Savvis is a subsidiary company of

Lumen Technologies Lumen Technologies, Inc. (formerly CenturyLink) is an American telecommunications company headquartered in Monroe, Louisiana, that offers communications, network services, security, cloud solutions, voice, and managed services. The company is a ...

(formerly CenturyLink) that sells managed hosting and colocation services headquartered in

Town and Country, Missouri Town and Country is a city in west St. Louis County, Missouri, United States with a population of 11,640 as of the 2020 census. It is home to Missouri Baptist Medical Center, (locally known as MoBap). Town and Country has the highest median hous ...

. The company owns more than 50 data centers spread across North America,

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...

, and

Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an are ...

and provides

information technology consulting In management, information technology consulting (also called IT consulting, computer consultancy, business and technology services, computing consultancy, technology consulting, and IT advisory) is a field of activity which focuses on advising or ...

. Savvis has approximately 2,500 unique business and government customers.

Early history

Savvis was founded in November 1995 under the name DiamondNet by CTO/COO Timothy Munro Roberts and CEO Andrew Gladney. The two met in the St. Louis area in 1994 where both lived, with Roberts working for a computer store and Gladney as a customer. Gladney put up the initial capital ($600,000 or $1 million, according to different sources) for a 75% stake in the startup, with Roberts’ stake being the remaining 25%."7-Up vs. Coke, Part 1" Riverfront Times
/ref> Gary Zimmerman was recruited by Roberts from SBC Communications Inc. to become vice president of engineering at Savvis in November 1995. He built out Robert's first national network design. The authentic network design was unique within the industry at the time it became fully operational, and there was significant coverage and discussion in the trade press regarding both the network and its architect, Roberts. In 2001, the last year in which Robert's original design was in use, Savvis was ranked the #1 fastest Backbone Network by Keynote Systems, an independent network ratings service. Roberts closed a revenue contract with Apple Computer, Inc. as their first large customer, dealing with David Zimmerman and Marty Suzuki at Apple's Cupertino headquarters. By leveraging the Apple Computer customer reference and testimonials, the company was able to close additional large contracts with other industry providers, and it quickly gained wide industry recognition. During this growth spurt, the company attracted the notice of St. Louis' Gateway Venture Partners, who subsequently invested millions of dollars. After the Gateway investment, Sam Sanderson, former CEO of Rogers Cable, was brought to helm the company. Sanderson brought much needed support to the company, closing substantial contracts and placing the company into an aggressive marketing position. Contemporaneously, Bob Murphy was named to the chief financial officer position (Murphy was previously the CFO of Williams Communications). Murphy in turn attracted additional capital, and a sound financial management team. In 1997, Roberts left the company, and Gladney left his position as CEO to become vice chairman. Gladney's relationship with Savvis ended shortly thereafter in 1999. By the time of the company's IPO (in 2000), Gladney's stake was 1% of the outstanding shares.

Growth and acquisitions

In 1999 Savvis was acquired by

Bridge Information Systems Bridge Information Systems was a financial news and data provider that was acquired by Reuters Group in September 2001.(9 April 2001)Reuters eyes Bridge ''CNN Money'' History The origins of Bridge date to 1974, when the original company was found ...

. After a year as a Bridge Company, Savvis was spun off by Bridge as a public company.Savvis, Inc.
/ref> Savvis' February 2000

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investme ...

(IPO) was listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange as "SVVS". Since its IPO, Savvis has grown both organically and through strategic acquisitions. In 2002, Savvis purchased WAM!NET, a content management and media application service, followed in 2003 by a purchase of the hosting operation and customers of Intel Online Services. In 2004 the company purchased the assets of Cable & Wireless America which included 15 data centers and the customers of

Exodus Communications Exodus Communications, the world's largest web hosting provider at the time, was a data center provider that provided retail and commercial server colocation and was an Internet service provider to dot-com businesses. Exodus went public in 1998 ...

