Verio
Encyclopedia
Verio is a global web hosting provider headquartered in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. Incorporated in 1996 in Denver, Colorado
Denver, Colorado
The City and County of Denver is the capital and the most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Denver is a consolidated city-county, located in the South Platte River Valley on the western edge of the High Plains just east of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains...

, it is currently a wholly owned subsidiary of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone
, commonly known as NTT, is a Japanese telecommunications company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. Ranked the 31st in Fortune Global 500, NTT is the largest telecommunications company in Asia, and the second-largest in the world in terms of revenue....

 (NTT) Communications, who acquired the company in 2000. Verio was formed from a consolidation of over 200 smaller Internet service provider
Internet service provider
An Internet service provider is a company that provides access to the Internet. Access ISPs directly connect customers to the Internet using copper wires, wireless or fiber-optic connections. Hosting ISPs lease server space for smaller businesses and host other people servers...

s (ISPs).

Through its ViaVerio Partner Program, Verio provides tools and support to companies such as Precision Pros, Accrisoft, Riser Media, Net-Flow, Banker's Academy
Banker's Academy
Banker’s Academy is a multimedia education and communication consulting firm headquartered in New York City, with an advanced design center located just outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in Fort Washington. The consulting company specializes in educational products and services for the banking...

, SpinWeb and Web Hosting Solutions.

History

Verio was founded by Mark D. Johnson, Darin Brannan and Justin Jaschke
Justin Jaschke
Justin Lanioux Jaschke is the founder and former chief executive officer of Verio, one of the world's largest domain hosting companies.-Early life:...

 in 1996 with a mission of becoming the largest ISP/Hosting company for the SMB/Mid Market business segment through a national infrastructure supported by local technical sales and servicing capabilities from acquired ISP/Hosting companies. Originally named World Net Access, Verio raised substantial funds ($1.1B) with which to purchase ISPs around the United States and Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

. It was funded by the principal founders, private investors, NTT, and institutional investors in a private placement
Private placement
Private placement is a funding round of securities which are sold without an initial public offering, usually to a small number of chosen private investors...

. The concept was to roll up
Rollup
A Rollup is a technique used by investors where multiple small companies in the same market are acquired and merged. The principal aim of a rollup is to reduce costs through economies of scale. Rollups also have the effect of increasing the valuation multiples the business can command as it...

 small ISPs into one large national ISP and achieve economies of scale
Economies of scale
Economies of scale, in microeconomics, refers to the cost advantages that an enterprise obtains due to expansion. There are factors that cause a producer’s average cost per unit to fall as the scale of output is increased. "Economies of scale" is a long run concept and refers to reductions in unit...

.

By the year 2000, Verio had purchased almost fifty small ISPs, most in the U.S. but some in Europe. During this time Verio went public on the NASDAQ
NASDAQ
The NASDAQ Stock Market, also known as the NASDAQ, is an American stock exchange. "NASDAQ" originally stood for "National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations". It is the second-largest stock exchange by market capitalization in the world, after the New York Stock Exchange. As of...

, trading under the symbol VRIO. In early 2000 Verio was sold to NTT at a per-share price of over $60, a total cost slightly exceeding $5 billion. Because NTT was a 53% Japanese government-owned company, foreigners were not allowed to own NTT stock, according to Japanese law at the time, and therefore the buy-out was a 100% cash deal. The United States Congress held hearings over the transaction to ensure it did not violate national security concerns. The Justice Department
United States Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice , is the United States federal executive department responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice, equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries.The Department is led by the Attorney General, who is nominated...

 and the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...

 expressed concern that the Japanese government, which owned 53 percent of NTT at the time, could gain access to classified information should the U.S. government use Verio's network to tap Internet communications during an investigation. To placate these concerns, NTT agreed to form a separate division within the company staffed only by U.S. citizens to handle any work in support of government investigations. As a result, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States
Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States is an inter-agency committee of the United States Government that reviews the national security implications of foreign investments in U.S. companies or operations. Chaired by the Secretary of the Treasury, CFIUS includes representatives...

 recommended that President Clinton allow the $5.5 billion purchase to proceed. The deal also prompted scrutiny of Japan's openness to foreign telecom competitors.

Shortly after the announced deal, the NASDAQ stock market crashed in the spring of 2000 in the dot-com bubble
Dot-com bubble
The dot-com bubble was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1995–2000 during which stock markets in industrialized nations saw their equity value rise rapidly from growth in the more...

 burst. The agreed price of around $60 remained and NTT and Verio completed the transaction by the fall of 2000. On March 9th, 1998 Verio's President Mark D. Johnson suffered a heart attack and died while on a business trip.

Over the course of the next few years Verio abandoned the lower revenue consumer internet access market and focused primarily on the more lucrative business to business web hosting market. Much of the original infrastructure and employees it had purchased were disbanded or consolidated into a few large centralized data centers.

Verio continues to operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of NTT Communications.

