| Posted by GregX59, 06-02-2005, 10:29 AM | | HostingLite (Hiya corp) has just been sold to Ambient Solutions. I've been happy with HostingLite, and I'm concerned about the change.
Anyone have any thoughts on this?
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| Posted by Lubby, 06-02-2005, 10:32 AM | | Can you post a pressrelease or any other info? That's pretty big news to there clients.
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| Posted by GregX59, 06-02-2005, 11:01 AM | | It's long, that's why I didn't post it. But here it is in it's entirety...
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Personal note from Fred Tawil:
Three years ago, HiyaCorp Networks opened it’s online doors for business. What started out as a hobby has quickly become an online innovator. I am so proud and extremely humbled to look at what HiyaCorp has become today. My dream has finally become a reality. However, it is not one I wish to partake in. I feel that I have taken HiyaCorp as far as I possibly can. It's time for me to step aside and allow someone else to continue the growth of the company. It’s time for me to follow a different path. So, it is with great joy, sadness and humility that I would like to announce the sale of HiyaCorp Networks to Ambient Solutions Ltd.
I will remain as a consultant for KG and his team for as long as they need me to allow for the smoothest transition possible.
I'd like to publicly congratulate Ambient Solutions Ltd, for their purchase of HiyaCorp Networks and extend a warm welcome to the Ambient Solution team, as they integrate into the HiyaCorp community.
Who is Ambient Solutions?
Ambient Solutions first began its services in 1998 trading under CXI. Its primary objectives then were to provide web based development integrated with I.T based solutions for small businesses and individuals. Today our objects still remain the same yet our portfolio of services we offer have increased ten fold due to customer demand and support and we have become a global brand name for many. We now offer an array of dedicated unparalleled services and unlike any other company in our sector offer a full dedicated suite. Therefore we don’t just offer domain registrations or just hosting services but a full suit to getting your presence online and marketed! We have won several awards throughout the years including one by CORE and have always been rated five star ratings for our services, pricing and quality of service year after year.
Today we have a global client list that spans from the USA to Australia and each client is treated with the utmost professional service we can offer and we make sure that our highest degree of customer support remains with them throughout their period with us
What will Ambient Solutions offer to HiyaCorp Clients and why them?
Ambient Solutions decided to take a keen interest in HiyaCorp over a month ago as it saw potential to expand the company and provide new frontiers for it. The buyout of HiyaCorp for us will allow us to strategically get a foothold within the US market and also provide an excellent array of services not brought to you before. As Ambient Solutions owns its own datacenter suite, infrastructure and equipment within the USA, this allows us to be far more flexible with our clients and offer them tailor made services as well. At the moment we offer an array of dedicated services to Empower the Web with for all our clients and this will be available to all US clients later this summer. Also we will be offering NITS™ (New Innovative Technology Services) in hosting, email and webmail of which some have never implemented the way we are going to implement them in the USA.
We will therefore offer more professional services, cost effective costs and at the same time keep our customer service key as we have always done.
Will the name be changing?
No. Why would Ambient Solutions lost the ability to answer all e-mails by starting off with “Hiya®”. HiyaCorp has built an excellent name for itself throughout the webhosting community. HiyaCorp has been providing affordable webhosting for the past three years and will continue to do so under the HiyaCorp brand.
Will I experience any downtime because of this acquisition? Will my server be moved?
No. We will not be making any significant changes due to the acquisition. We have no intentions of moving the customer servers. We see no need to migrate customers off perfectly good servers.
Will my support options be changed?
Nope. Support will remain the same. We will offer 24x7 support through our help desk and via live support. We will also continue to offer sales and emergency support via telephone. HiyaSupport will continue operations as normal. HiyaForums.com, the community run support forum, will also continue to function as normal.
What will change with respect to billing?
1. All new credit card charges will appear as Ambient Solutions Ltd.
2. Due to the security hazards or transferring payment details, we are requesting that all clients re-enter there payment details. This will affect all clients, regardless if you use PayPal or Credit Card. Our new Credit Card processor is WorldPay. Our paypal payment address has also changed. If you are an existing Paypal subscription customer, you will have noticed that your subscription was cancelled in the last 24-hours.