, the Tier-1 Internet backbone previously owned by MCI, the

content delivery network A content delivery network, or content distribution network (CDN), is a geographically distributed network of proxy servers and their data centers. The goal is to provide high availability and performance by distributing the service spatially rel ...

(CDN) from Digital Island, and a significant professional services organization for $155 million in cash and assumed liabilities of approximately $12.5 million.

Name change

In 2005, Savvis announced a change in its name from Savvis Communications Corporation to Savvis, Inc. to reflect company expansion from network services to Global IT services. Until January 21, 2014, Savvis was referred to as Savvis, a CenturyLink company, an autonomous managed-hosting entity under the CenturyLink umbrella. In early 2014, the company name was changed to CenturyLink Technology Solutions, in order to better align the Savvis business unit and the CenturyLink parent company. In early 2015 CenturyLink Technology Solutions was fully absorbed within CenturyLink's IT Services group, it is now unified under one name "CenturyLink".

Content delivery network divestitures

In 2006, Savvis announced that

Level 3 Communications Level 3 Communications was an American multinational telecommunications and Internet service provider company headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado. It ultimately became a part of CenturyLink (now Lumen Technologies), where Level 3 President ...

would acquire Savvis’ content delivery network (CDN) services business for $135 million; the deal included network assets, customer contracts and intellectual property used in Savvis’ CDN business.

Expanding EMEA presence

In 2007, Savvis opened a data center in

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bor ...

, increasing its presence in the Asia Pacific region. The following year, it opened a new data center in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

, increasing its services in Europe.

Acquisition of Fusepoint

In June 2010, Savvis acquired Canadian technology firm Fusepoint, including data centers in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.

Recovery

In January 2011, Savvis was positioned in the Leaders quadrant of the

Magic Quadrant Magic Quadrant (MQ) is a series of market research reports published by IT consulting firm Gartner that rely on proprietary qualitative data analysis methods to demonstrate market trends, such as direction, maturity and participants. Their anal ...

for Cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service and Web Hosting (2010 Edition) by

Gartner Gartner, Inc is a technological research and consulting firm based in Stamford, Connecticut that conducts research on technology and shares this research both through private consulting as well as executive programs and conferences. Its client ...

, an IT research and advisory firm. Savvis is positioned alongside 19 other web hosting providers, including

AT&T AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile te ...

Rackspace Rackspace Technology, Inc. is an American cloud computing company based in Windcrest, Texas, an inner suburb of San Antonio, Texas. The company also has offices in Blacksburg, Virginia, and Austin, Texas, as well as in Australia, Canada, United ...

Verizon Business Verizon Business (formerly known as Verizon Enterprise Solutions) is a division of Verizon Communications based in Basking Ridge, New Jersey that provides services and products for Verizon's business and government clients around the world. I ...

, Terremark, and Sungard in the measurement of "completeness of vision" and "ability to execute". As well, the company launched its global, cloud-focused Savvis Alliances Program for channel partners. Savvis also entered into partnership with Bharti Airtel Limited to launch a major strategic managed hosting and cloud computing initiative in India.

Acquisition by CenturyLink

On April 27, 2011,

telecommunications Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than that fe ...

firm CenturyLink, Inc. and Savvis reached an agreement whereby CenturyLink acquired Savvis through a buyout of outstanding common shares in cash and stocks, for approximately $2.5 billion

USD The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...

. This valued Savvis at $40 per share, which represented an 11% premium over Savvis’ closing price on April 26, 2011. Under the agreement, Savvis shareholders are to receive $30 per share in cash and $10 in shares of CenturyLink common stock. In September 2011, Savvis announced facility expansions in existing markets including Atlanta, Boston, and Toronto; as well as the opening of 2 new data centers in Seattle and Piscataway, New Jersey. This adds 100,000 square feet of raised data center floor space in the 5 cities, bringing the total sellable global footprint to 2 million square feet.

Controversy

Spam support allegations

On 8 September 2004, Savvis' Operations Security Manager, Alif Terranson, left his position and went public with internal Savvis documents, releasing them to media outlets including the

BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...

...