C I Host Strengthens Service Level Agreement

FORT WORTH -- July 9, 2004 -- Raising the bar for what Web hosting companies agree they will do for their clients or pay a penalty, C I Host now promises 100 percent network uptime for its dedicated server customers. In addition, C I Host guarantees that its physical plant will be fully functional and secure 100 percent of the time and any server hardware that fails will be replaced within 30 minutes.

“This leads the industry and sets the standard for others to meet,” said Christopher Faulkner, CEO of C I Host. “Most hosts offer SLAs (service level agreement) of 99.9 percent, few have environmental guarantees and the usual time to replace hardware is one to two hours.”

Both Interland and Hostway, for example, list 99.9 percent SLAs for their dedicated servers. And Verio states that replacing the MRS CPE if the client has its managed router service package will take place within four hours.

“When a server is down at C I Host is is labeled a ‘red emergency’ in our CRM system and all of our data center operations personnel are sent a message,” Faulkner said. “If it is down for 15 minutes without a recovery, our executives are sent a message – including me.”

To meet the demands of the 30-minute hardware guarantee, C I Host has built an inventory room complete with every server component C I Host uses on every server configuration to ensure that the on-duty engineer has everything needed to replace one component or every component in the server at the drop of a hat.

C I Host backs up its SLA with generous customer refunds for downtime. That includes the physical plant. C I Host guarantees that all its HVAC, electrical system, cabling and other critical infrastructure will be available 100 percent of the time.

“If our air conditioning fails, we will refund money even if the customer’s server is unaffected,” Faulkner said.

Most recently, C I Host introduced a guarantee of “same day” setups for dedicated servers to meet “need it now” customer demand.

“ We take speed of delivery and avoiding downtime very seriously,” Faulkner said. “Our customers deserve the best.”

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 210,000 individual consumers and businesses in 190 countries worldwide.