You will be issued a new invoice when your web hosting is due for renewal and you can create a new Paypal subscription/re-enter your credit card details at that time.
Will my pricing change?
We will not increase your costs. We will honor the costs that you purchased the hosting packages at, regardless if we decide to change the costs in the future.
What will be different?
Ambient Solutions Ltd has agreed that it will keep intact the services already running within HiyaCorp and that for the time being there will be no changes in service or quality of service. We will be carrying out a survey to see what you as the client would like to see as bring from our portfolio in the next coming months.
If Fred starts another company, can I move to his company?
Fred has signed a non-compete agreement with us. This will not allow Fred to re-enter the Webhosting field. One of the reasons we purchased HiyaCorp was because of their stellar reputation and Fred and his team are an integral part of that. We will earn your trust by continuing to provide the excellent support you are accustomed to.
Ambient Solution Executives
CEO KG
KG has a Beng in Computer Science and Engineering from University of London. He has worked for NEC Europe where he implemented his own Web servers, and DNS servers into the 3G Mobile Network and was the first in the UK to have his setup work and be viewed on the 3G Mobile Handsets. He was also the IT manager at NEC where he overlooked operations in the early days of NEC3G. Prior to this KG had his own company CXI where he sold custom built computer systems and hardware to corporate companies in the financial sector which he later sold. He then founded in 1999 Ambient Solutions Ltd of which he is currently the CEO of. Mr. Ghedia has also been on the public TV networks holding discussions on IT infrastructure in the UK and also worked with many government agencies where he has been able to provide his services through Ambient Solutions Ltd. He also owns Ambient Connections a IT firm which he co-founded.
CTO Elmer Tolentino
Civil Engineering graduate of 1998, turned IT specialist during the dot com days, still manages to maintain his technical edge after 7 years in this industry. Among the certifications attained during the years are MSCE, CCA, and CCNA. His experience covers Microsoft, Citrix, Cisco, and Linux. He has worked for Epson and Canon Communications. He has also helped numerous other companies setup their office network. He currently is an IT Manager at a Software Engineering company in Irvine, CA and also the CTO of Ambient Solutions Ltd where he overlooks all operations and has done so for the past three years. He has been key to Ambient Solutions IT infrastructure development and is on going on upgrading and maintaining all systems within the USA.
CFO James Flint
James has worked for several small accounting firms within the UK and now works for Ambient Solutions Ltd. His experience in accounting methods and constant drive to implement it within technology has greatly helped Ambient Solutions further its self. He is in charge of all financial matters within Ambient Solutions and leads a group to make sure all clients are billed fairly yet at the same time that all accounts are in good standing order.
Customer Service Manager Sumeet Sagoo
Sumeet Sagoo has a 2003 graduate BSc in Business Management from Queen Mary London University and within a year became in charge of customer services. Her skills are second to none and her sharp eye on customer services has enabled Ambient Solutions to have one of the best customer service records within our industry. She has appeared in several small magazines within the UK service industry and she continues to work to better our services.
Support Manager Photon
Ambient Solutions Photon Pvt Ltd is our sister support team who have been providing support for our UK clients for over 3 years and with the convergence of HiyaCorp we will be making sure both support teams work together to provide an unrivaled service.
Sales Manager: Rakesh Shah
Mr. Shah has been in charge of all sales within Ambient Solutions and with our ever growing growth Mr. Shah has kept marketing as key within Ambient Solutions and has worked closely with KG over the past few years to make Ambient Solutions a household brand name within the UK web industry and his skills in making sure marketing and customer services work in hand have shown great results.
