview: Can you please share with our readers how Infinitely Virtual started and how it grew to what it is today.
Adam Stern: Infinitely Virtual grew directly out of our experience with VMware. It was becoming clear that we could combine the raw compute power of today’s servers, virtualization and the growing bandwidth of the Internet, permanently shifting the information technology paradigm. We created Infinitely Virtual to pioneer this new compute model.
Today, Infinitely Virtual is a mature VMware Virtual Dedicated Server hosting company with a large selection of products designed to meet the needs of SMEs and Large Enterprise.
HostReview: What is it that makes Infinitely Virtual a competitive company in the hosting industry?
Adam Stern: From the very beginning we set out to build E.V.E, or our Enterprise Virtualization Environment, the most technologically advanced VMware hosting environment available. E.V.E. offers our customers true 100% uptime; it includes daily backup and offsite data replication using application-consistent snapshots; it ensures that our servers are the highest performing in the industry; and our VMs consume less than 8 watts on average. Add to that our competitive pricing, and we are a force in the hosting industry.
HostReview: What are the latest developments taking place at Infinitely Virtual?
Adam Stern: Infinitely Virtual is constantly evolving. Later this year we will be releasing a new ecommerce site that extends further our Infinite Scalability. Customers will be able to customize their plans by adding RAM, CPU cores and storage affordably, in tiny increments. I am excited to tell you that we will be releasing 15 new products coinciding with the new website’s release.
HostReview: What virtual technology are you using?
Adam Stern: All of our products are based on VMware; they continue to outpace the rest of the market in performance and stability.
HostReview: What technologies do you think have the biggest impact on the hosting industry today? Which technologies will be "hot" in the next couple of years?
Adam Stern: A big driver for hosted network infrastructures will be the increased bandwidth to homes and businesses. Today it is common for businesses to have between 2 and 15 mbps. As bandwidth increases, hosted network infrastructure will displace traditional networks in offices.
Application virtualization is likely the next hot technology for the hosting market. Giving users the ability to run applications from a shared or dedicated application repository will catch up with other methods of application delivery over the next 5 years.
HostReview: What do you consider progressive or unique about Infinitely Virtual’s offerings and services?
Adam Stern: We are the only company with pre-packaged plans, using virtual dedicated servers, designed to replace the office network entirely. Our customers never need to purchase a physical server again.
HostReview: Infinitely Virtual continues to grow and expand its range of services. What new services and features has Infinitely Virtual added for its customers in the past year?
Adam Stern: We had a great year! Here are some of the features and services we added:
- Virtual Dedicated Servers with Windows 2008 and later Windows 2008 R2
- Office 2010 Standard & Professional Plus on our Virtual Terminal Server plans
- Virtual Dedicated Servers with Turnkeylinux appliances
- New Juniper SRX firewall cluster enhancing security and performance
- Kaspkersky based Perimeter Antivirus for VTS, PHE, VON, and VVPN plans
- Nightly application-consistent Snapshots, previously crash-consistent
- Virtual Dedicated Servers with Sharepoint 2010 Foundation, Standard & Enterprise
- Free snmp monitoring for every plan
HostReview: What is your best selling product?
Adam Stern: Our Virtual Terminal Server is our best-selling product. Every day companies are buying these plans to enable application and data sharing with their coworkers. We support from 1 to 100 users on servers with up to 8 2.53Ghz cores and 16 GB RAM.
HostReview: How do you market your services? How did the customers know about Infinitely Virtual?
Adam Stern: We have two channels: direct and reseller. Our direct channel is marketed entirely online. Customers find us using sites like Google and Facebook, and they can complete the transaction online without ever talking to a human being. Of course we have 24/7 sales support, and many customers call to talk with our sales engineers so they can choose the right product or service. Unlike our competitors, when you call Infinitely Virtual, you speak with someone that is technical enough to answer every question right the first time.
Our reseller channel is equally exciting. We are actively adding resellers who want to sell our technology to both new and existing customers. We welcome small and large companies who are excited about the new compute paradigm.
And of course we get a lot of business via word-of-mouth. Our customers love us, and they recommend us whenever they get a chance.
HostReview: What group of customers are you targeting?
Adam Stern: We actively market to SMEs. If a company has between 2 and 5000 users, our products fit them perfectly. And we create custom solutions every day.
HostReview: Why would customers choose Infinitely Virtual over other virtual hosting providers?
Adam Stern: We are the only hosting company with E.V.E. If a customer is looking for a premium product with true 100% uptime, application-consistent snapshots, offsite replication, and industry leading performance for a competitive price, we are the only hosting company offering it.
HostReview: What should be expected from Infinitely Virtual in the coming months?
Adam Stern: Infinitely Virtual is constantly evolving; we will continue to upgrade E.V.E., ensuring that we will maintain our technology leadership position. I expect to push below 5 watts/VM, making us one of the greenest hosting companies in the VDS space. I am excited to say that we will be releasing our new ecommerce website with industry-leading level of plan customization. Lastly, we will round out our offering with 15 new products sometime this year.
Thank you for your time. We look forward to seeing your success in the coming years.
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