What keeps Hedgehog competitive in today's ever changing hosting marketplace

As the team at Hedgehog continues to examine large cloud hosting providers such as Google and Amazon Web Services, we find that despite all the buzz they get, our services remain better suited for the needs of high-end, security minded hosting clients similar to the environments that we currently host.

We know that the big differentiator is the level of customized service and support you get from these different companies.  But taking that a step further, we know that each of these companies react to challenges in markedly different ways. And it is in these cases where companies like Hedgehog rise above.

We see this most evidently with regards to security.  Companies like Google and Amazon are so large that they function at a level that is sometimes counter to the needs of the individual client.  For example, if you have a site that allows your users to share articles and that particular piece of code or functionality is not properly locked down, it could become compromised and a malicious person could use your forms to send spam.  Generally, this will cause your provider to be alerted and can lead to the blacklisting of IP addresses or the shutdown of services.

In order to service their volume of clients, large companies have had to automate these processes to simply block certain traffic when they think there may be a problem. In the case of spam e-mails being sent, that may just mean the blocking of e-mail or it could mean the suspension of all implicated services until the root problem can be identified and rectification can be made.  Unfortunately, where each client's architectures are not physically separate, one client’s services could be suspended because of a problem with another client. This possibility becomes even more dramatic in cases when the government must confiscate equipment for legal proceedings. What happens when client services are shared across physical equipment?

The equipment and the infrastructure are obviously core features of the hosting business.  Many companies in this larger cloud arena say that economy of scale, with regards to the equipment, is what matters the most.  The idea is that more equipment leveraged across their entire network will mean lower prices for the end user.   Hedgehog's clients know that the team of people, that keep them up and running is the real differentiator.  We know the ins and outs – including the history – of each architecture so if a problem does occur with one client, we can identify it and help them fix it – not simply automatically suspend service. Hedgehog also maintains individual client clouds – often called virtual clouds or silo'ed clouds – that are physically separate from our other clients’ environments, in an attempt to mitigate issues ensuring that one client's operations do not impact any other clients operations.

We feel that this higher level of service will never cease to be needed no matter how technologically advanced the underlying equipment and infrastructure become. After 13 year in business, Hedgehog feels that the foundation that our company was built on is still relevant in today's hosting industry.  Clients first!