The first and second part of my overview about the history of Contabo was about our beginning on the hosting market and our rapid and continuous growth up to the year 2007.
Now let’s move to 2008.
Please find again on the chronicle below what has happened in 2008:
In 2008 we relocated more than 700 servers from Frankfurt am Main to another data center location in Dreieich near Frankfurt, which was 15 kilometers away from the old location. After extensive planning (all customers were informed more than on time), the relocation has been executed, of course, at night in order to bring all servers online again within a short time.
Our removal team stayed in a small hotel in Dreieich for 2 nights, built up dozens of racks, connected them with cables and prepared everything for the new servers. Thanks to their continuous hard work for 2 days and nights, our customers haven’t been affected much.
Once the relocation had been completed and after all the efforts had been finished we had dinner at a little Greek restaurant in Dreieich. Although the Bifteki there was great and a cold beer helped to feel better 😉 some of us even fell asleep during dinner, right at the table.
Anyway, all the effort was worth it, because every server went online again in Dreieich without any complications and within a short time.
In the following you will find some impressions of our data center (2008) in Dreieich near Frankfurt:
Reasons for the relocation were among other things the good collaboration with Tiscali, an ISP that operated under the name “Nacamar” at that time. Just like our second server location in Munich that we operated at the same time, our new data center location in Dreieich was built and provided by Tiscali – and exclusively used by us.
These two locations gave us and Tiscali the possibility to benefit from each other: Tiscali’s previous investments into the data center infrastructure worth millions of Euros hadn’t been for nothing but had been used by us for our increasing number of servers; and thus this has been very lucrative for both us. Our further growth was secured and we were able to offer top quality service to all of our customers.
Nonetheless, in the same year, we already worked on our new goal and initiated the merging of all our servers in just one location.
We planned and designed our own, new, big and modern data center location in Munich. In a modern office building on two floors we found the appropriate location for our plan.
On the first floor, that was bigger than 300 sqm, the data center area should be located; the floor above should include the office area and service area for our customer support department and for our technical staff.
In spring 2009 our plan became reality and several specialist firms started with their work, like mounting the double floor, electricity, air-conditioning and so on. Everything was directed by us.
Finally, in April 2009 our new data center in Munich with room for up to 4000 servers has been put into operation and our former data center locations in Dreieich and Munich were closed.
Since that time 5 years have passed and we still host all of our customer servers at that place. “Our servers” have already reached the number of 2500 machines – “our customers” are about to outnumber 10.000 from all over the world.
Thanks to our professional technicians we guarantee a smooth data center operation, twenty-for-seven. Our support team, which is responsible for competent instant service and individual requirements one may have, is available daily from 8am to 11pm via email ([email protected]) or by phone (local number). The office is occupied on 365 days a year including holidays and weekends.
We are dedicated to provide a response time of less than 1 hour, no matter what issue is concerned. This is what we call customer service made by Contabo!
Please be informed about any update and news here on our blog or on our Facebook page. In addition to that we provide further details regarding our data center on our website Contabo.com. Thanks to two webcams you are able to convince yourself live of your running server and that we haven’t been hit by any earthquake :-).
Our customer reviews on our website prove that we do not just preach excellent service but also live this idea. Doesn’t matter what kind of customer you are, whether you just host a small webspace package or a dedicated server with us – each of our customers gets our full and undivided attention.
Since the time when we have taken our new data center into operation in 2009, we continuously work on further improvements and on further developments regarding our product range. Many customers accompany us since our beginning, for more than 10 years right now, and this makes us really proud.
You will find an overview of the most important events and happenings of the last years in our news section on our website.
Here are just a few milestones:
– January 2010: We became a member of the RIPE
– February 2010: Relaunch and new design of our website
– June 2010: Introduction of our company blog
– July 2010: Additional upstream of 10 Gbit/s: Telia Sonera
– August 2010: Introduction of a new product: Virtual Private Servers (VPS)
– Winter 2010: Increase of 150% air-conditioning performance in our data center
– Spring 2011: Introduction of our Facebook page
– December 2011: Additional upstream of 10Gbit/s: Level3
– July 2012: Introduction of our Customer Control Panel (CCP)
– January 2013: Company name change – Giga-International became Contabo
And…we haven’t finished yet!
At the moment we are working on further new projects, small ones and huge ones, for further improvements and products. You can imagine, our list of To Do’s is still very long and day by day, we proceed!
I hope I could provide you some insight into the history of Contabo, based on my three-episode series.
I would like to take this opportunity and say thank you to those without whom each milestone and plan would not have been possible. In short, Contabo wouldn’t exist without them!
for your dedication and effort, day by day!
Thank you to all of our customers,
for your confidence and loyality!
I’m looking forward to having a great time with you further on and to celebrating our 20th company birthday in less than 10 years!