At the end of 2005, the backbone and some dedicated hosting centers moved to NTT America, with the web hosting business staying with Verio. At the same time, the European arm, Verio Europe, was moved in its entirety to NTT Europe. In October 2006 Verio Europe was re-named NTT Europe Online
NTT Europe Online
NTT Europe announced on January 17, 2011 that it will merge NTT Europe Online, its managed hosting subsidiary, into the company as another step towards becoming an ICT service provider...

.

Some of the ISPs purchased by Verio

Verio was initially built on a business model known as a "rollup
Rollup
A Rollup is a technique used by investors where multiple small companies in the same market are acquired and merged. The principal aim of a rollup is to reduce costs through economies of scale. Rollups also have the effect of increasing the valuation multiples the business can command as it...

", composed entirely of smaller companies operating under the Verio brand-name. By the year 2000, Verio had purchased almost fifty small ISPs, most in the U.S. but some in Europe, ranging in price from under a million dollars (USD) to over 100 million dollars per ISP. These companies were often mature and well known brand names in their local markets, more well known than Verio, and often continued to operate with a great deal of local autonomy even after purchase by Verio. Some of the ISPs purchased by Verio were leading pioneers in the ISP industry (Digital Nation), representing the first wave of commercial ISP access in local markets around the US and Europe. Some
of these companies included:
  • Access One (accessone.com) Western Washington
  • AimNet (aimnet.com) Santa Clara, California
  • ATMNet
    ATMNet
    ATMnet was a regional Internet Service Provider located in San Diego, California, United States, that began business in 1994, until its purchase by Verio in the late 1990s as part of a national roll-up of regional ISPs. ATMnet was originally an operating unit of Visicom Laboratories Incorporated ...

     (atmnet.net) San Diego, California
  • Best Internet Communications, Mountain View, California
  • Branch Net (branch.net, branch.com) Ann Arbor, Michigan
  • CCNet (ccnet.com) Walnut Creek, California
  • ClarkNet (clark.net, clarknet.net), Columbia, Maryland
  • Communique (cmq.net) Gulf South
  • Compute Intensive, Inc.
  • CompuTech (Spokane)
  • Computing Engineers, Inc. (dba WorldWide Access
    WorldWide Access
    WorldWide Access, also known as WWA, was an Internet Service Provider based in Chicago, Illinois. It was acquired by Verio in 1998. WorldWide Access was actually a service mark of the company, which was called Computing Engineers, Inc.: "...although no one but the lawyers called us...

    ) (wwa.com, wwa.net), Chicago, Illinois
  • Digital Nation (Owner - Bruce Waldack)(dn.net) Alexandria, Virginia
  • Florida Internet (flinet.com) South Florida
  • Global Enterprise Services (ges.net, ges.com, jvnc.net) New Jersey
  • Global Internet Network Services (globalinternet.com), formerly MidNet (mid.net) Lincoln, Nebraska
  • Hiway Technologies (hiway.com/.net, hway.com/.net, rapidsite.com/.net) Boca Raton, Florida
  • Internet Engineering Associates, Inc.
  • Internet Now, Inc. (inetnow.net) Atlanta, Georgia
  • Internet Servers, Inc. (iserver.net, iserver.com, secure.net) Orem, Utah
  • Long Island Internet (li.net) Long Island, New York
  • MagicNet (magicnet.net) Orlando, Florida
  • Monumental Network Services, (monumental.com/.net, mns.com/.net, mnsinc.com/.net) Chantilly, Virginia
  • National Knowledge Network (NKN) (nkn.net, nkn.com, nkn.edu) Dallas, Texas
  • Network Intensive (ni.net, compute.com) Irvine, California
  • New York Net (new-york.net) New York City
  • Northwest Network Services (NorthWestNet) (nwnet.net) Bellevue/Seattle, Washington
  • NS Net (ns.net) Sacramento, California
  • OnRamp (onramp.net) Dallas, Texas
  • Pacific Rim (pacificrim.com, pacificrim.net) Bellingham, Washington
  • PacketWorks (packet.net) Tampa Bay, Florida
  • Pioneer Global (pioneerglobal.com, pn.net, wing.net) New England
  • PrepNet (prep.net, prepnet.net, prepnet.com) Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
  • QualNet/IAGNet (qual.net, qualnet.net, iagnet.net, cic.net, cyberdrive.net, harborcom.com) Cleveland, Ohio
  • RAINet (rain.net, rain.com) Oregon
  • RustNet (rust.net) Michigan
  • ServiceTech (servtech.com) New York City
  • SesquiNet (sesqui.net) Houston, Texas
  • SigNet (sig.net) Austin, Texas
  • SmartConnect (smartconnect.net) McLean, Virginia
  • Spacelab (spacelab.net, mxol.com) New York City
  • Starnet (starnet.net) St. Louis, Missouri
  • Structured (structured.net, sns-access.com) Oregon
  • Surf Networks (surfnetwork.net, p3.net, dynanet.net) Philadelphia
  • Tab Net (tab.net, tabnet.net, criticalpath.net, cp.net) Napa Valley, California
  • TerraNet (terra.net, terranet.net, terranet.com) New England
  • Web Communications (webcom.com) Santa Cruz, California
  • West Coast Online (wco.com) Rohnert Park, California
  • WWW-Service, Regensburg (Germany)

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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