DailyHostNews just got an opportunity to interview Mr. Simon Anderson, CEO of DreamHost. Without any ado, over to him!
Q : What is your name and position with DreamHost?
A : Simon Anderson, CEO of DreamHost.
Q : Please tell our readers in brief about DreamHost.
A: DreamHost is a global web and cloud hosting provider with over 340,000 customers and 1.2 million blogs, websites and apps hosted. We offer a wide spectrum of Web and cloud hosting solutions, including Shared Hosting, Virtual Private Server (VPS) and Dedicated Server Hosting, Domain Name Registration, the cloud storage service DreamObjects, and the cloud compute service DreamCompute.
Rather than focusing on upselling business services to customers, we focus on building and supporting next-generation hosting and cloud services that are flexible, powerful and affordable.
– Simon Anderson, CEO, DreamHost.
Q : Why did you choose DreamHost as the brand name?
A: The name “DreamHost” was selected by the four company founders with the idea that they wanted to help entrepreneurs and developers to pursue their dreams on the Internet. Today we host millions of “dreams” in the form of customer websites, blogs, and apps.
Q : Tell us the milestones that the company has reached in past 5 years?
A: A few years ago, DreamHost surpassed one million domains hosted, which was a big milestone for us. As the company has grown, we are proud that we have retained our unique culture: DreamHost is 100% employee-owned and has been included in the WorldBlu List of Most Democratic Workplaces for the past five years running. DreamHost is also honored to be recognized by WordPress as one of the world’s best WordPress hosts.
Another major milestone for DreamHost has been the incubation of the Ceph open source distributed storage system, which was created by DreamHost co-founder Sage Weil. Ceph spun off to its own startup this year, called Inktank, while DreamHost has used the Ceph technology to roll out our new cloud services offerings: DreamObjects (objects-based cloud storage) and DreamCompute (our cloud computing platform).
Finally, hiring a CEO was a big milestone! I joined DreamHost 18 months ago as the company’s first CEO, taking the reigns from the original company founders.
Q : How does DreamHost distinguish itself from the other hosting providers?
A : DreamHost believes that our combination of engineering talent and use of open-source technology delivers the best solutions and value for providing hosting services to entrepreneurs and developers. Rather than focusing on upselling business services to customers, we focus on building and supporting next-generation hosting and cloud services that are flexible, powerful and affordable.
DreamHost has the best customer service in the industry because we hire developers for our tech support team, and, therefore, we offer highly experienced technical support, which enables the success of our customers.
Unlike most big hosting providers today, DreamHost is employee-owned. We believe we can deliver unique services because we’re not subject to the same rules and red tape as the big conglomerates.
Q : How do you see the future of web hosting industry & DreamHost?
A: Web hosting is and will continue to be an essential Internet service for the foreseeable future. However, we do see that new technologies like cloud, software-defined storage, and virtual networking will reshape the underlying infrastructure that web hosts are using to run services, for the benefit of customers. The DreamHost team is on the cutting edge of this technology shift, investing in the people and development that will enable DreamHost to be a big player in the future of web hosting and cloud services.
The new generation of Internet entrepreneurs and developers are highly tech-savvy. Thus, web hosts like DreamHost that make services programmatic and flexible will be the ones that prosper in the future. Today’s millennial generation is accustomed to being hands-on with technology. They don’t need to ask a person on the phone how to use it; they figure out how to solve problems for themselves. We see that as the future of web hosting—it’s about giving users more power and flexibility, not dumbing things down and simplifying them.
Q : Are there any current offers at DreamHost that you want to share with our readers?
A : DreamHost has recently launched two major cloud services—DreamObjects, our public cloud storage service, and DreamCompute, our IaaS cloud computing platform. Both DreamObjects and DreamCompute are currently available in beta with two-months-free trial offers. Designed for the needs of developers, DreamObjects and DreamCompute are very cost-effective and competitive with Amazon services. To learn more, please visit dreamhost.com/cloud.
Q : Can you tell us more about Ceph & Inktank?
A : Ceph is a highly scalable, open-source distributed storage system that represents the future of storage. Ceph is unique because it combines object storage, block storage, and a POSIX-compatible distributed file system into one universal platform. To date, Ceph has been integrated into the Linux kernel, Ubuntu, Apache CloudStack, and the OpenStack cloud operating system, as well as a growing number of cloud platforms and distributions. Ceph also powers DreamHost’s newly launched DreamObjects and DreamCompute cloud services.
DreamHost co-founder Sage Weil created the Ceph storage platform as part of his doctoral dissertation at the University of Santa Cruz in 2004. Since that time, DreamHost has been the principal sponsor of Ceph. In May 2012, we launched a new company called Inktank, which provides enterprise-level support and services for Ceph and empowers the future of storage.
