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The Planet, the global leader in IT hosting, today announced that ContentActive (http://www.contentactive.com) has selected the company’s hosting platform. Headquartered in Houston, ContentActive develops an extensive array of Web site and communications solutions for its clients to support their online businesses. The company’s portfolio includes content management, mobile solutions, document management, hosting, and search engine marketing and optimization.
Co-founded by Chief Executive Officer Brian Gaubert and President and Chief Operating Officer Leisa Holland-Nelson, the two entrepreneurs joined forces in 2003. Their business has grown to a client list that numbers more than 400 companies in a broad arrange of industries, from non-profits, real estate and retail, to legal, healthcare, education and energy. The two proudly boast that their business has never lost an account, and the company continues to flourish, despite the current economic climate.
“We’ve experienced significant growth in the past six years, and any company on a growth trajectory understands how difficult it is to keep up with their IT infrastructure,” said Gaubert. “Our content management system is the basis for our service, so if clients decide they suddenly need more capabilities, we’ve got to have a company that provides the reliability and immediate scalability we require. The Planet delivers every time. We evaluated a number of providers, including Rackspace, and we selected The Planet based on serviceability, pricing, and the quality of its data centers and network. It was definitely the right choice.”
“In today’s economy, companies are faced with even greater challenges in managing their IT infrastructure,” said Steve Kahan, vice president of marketing and product management for The Planet. “From the simplest to the most complex, The Planet provides the power to choose with capabilities from colocation and managed hosting, to dedicated servers that can be equipped with the value-added services many customers now require.”
ContentActive Snapshot
Brian Gaubert and Leisa Holland-Nelson provide a perfect blend of talent: he, the technology guru, and she, the marketing maven. When the two decided to buy the firm they were working for, they jumped right into how best to serve their existing – and burgeoning – clientele. They realized their roster of 150 companies would continue to need services, and they set about to establish a new identity with an even broader set of customers.
“At that time, we were a team of 3-1/2,” says Holland-Nelson, “working primarily with non-profit organizations. As we evaluated new opportunities, we realized that more than half our business was being done through creative agencies,” she says. “Graphic design companies, ad agencies and public relations firms were calling on us for services. Real Web capabilities were beginning to take shape, and it was just before search engine optimization (SEO) began to take root. Today it’s all about building SEO since virtually every company operates around-the-clock with Web sites that are their face to the world. We’ve been consistently ahead of the market.
“We don’t have a sales team,” she remarks. “While I’m the front person and typically have the first appointment, every client is touched by every member of our 17-person team during an engagement. Most of our business comes through community relationships, word of mouth, referrals or sponsorships we create. Our clients truly become good friends, and in the process we enable them with capabilities that help to grow their businesses.”
Gaubert the technologist clearly loves his work, and he speaks the technology language of business when he talks about clients.
“One of our international oil and gas clients challenged us with developing a new payment system to accommodate multiple currencies, sites and languages,” he says. “We developed a solution that automatically converts currency on the fly, associating payments through gateways for both domestic and international customers. They can pay with Euros or American dollars, and the system we designed alleviates credit card issues.
“What makes the work exciting is that our clients have high expectations,” notes Gaubert. “We provide an end-to-end solution, from development and deployment, to hosting and ongoing maintenance, so it’s got to be right, and the experience has got to be phenomenal. For example, a high-profile commercial real estate firm had an existing technology that provided their brokers with data, but what they had was coming from too many databases. In that business, the stakes are high, and information moves fast. Our team built a system so they can now get reliable, current information out to clients and other brokers quickly. Their livelihoods are based on the data, so we’ve made a tremendous difference for them. That’s the nature of our business, and it’s how our company operates.”
To hear first-hand about ContentActive, visit The Planet Web site and watch a new video featuring its co-founders Brian Gaubert and Leisa Holland-Nelson: http://www.theplanet.com/videos/#contentactive.com.
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