LightWave Networks: Providing Fast, Reliable, and Personalized Hosting Solutions to Businesses Nationwide

Written by: Christine Preusler

Christine Preusler

Christine covers the hosting and technology space through in-depth feature articles and interviews with the biggest names in the industry. With more than a decade of experience managing and publishing print and digital publications, Christine leverages her communications skills to keep readers up to date on the latest web hosting services and innovations. Her goal is simple — to distill complex hosting concepts into clear yet thought-provoking narratives suitable for developers and tech newbies alike.

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Edited by: Lillian Castro

Lillian Castro

Lillian brings more than 30 years of editing and journalism experience to our team. She has written and edited for major news organizations, including The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the New York Times, and she previously served as an adjunct instructor at the University of Florida. Today, she edits HostingAdvice content for clarity, accuracy, and reader engagement.

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TL; DR: LightWave Networks is known for its high-quality dedicated servers, personalized colocation services, cloud backup services, and managed networking. The hosting company, which has datacenters in Boston, Dallas, Philadelphia, and New Jersey, enables customers across the nation to run their businesses on fast and reliable infrastructure. Through knowledgeable 24/7 support and a considerate approach to customization, LightWave Networks offers a distinct alternative to the more commoditized hosting solutions of so many providers.

The global public cloud market has flourished over the past decade, growing from a $15.08 billion valuation in 2010 to an estimated $257.9 billion in 2020.

But while big-name providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud have their advantages — particularly in scalability and convenience — they’re not the right fit for every company.

In addition to unpredictable pricing, the biggest disadvantage of these hyperscalers is their one-size-fits-all approach. Every business has its own unique needs, some more complex than others, making it difficult to find a fitting public cloud solution off the shelf.

A lack of options isn’t a problem with private clouds. Unlike public clouds, which third-party providers own, private cloud solutions are dedicated solely to an organization.

LightWave provides tailor-made hosting and colocation solutions.

Recognizing this, hosts like LightWave Networks help businesses stay connected with customized solutions tailored to their needs.

“We’re a small company, but we’ve attracted some relatively large customers strictly because of the way we deliver precise, customized solutions,” said David Capone, VP of Operations at LightWave. “We’re not going to say, ‘Here’s our oatmeal, chocolate chip, and sugar cookies — pick one.’ We are more about, ‘Here’s the flour, butter, and sugar. Tell us what you need us to make.’”

Between bespoke private cloud solutions, high-quality dedicated servers, personalized colocation services, cloud backups, and managed networking, LightWave can cater to a large customer base. The company, which has datacenters in Boston, Dallas, Philadelphia, and New Jersey, also boasts the fast and reliable infrastructure needed to serve businesses nationwide.

Providing Value Around Cloud-Centric Offerings

Before serving as VP of Operations at LightWave, David told us he worked in the dedicated server and colocation spaces for approximately 15 years. He then took on a contract CIO role with a large national company that depended heavily on AWS cloud.

“They did a lot with Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EZ2) instances, so I saw first-hand the budgets and cost structures associated with that. LightWave was partially founded around knowing some of those metrics in the market. I also have a lot of friends that work in various tech industries that provide a finger on the pulse of the tech infrastructure space.”

Upon leaving the contracting role, David was able to help steer LightWave in new directions. David said his experience reinforced his view of the public cloud: It serves as a good option for companies with applications that must scale in real-time and early-stage organizations with massive growth potential. But better options exist for companies with fixed needs.

Man with servers in datacenter

The company has a datacenter presence in Boston, Dallas, Philadelphia, and New Jersey.

“The company that I was with was spending a lot of money with AWS, but they didn’t need scaling features,” he said. “Their need for compute and storage was highly fixed. They weren’t at a point where they would need to add 100 new VMs every year to keep up with demand.”

David said he recognized that there would have been significant savings if the company transitioned from the public cloud to a dedicated private infrastructure solution that offered flexibility in delegating permissions and controlling resource access.

“That’s been our goal with LightWave — to drive value through customized solutions for businesses of all sizes rather than offering a list of servers on our site that you click to order on-demand,” he said.

Cloud Server and Colocation Services Tailored to the Customer

Today, LightWave offers a wide selection of products and services, from dedicated and cloud servers to colocation, managed services, and monitoring support.

“Colocation, dedicated servers, and our cloud infrastructure are our core offerings,” David explained. “The other ancillary services are typically bundled together with these three to deliver customers the best solution for their needs and therefore the best chance of success.”

LightWave’s ancillary services include managed networking to support dedicated servers, virtual, and cloud servers, as well as firewalls. The company offers both physical and virtual servers via its Boston and Dallas colocation facilities.

LightWave offers colocation via its Dallas and Boston facilities.

The company also provides blended Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) IP Transit, which manages how data is routed across the internet. Speed and bandwidth options are customizable based on business needs.

Of course, the LightWave team works with each customer to determine exactly what each customer requires. David said the company isn’t in the business of piling on services to charge customers more than is necessary — or accumulating as many customers as possible to pad the bottom line.

“We listen to your requirements, and we deliver the solution that you need through the best fit within our product portfolio, even if that means providing a more affordable solution than what you may have contacted us for.”

A Focus on Customer Service and Retention

LightWave knows that keeping customers happy is the best way to ensure they’ll stick around.

“Our goal is long-term customer retention,” David said. “We’re constantly staying on top of our customer base, monitoring and ensuring they’re receiving the best value.”

The alternative — depending on a revolving door of customers — is expensive and detrimental to building trust. Loyal customers also provide valuable feedback and help attract new customers.

“Building a business where you’re focused on delivering value to those existing customers may cost a little upfront, but it gets offset on the other end,” he said. “You’re not constantly spending marketing and advertising dollars to replace them when they decide to go a new route when they find a better price elsewhere.”

While LightWave’s guiding principles focus primarily on providing value via private cloud and dedicated server infrastructure, the company can also offer public cloud infrastructure with a customized twist.

“We talk to the customer; we understand what they need,” David told us. “If they’re a startup and they just need one VM instance, of course, we offer a public cloud infrastructure and can spin up that VM. And if they need another VM, we can spin one up and monitor growth to see whether a more value-oriented solution may come into play.”

New Raspberry Pi Colocation Solutions

LightWave recently began providing colocation and hosting services for Raspberry Pi, a small and affordable single-board computer. Though initially created for learning purposes, Raspberry Pi computers have become more powerful and are now used to provide hosting and run apps that are not compute-intensive.

Customers can either provide their own Raspberry Pi computer or rent one from LightWave at a low monthly price.

“Raspberry Pi colocation is the new craze for low-power devices deployed in the data center,” David said. “We are starting to roll out the service at all locations.”

Fitting with its overall value proposition, LightWave provides customizable hosting services for its Raspberry Pi service packages. Contact the company for a custom-designed configuration at a low monthly cost.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Christine covers the hosting and technology space through in-depth feature articles and interviews with the biggest names in the industry. With more than a decade of experience managing and publishing print and digital publications, Christine leverages her communications skills to keep readers up to date on the latest web hosting services and innovations. Her goal is simple — to distill complex hosting concepts into clear yet thought-provoking narratives suitable for developers and tech newbies alike.

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