Wowrack Provides Hassle-Free Hybrid Hosting Services and Recovery Solutions for SMBs and Enterprises

TL; DR: Wowrack offers hosting services that range from private and hybrid cloud infrastructure to colocation and disaster recovery solutions. The company provides robust security compliance and cost-saving strategies to help clients — from small businesses to enterprises — stay ahead of the competition. Wowrack also works with companies from design to implementation and builds custom infrastructure solutions to fit specific needs.

Garrett Gunderson opened B&R Flooring with a mission to provide the highest level of attention, service, and expertise to commercial and residential clients.

When it began exploring options to improve its IT infrastructure after its on-prem server crashed, B&R wanted to partner with a company that shared its customer service values. Garrett, the company’s owner and sole IT administrator, also wanted to return his focus to managing the growing business instead of its data.

B&R contacted Wowrack, a comprehensive cloud hosting company, after hearing about the experiences of other satisfied customers. Garrett described the Wowrack sales and implementation process as painless.

“They never tried to sell me anything I didn’t need, unlike other providers, and were with me 100% during the process,” Garrett said in a testimonial.

Erward (Ed) Osckar launched Wowrack in 2001 with his college friend, Jimmy Pandra. What started as a small business in an apartment bedroom has steadily grown into a company that employs 160 people in nine datacenters around the world.

“It started with us hooking up seven computers in Jimmy’s bedroom, and we got cPanel and began to build and host websites,” Ed said. “We were in the apartment for about four months and grew to about 45 servers. Eventually, we ran out of power.”

Today, Wowrack has expanded its services to include security compliance, disaster recovery and backup, hybrid cloud, and other managed services companies need. In that time, the tech industry has seen massive changes in storage solutions, and Wowrack has weathered all of them, expanding year over year.

The most significant change in the hosting industry has been increased access to simplified public cloud storage. However, many of those options aren’t cost-effective for companies that require a lot of space. Wowrack works to build customized infrastructure solutions for clients whose enterprises are in the growth or operational stages.

Each company has unique needs and is on a different timeline, so one size software or infrastructure solutions doesn’t fit all. Wowrack partners with companies and saves them money and time by building customized solutions.

When Wowrack launched in 2001, it worked with anyone who needed a website. The web was an entirely different place, and most users didn’t feel comfortable navigating it alone, which is where Wowrack stepped in.

“Before 2010, a lot of our customers were technology companies,” Ed said. “At one point, they were up to 75% of our customer base. At its peak, we were serving one-third of the tech startups in the Seattle area.”

And though Wowrack still serves plenty of startups and SMBs in the tech space, it also works with enterprise companies, including Cisco and Microsoft. Many startups initially choose public cloud solutions to mitigate costs. However, forward-thinking companies often turn to hybrid hosting services to maintain the highest levels of security while staying under budget.

Although public cloud options are easy to use, they aren’t the safest or the most cost-effective when using more than a small amount of storage. Many public cloud companies don’t have an extensive IT department, and they don’t develop strategies to fit the needs of their clients. That is where Wowrack differentiates itself.

Wowrack’s excellent customer service and in-depth expertise in the industry makes it easy for startups, SMBs, and enterprise customers to get the right help. The company has grown significantly since 2001, and it has infrastructure that can empower entrepreneurs around the world.

“We have a presence in North America and Asia, running out of nine facilities. We run and own our own data facilities,” Ed said. “Our core business now is a hybrid cloud solution that focuses on fully managed private cloud infrastructure solutions for clients.”

With all the changes that have taken place in tech, Wowrack has pivoted toward infrastructure-as-a-service rather than the original web hosting product solution. When Wowrack began in the early days of web hosting, producing easy-to-use, cost-effective web hosting was all that a company needed to do to stay competitive.

However, today’s market is flooded with options, so Wowrack offers a unique, fully customized managed service. Companies no longer need to spend a large portion of their budget building out an IT department because Wowrack professionals can step in and offer expertise. And the company has provided hosting and storage solutions since 2001, so few companies have such a well-established reputation, Ed said.

“We provide design, implementation, and operations services for our clients’ infrastructure,” Ed said. “That’s not just in our nine datacenters, but it stretches to the public cloud and their on-premise infrastructure. We maintain, operate, and provide infrastructure solutions for our clients.”

Smaller companies often don’t pursue managed services because they think the costs will be too high for their tighter budgets. They may not realize how much time they can save and how quickly that translates into ROI. Public cloud hosting options may look like a deal but aren’t providing the services they need.

Companies can keep a lean budget with Wowrack while remaining competitive. The web has become inundated with storage solutions and software for almost every problem, but what isn’t readily available are experts that offer a fully scalable, all-in-one infrastructure solution, said Ed.

Wowrack aims to offer flexible solutions that can scale with growing companies. Public cloud storage may be part of a cost-effective infrastructure solution, but it shouldn’t be the only solution. Physical servers can provide more safety, higher reliability, and lower costs. A combination of physical servers with cloud-hosted options encourages flexibility and scalability.

As companies grow and begin to consider security, compliance, and data recovery, hybrid cloud hosting options can offer the best value, Ed said. Wowrack works with companies in the healthcare, legal, and financial fields and provides solutions that meet HIPAA regulations.

“We can help with hosting, but we can also take them through the entire journey from designing what they need, working with their budget, and operating their hybrid cloud solution. We can do it all under one umbrella,” Ed said.

Instead of using one solution for storage and another for data recovery, Wowrack offers both in one place, and it does the heavy lifting for its customers.

One thing that has changed since 2001 is that companies often find it more difficult to receive excellent customer service from a hosting company. The reviews on Wowrack make it clear that its customer-centric approach has played a vital role in its success.

Ed said that customers understand that Wowrack isn’t trying to sell them the most expensive solution and instead helps them build the right data management strategy to keep their businesses growing.