Standby Support Manager: Darryl Kirk
External Accounts Manager: Anup Bhamm
Word from the KG, CEO Ambient Solutions:
It takes me great pleasure to announce the agreement made with Fredrick Tawil on the purchase of HiyaCorp and its affiliated companies. Mr. Tawil has done a great deal in setting up what seems to be a client focused company with customer service as a key role. I admire his dedication and efforts he has placed in over the years and also at this time to realize that for him to see his company further itself and take the next step it would require a greater outside external influence. Mr. Tawil will still play a key roll over the next few months as the transition is made and we hope will be there to see his company grow from strength to strength. We wish him all the best in his new job and hope that he is successful as ever. I would like to point out that it is you the clients who have proved loyal that have made HiyaCorp what it is today. Without loyal clients no company can ever exist. My aim is to bring HiyaCorp and its clients new services and at the same time make it into a local and global leader within the USA. I unlike many CEOs of today am very hands on and will be here to listen to all your questions. I will do my best to personally answer any questions you may have, as I always feel that clients want to hear from the ‘man’ in charge and not his PR. We have an exciting road ahead of us now and I hope all of you the very best and that you continue to enjoy the services provided by us.
Warm Regards,
KG
CEO
Ambient Solutions Ltd
Last edited by Alex; 07-03-2009 at 02:22 PM.
Reason: note
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| Posted by Lubby, 06-02-2005, 11:29 AM | | Other then the spelling and gramatical mistakes that was a very informative press release and congrats to all those involved.
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| Posted by ldcdc, 06-02-2005, 11:48 AM | | A key statement that brings hope that things will be properly handled.
Congratulations Fred for the sale!
Last edited by SoftWareRevue; 12-05-2007 at 06:54 PM.
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| Posted by Lubby, 06-02-2005, 11:49 AM | | There were a few recent acquisitions of other companies that could have been helped by having that setup.
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| Posted by Hamtramck Rick, 06-02-2005, 12:32 PM | | I'm always more cynical of such purchases.
Fred Tawil wrote:
>I will remain as a consultant for M. G. and his team for as long as they need me to allow for the smoothest transition possible.
That is what they always say.
Usually, when one company buys anothers customers there is a period of turbulance, but the question is always how much turbulance?
You might want to estimate how many clients does this affect, and then ask the buying company what are they doing to handle the extra load. Take them up on their offer and ask as many piercing questions as you can think of.
Last edited by SoftWareRevue; 12-05-2007 at 06:54 PM.
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| Posted by WireNine, 06-02-2005, 01:34 PM | | Lets hope this turns out better then it usually does for some companies. Best of luck to Fred Tawil!
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| Posted by niyogi, 06-02-2005, 06:43 PM | | Good luck to Ambient - good luck to HiyaCorp customers as well.
Roj
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| Posted by catfished, 06-02-2005, 08:20 PM | | Well I'm sure it'll turn out a lot better that the AH fiasco.
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| Posted by BigBison, 06-02-2005, 09:57 PM | | Congratulations to all parties, here's to a smooth transition!
How do you know? What indications were there that the AH acquisition by dotCanada would be anything but smooth? To what would you attribute the ensuing fiasco? I'm utterly incapable of comprehending how that one turned out sour.
Now, the Dinix fiasco -- there's a train wreck that came as no surprise, given the acquiring company's track record. But how to account for a highly reputable company 'dropping the baton' in the transition?
I think AH-Tina and Aussie Bob should collaborate as a tag-team consulting duo for companies in Ambient Solutions' position. There's some experience of what can work out and what can go wrong from two insiders whose companies succeeded largely due to an image created by a strong personality. The results of subsequent acquisition cover the full spectrum.
Fred has accomplished the same thing with HiyaCorp, if I were in the position of acquiring that company I would certainly do my homework beforehand on how to keep the ball rolling. That kind of information isn't easy to come by, and success in such a situation is far from a sure thing.
Right, dotCanada?
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| Posted by catfished, 06-02-2005, 11:14 PM | | You're right BigBison, I should have said that I hope it will turn out a lot better than the AH fiasco.
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| Posted by FredTT, 06-04-2005, 01:02 AM | | Hiya Everyone,
Thanks for the nice comments. This sale came after a month of collaberation between K and myself. We spoke about all of our options and how everything was handled. I intoduced them to the HiyaCorp way to make sure everything remains run the way it always has been.
