News broke earlier this week on the national scene that HP cloud division VP Emil Sayegh has left HP for new pastures.  After a brief discussion with Emil, we discussed his history, his time at HP, where he is going, and what comes next.  Sayegh is joining cloud and internet provider Codero as CEO. Codero may not be a well-known name – yet. With Sayegh at the helm, expect new found recognition, products and services.

Codero’s history traces back to 1992 in San Diego, CA where immigrant dreams laid the foundation of the company.  Once known as Aplus.net, it morphed over the years, taking forms of a domain registrar, a dedicated, managed and shared hosting company, and where it is today.  Throughout, the company managed to sustain its independent entrepreneurial spirit. Catalyst Investors private equity got behind it in 2009, and sold off much of the company, choosing to keep the dedicated hosting and cloud services, renaming the company to Codero.

Since that time Codero has thrived and their secret formula is a tested combination of dedication, excellent customer support, and automation. Add to that one more critical piece as Sayegh states:

“The company  has a truly amazing DNA of automation”

With automation at the heart and entrenched throughout the organization, the company has a price advantage that keeps their offerings competitive to their customers. Fast provisioning, customer delivery and turnaround, and great management of the workforce all excel in this automation focused environment. When it comes to their dedicated and highly qualified workforce, training, efficiency and onboarding of personnel also gain advantage. The ability to scale is phenomenal and plays to their diverse base of clientele. And they always deliver on time.

Fantastic customer support is another critical component of their success. From everyday technical support, to sales, the customer relations formula is the same – energy, detail, excellence. Take for example this little anecdote about the work environment. When a new customer comes onboard and a deal is sold, the sound of a bell is played throughout the office, announcing to the company another win to add to their success story.  Customer satisfaction surveys are routinely sent to their clients, and they receive consistent very high rankings time and time again.

These advantages have given the company a competitive edge with an extremely loyal customer base, over 4000 businesses of all sizes and little turnover. With a large SMB presence at one end of the spectrum, and major enterprise clients at the other end (including a famed online gaming client, a major international bank, a major airlines, to name a few), the company is poised for continued growth with their complete portfolio as their hallmark.  Another sign of this growth is a coming introduction of a third datacenter coming up in Virginia, in addition to their existing Phoenix and Chicago locations.

Moving towards the events that led up to this opportunity Sayegh shares the following:

“When the opportunity came up and I did my due diligence, among all the standard things.  I decided to call some of Codero’s customers to get a good picture.  What I kept hearing time and time again was a unanimous satisfaction and really great stories. You have to ask yourself why is this the best-kept secret in hosting? Why wasn’t I familiar with the name before I was approached? The more I found out, the more it became clear that everything was lining up and telling a compelling story.”

Considering Sayegh’s professional record, there is little doubt that story will grow. Looking towards the future, he was able to share a peek at some of the immediate priorities for Codero.

1. Elevate profile – Get the word out about the real Codero. It is truly a marketing/messaging mission. This is a great company for all those shared reasons and let’s not forget fantastic uptime! –
2. Enhance product portfolio – Emil’s roots are in product development. One challenge is to build and serve a hybrid portfolio, in cloud and dedicated. This way customers can pick and choose the best services to suit their needs. Codero will focuse on building this enhanced value proposition and make it seamless.

The wheels are already turning and product announcements loom in the near future. With offerings in Linux and Microsoft host options, their significant partnerships with Microsoft, Dell, HP, Cisco, and Intel (to name a few), gives Codero a critical flexibility and ability to build whatever technology creates the best offering possible; be it storage, virtualization, network, and so on, the possibilities are endless.

“We have some work to do to get the name out there, and we are all very excited for things to come”

With Codero’s “DNA” and long list of advantages along with Sayegh’s cloud savvy and experience, the best-kept secret in the hosting business will not be a secret for very long.  Congratulations and  thanks to Emil and Codero.