Exodus Communications, the world's largest

web hosting A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that hosts websites for clients, i.e. it offers the facilities required for them to create and maintain a site and makes it accessible on the World Wide Web. Companies providing we ...

provider at the time, was a

data center A data center (American English) or data centre (British English)See spelling differences. is a building, a dedicated space within a building, or a group of buildings used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommun ...

provider that provided retail and commercial server colocation and was an

Internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise priva ...

to dot-com businesses. Exodus went public in 1998 amid massive business growth (40% quarterly growth over 13 quarters) and achieved a peak market value of approximately $32 billion US dollars in 2000. Along with many of its customers, Exodus experienced the bursting of the

dot-com bubble The dot-com bubble (dot-com boom, tech bubble, or the Internet bubble) was a stock market bubble in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet. Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Comp ...

and declared

Chapter 11 bankruptcy Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code ( Title 11 of the United States Code) permits reorganization under the bankruptcy laws of the United States. Such reorganization, known as Chapter 11 bankruptcy, is available to every business, whe ...

in late 2001. Exodus was purchased by Cable and Wireless. The company created and enabled many "firsts" for the "modern Internet", including the first "storage as a service" cloud service branded as DataVault in partnership with

Cisco systems Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational digital communications technology conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, ...

and

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, t ...

. This was years before

Amazon S3 Amazon S3 or Amazon Simple Storage Service is a service offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that provides object storage through a web service interface. Amazon S3 uses the same scalable storage infrastructure that Amazon.com uses to run its ...

came into existence. The tape backup portion of the DataVault business unit was acquired by Sanrise Inc. Exodus Communications built and operated the first truly global anycast

Domain Name System The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical and distributed naming system for computers, services, and other resources in the Internet or other Internet Protocol (IP) networks. It associates various information with domain names assigned t ...

in 1999, using it's globally deployed BGP autonomous system. Exodus acquired American Information Systems, Cohesive, Arca Systems, and Network-1's professional services division. In December 1999, Exodus headed by

Ellen Hancock Ellen Mooney Hancock (April 15, 1943 – April 19, 2022) was a technology manager from the United States who worked for IBM and Apple, among others. Early life and education Hancock was born April 15, 1943 in the Bronx, New York City, and raise ...

CEO acquired Global OnLine Japan (GOL), Japan's first ISP, launched in 1994 by a Canadian entrepreneur, Roger J. Boisvert together with his wife, Yuriko Hiraguri. Exodus opened its Tokyo IDC in April 2000 together with Nomura Research Institute. In September 2000, the company bought GlobalCenter,

Global Crossing Global Crossing was a telecommunications company that provided computer networking services and operated a tier 1 carrier. It maintained a large backbone network and offered peering, virtual private networks, leased lines, audio and video co ...

unit, for $6.5 billion in stock. By the time the deal closed in January 2001, the stock was only worth $1.95 billion. In January 2003, Cable and Wireless Japan sold Global OnLine Japan to Japanese VoIP operator Fusion Communications, merging its existing consumer Internet and VoIP efforts to create Fusion Network Services. The Fusion group was later acquired by Rakuten Group. In March 2004, Cable and Wireless America, including the Exodus assets, were acquired by

SAVVIS Savvis is a subsidiary company of Lumen Technologies (formerly CenturyLink) that sells managed hosting and colocation services headquartered in Town and Country, Missouri. The company owns more than 50 data centers spread across North Ameri ...

. Cable and Wireless Japan sold its IDC operations to the

SoftBank Group is a Japanese multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo which focuses on investment management. The Group primarily invests in companies operating in technology, energy, and financial sectors. It also runs the Vi ...

in February 2005.

References

{{reflist American companies established in 1994 American companies disestablished in 2001 Companies based in Santa Clara, California Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2001 Computer companies established in 1994 Computer companies disestablished in 2001 Defunct companies based in California Defunct computer companies of the United States