I have given Ambient Solutions my assurance that I will remain as a consultant for a minimum of 60-90 days. I started this company from the ground up and I want to make sure it continues running smooth and continues to grow.
So far, everything has been going smooth. Most of our clients (and myself) are eager to see what new changes Ambient Solutions is going to bring.
As for me, looks like I need to change my WHT username and stop using the word "Hiya" to start off all my posts.
~Fred T
Last edited by Alex; 07-03-2009 at 02:22 PM.
Reason: Note
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| Posted by PowerDot, 06-04-2005, 11:35 AM | | You say this nice Fred and good luck!
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| Posted by Aussie Bob, 06-04-2005, 11:49 AM | | lol, now there's a scarey thought.
Strong personality will only get you so far in this business. You need to back that up with a great customer experience, and that's what gets you further along the track.
But true, if someone is purchasing a company when the previous owner was very hands on, and visible, then it makes good sense if the previous owner can stay on through a transitional period of a month or 2.
For me that lead to staying on with httpme beyond that initial transitional period, and that works for me, our lifestyle, and the new httpme owner.
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| Posted by AussieHosts, 06-04-2005, 09:46 PM | | Congratulations on the sale Fred.
I'm lucky. We've sold Aussie Hosts, but we still run a forum for "Aussie Hosts", so I'll keep mine.
Gary
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| Posted by FredTT, 06-05-2005, 02:09 AM | | I'll probably just end up changing my name to HiyaFred or FredT or something like that.
Fred T
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| Posted by Tina J, 06-12-2005, 08:38 AM | | I laughed out loud!
I'd take him for a drink, but I don't think a business collaboration is desirable for either of us at this time.
--Tina
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| Posted by Roy@ENHOST, 06-12-2005, 11:40 AM | | Therefore I suggest everyone use the new AOL Spellchecker before doing any press releases in the future.
http://www.anothersite.co.uk/gallery...8083141-35.jpg
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| Posted by asdkfljasa, 10-04-2005, 12:57 AM | | I'm not sure if anyone has sufferred from HiyaCorp being sold. Obviously I did. It's been some time already. But I think my experience with hiyacorp may help other members here to make a more informed decision.
I heard about HiyaCorp from this community. And it seemed that their service and price were very nice. So I signed up a one year shared plan with HiyaCorp. Within the first month, there were some issues, but worked out with them. And I thought maybe everything would be OK eventually. Because my reseller account with another company was going to expire soon, so I quickly signed up another reseller account with HiyaCorp and transferred my accounts over. I did have some doubts about HiyaCorp based on the issues with the first shared plan. But I was in a rush to find a new service provider, so I kept my fingers crossed and hoped everything would work out fine. But, I was wrong.
I need to clarify first that my sites were not resource intensive. Some were in fact new setups, only a handful of clicks per day. But from time to time, the MySQL server went silent. As my sites were running some open source forum based on php and mysql, once MySQL was gone, the whole site was gone. I had to contact the support to turn the MySQL back on. Every time I was promised that this would never happen again. And every time I was disappointed. It happened almost on a daily basis and sometimes even a few times within the day. I was busy promoting the sites. However, the disruption turned new visitors away. I was frustrated. Then they moved me to another server and promised that everything would be fine. Well, at that time, I was already exhaused monitoring the sites and contacting their support to turn the sites back on, I more or less gave up on the sites already. Anyway, I tried out the new server and this time even a bigger issue occured. I couldn't access the control panel! I contacted them a few times. They kept on saying they could access from their side and offered no solution to this.
As I was also hosting a few of my customers' sites on that account, some of them were already complaining about the disruptions. So I had to find an alternative. Then I approached PowerVPS and after a few rounds of email conversation, I was quite happy with their response time and obvious they had the customers' interest in mind. So I signed up with them and transferred my accounts over. After some time, I was absolutely happy with their service and upgraded to a higher end plan. One of the accounts couldn't access the cpanel after the upgrade. However, their support was experienced enough to advise me it was because the cpanel skin previously chosen was not installed on the new server and quickly helped me corrected it.
