Hostway Corporation, provider of cloud hosting, managed hosting and hybrid hosting, has appointed Robert Boles – a 30-year technology industry veteran – to the post of Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Boles succeeds John Martis, who is the new Chief Operating Officer (COO) and will work with Boles to broaden the company’s Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solutions and delivery models.
Boles most recently served as Senior Vice President of IT Infrastructure Services for Cognizant Technology Solutions, an $8+ billion provider of global IT and business process outsourcing services where he drove dramatic growth by leading a move into the data center and cloud hosting services space. Hostway plans to leverage Boles’ previous experiences to bring new solutions to the small and mid-sized businesses that Hostway serves.
Boles’ career has focused on network, managed and IT infrastructure services. In addition to Cognizant, his background includes serving as Chief Operating Officer at Pegasus Solutions; and founding and leading a managed services company called AimNet Solutions that served the SMB market and was acquired by Cognizant in 2006. He also worked in various senior leadership capacities at IBM Global Network Services, and its successor, AT&T Global Network Services.
Acquisition of Hostway
The executive changes and expanded roadmap mark the first public indication of the company’s revised strategic direction since the acquisition of Hostway by private investment firm Littlejohn & Co, LLC, last December. Littlejohn invested in Hostway because of the burgeoning market demand for managed cloud hosting solutions and the company’s 500,000+-customer footprint in the hosted technology market.
“Hosting and cloud services are becoming increasingly critical to SMBs, and Hostway has established a solid foothold in the space,” said Robert Boles. “The company is ideally positioned to take advantage of the ongoing move to consuming IT as a service, and we’re going to do that by offering bundled IaaS/solution packages that help SMBs streamline the sourcing process, consolidate billing, and get their own solutions to market faster.”
That process will include expanding on the company’s current hosted and cloud hosting services through both internal product development and partnerships with best-of-breed solution providers. One of the first initiatives – to be announced at the Parallels Summit 2014 that opens in New Orleans on February 24 – involves launching a private-label, turnkey cloud reseller platform targeting value-added resellers, system integrators, telcos and other organizations that work with SMBs.
