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Transition of Hosting Services
Dear Valued Client,
Northstar has been providing web and server hosting services since 1996, starting with just a single machine in my home’s basement. We grew rapidly starting in 2001 to where we had two full cabinets of servers in an enterprise-grade data center here in the Indianapolis area. At the same time, we have assisted many of you with building new web sites, refurbishing older ones, and other related consulting services. We continued gaining clients, thanks to your referrals, including some fairly large clients. Those larger clients chose us over more expensive providers because of the personal service we offered.
Unfortunately, the economics of web hosting have changed to the point where a part-time model simply doesn’t work any longer. The hosting services we provided have always been a part-time business, and clients demand full-time service that I’m no longer in a position to provide all by myself. There have also been new changes in my personal and professional life that are taking more time than they used to take.
As a result of these changes, Northstar has entered into an agreement with On-Ramp Indiana, Inc. (ORI.NET) to take over our hosting services. Northstar will continue to operate but will focus solely on consulting and web development services.
On-Ramp Indiana, Inc. (ORI.NET) is a privately owned company located a few miles north of Indianapolis in Noblesville, Indiana. R. Michael "Mike" (1947-2009), Scott and Mark LePere have been involved directly in computer consulting in the Indianapolis Metro area since 1989, and in 1996 they created ORI.NET to bring all the advantages of doing business over the Internet to their existing consulting clients. Since then ORI.NET has grown steadily at a comfortable pace to the 9000 users we serve today, of which 80% are small business. As a small business ourselves, we feel ORI.NET understands the needs of small business better than the large IT, Telco, and Cable providers.
ORI.NET remains one of the largest providers of Internet Access, Website Hosting, and Corporate Email providers in the state of Indiana. They are locally owned, all staff work on-site in their Noblesville, IN headquarters, which allows them to provide personalized support and customer care. They get to know our customers, which allows us to provide the highest level of service custom crafted to fit your needs. They recently celebrated our 23rd year in business, and they look forward servicing this market with the latest IT solutions for decades to come!
The transition date is targeted to be June 1st, 2012. On this date, the following first steps will happen:
- ORI.NET will be given a database of our accounts, paid-through dates, and contact information. ORI.NET WILL NOT be given your credit card information for security purposes. They will contact you separately to discuss your billing options.
- Account prices will remain the same through the end of 2012 at a minimum. All accounts on alternate billing rates will remain the same through the end of 2012, as well.
- Your accounts will stay “paid through” their current paid through dates. ORI.NET and Northstar will settle our books to eliminate any chance of you being charged twice for the same service. We are still attempting to collect some overdue invoices through our latest billing cycle of May 2012. After those are collected or otherwise written off, we will not have any more billing cycles for hosting.
- Northstar’s toll-free number will be rerouted to ORI.NET for sales, billing, and support purposes. ORI.NET will be responsible for all support of your account from June 1st onwards.
- We will work with ORI.NET to take over all the ancillary services we provide – domain registrations, AppRiver e-mail services, etc.
- For any development or consulting services questions, please use my personal Google Voice number: (317) 288-1720. I will maintain my current e-mail address of eric@northcomp.com. Other addresses like support and billing will be rerouted to ORI.NET. Messages that I get will be rerouted to ORI.NET so you don’t need to worry about your request getting lost.
As time goes on, ORI.NET will be integrating our servers and services into their operations, but these technical changes will not happen immediately. As we have done, they have purchased other hosting companies and have done the transition before. I have known Mark and Scott since 2001 when I first moved to the Indianapolis area. They built their business the same way I did – on good customer service and expert technical knowledge. They have a larger staff and in-house technical capabilities that I did not have.
On a personal note, we feel blessed to have worked with all of you – whether it was only a few months or all 16 years we operated this business. If you have any questions or problems during this transition period, please contact me via phone or e-mail.
Sincerely,
Eric Smith
President, Northstar Computer Systems
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