By the way, I used some website monitoring applications to monitor the uptime of my sites. While with HiyaCorp, I received downtime alerts frequently (so it was not only mysql, http was down also). After the switch, none, and the monthly report always showed 100% uptime.
My story with HiyaCorp didn't end there. Their service was obviously not acceptable, so I asked for a refund. My shared plan and reseller plan were both paid 12 months. But only 1 month had elapsed by then. I wrote to them, with those site monitoring reports attached. First they asked me to give them another chance. Well, I had had enough of that crap, and I had already signed up with powervps, so, no way. Later on they said they would pass the issue to their management to decide and asked me to wait. After a long wait, (well, I wasn't actually waiting. I felt that it was impossible for them to give the money back to me, since they were so mean. I just wanted an explanation), they said sorry, no refund would be given, because their services were "not being down for a period which we think is not acceptable" (well, obviously they had really high tolerance level there), and "There was only MYSQL downtime and not HTTP"(Did I not pay for the MySQL service? The site monitoring reports said nothing about the HTTP downtime?). They also said that "so far 9/10 customers are happy with our service". What about the rest 1/10? Are they not your customers? Their money are not money? Sign...
This happened a few months ago. I had been busy ever since, so I totally forgot about it. Now I have some free time, so I think I could share it with the community here. I know running a hosting business is not easy. It's very competitive and it's impossible to satisfy every single customers. Well, if you cannot satisfy them with your service, you can at least make them happay by giving back their money and let them find their satisfaction elsewhere. You don't keep their money and say, "sorry, live with it, because you belong to the 1/10 minority". I know reputation is very important to a business, but, hey, sorry, I'm just telling the truth. If this post happens to catch the attention of HiyaCorp people, and if, by any chance, you want to contact me and refund me the money, well, don't bother, it's not that much money, i can live without it. and also I don't want to waste additional time on this matter. If you do feel sorry and want to make it up, then you should improve on your service and I would be happy to see that. For the community, Do remember NOT to rush getting committed with ANY hosting company. If you have any doubt, even the slightest, you are most likely right.
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| Posted by FredTT, 10-04-2005, 01:17 AM | | Your kidding right? If I recall correctly, your mySQL DB's were about 1 GB each, with ENOURMOUS quieres from each page, and leaving the connections open after pulling the data. The scripting was so bad, yes, we shut down your access. We contacted you and told you about the problem. Your mySQL was using over 60% of the CPU power by its self.
~Fred T
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| Posted by premium20, 10-04-2005, 01:31 AM | | This thread is useful. It tells us of 2 things:
1. Never prepay for a year, howsoever sweet the deal maybe. Getting a refund is a pain always, unless you go for a chargeback.
2. Your experience with PowerVPS shows that if you care to think about your customers, and pay for the services that will make your customer happy, you have a better chance at being successful with your biz.
I hope HostingLite will take care of your issues and refund in good earnest.
Thanks,
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| Posted by asdkfljasa, 10-04-2005, 02:13 AM | | Hi Fred, I'm afraid you didn't recall correctly. 2 reasons I can say so:
1. As I said, my sites were new setups. Could a new site possibly generate 1GB MYSQL within 1 month, with frequeny downtime? Would anybody want to join a new forum that goes offline from time to time? In fact, less than 50 people signed up and on average each member posted less than 1 post. I wonder how that can come to 1GB.
2. You didn't shut down my access. Coz you would have to pay me back if you do so. You simply let it hang there, until I gave up myself. And this is the first time I hear about the MYSQL taking up too much CPU issue. You may have said so, but obviously not to me.
In conclusion, you don't really know which account I'm referring to. Tell you what, don't bother. What's happened has happened. Nothing can change that. What you can do is probably to improve your service and make sure it doesn't happen again.
I don't care about the money any more. Just take it as my tuition fee. Lesson learned.
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| Posted by Tina J, 10-04-2005, 07:12 AM | | How do you know which account was his/hers? There's absolutely no identifying information in his/her post.
--Tina
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