DigiPLUS Assumes Assets of BurstNet, Relocates Main Data Center

[admin]

Many smaller web hosting providers are down currently due to the mess with Burst.net and their shoddy relocation plans. It also seems that Burst.net has been taken over by a company called DigiPLUS of whom I cannot find any good references online for.

Not that long ago I had a server with Burst.net, I`m glad that I got rid of it now. Some of our online friends our still experiencing server downtime almost a week down the line.

It`s a joke and I feel sorry for people who have servers with them Burst / DigiPLUS!


Source: https://support.burst.net/index.php...assets-of-burstnet-relocates-main-data-center

More info can be found in this lengthy thread that myself and @Genesis have been following: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=342cdac63e2e5ae99f08d9b52f54759c&t=1358774

 

[Genesis]

There is no reference for DigiPLUS as it is brand-new. I think the new owner deliberately planned on only creating it at the last moment so as to keep present customers in the dark. All of the customers only heard about the move right at the time when it was happening. Some got 10 days notice, others got about a day.

I was totally curious of course and did some research and found some more information by researching the new owner of DigiPLUS, JW Ray.

JW Ray seems to be a financial genius of a kind with roots in Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch. He is the founder of Backlog Capital LLC, a Venture Debt Fund focused on lending money to early to mid-stage technology companies. He must have used the Venture Debt Fund to target BurstNET, when BurstNET was going broke. He then was appointed on their Board in January. And then probably created DigiPLUS towards end of March, so no one really knows anything about it. He is obviously gifted with good words as of course the way his Press Release is worded made it sound as though DigiPLUS is a large conglomerate of sorts. Very confusing too as there are many DigiPLUS companies all over the world.

Here is some more information about JW Ray that I found at one of his projects Web.teach.com.

Previously JW co-founded and served as Chief Operating Officer of Learn.com. He had retired from Learn.com on October 1st, 2010, after Taleo, a SaaS Talent Management leader acquired Learn.com. As Learn.com's Chief Operating Officer, he helped take Learn.com from earning $50,000 in revenue to earning just under $30,000,000 in a hyper competitive marketplace. JW was responsible for the day-to-day field operations of the company and for developing comprehensive sales and marketing programs.

Prior to co-founding Learn.com, Mr. Ray previously served as a Senior Vice President at Morgan Stanley and Assistant Vice President at Merrill Lynch for 8 years. He spent over 10 years in the food and beverage industry, including owning his own restaurant at 19 years of age. Mr. Ray also proudly served in the U.S. Army.

Source: http://webteach.com/about

Any way, what is interesting is his family lives in North Carolina. So maybe in a way having DigiPLUS there may mean he is serious about what he is doing with the new company. Although VERY ruthless of course. As I'm dead certain he must have factored in the total disappearance of BurstNET, including a large number of clients, and for him it was more about salvaging assets than rescuing them.

JW and his family also own and operate JOLO Winery & Vineyards, LLC a family owned boutique winery in North Carolina

Here's a photo of the new owner ...

 

[GigaGreg]

Hopefully it will bring up something good, but i feel sorry for those who are down and have problems due to that company. At the end I hope that the company would be positive and give opportunity for new people to use their hosting.

 

[Opal]

Been following this with great interest. Probably one of the most catastrophic and disastrous large datacentre moves in the United States history of large datacentre moves. People are still looking for missing servers or servers that have been left behind. This was a move that really should scare most people in being everything but complacent with a large datacenter that they have grown comfortable with over a number of years. Change is in the nature of the industry, and one should always be prepared for something like this to happen. Have plenty of back-ups preferably with other providers.

 

[Sander k]

Price -> quality

Burst was always cheap, you get what you pay for.

 

[Genesis]

From the discussions I read at Webhost Talk, Burst was good at one stage. It was a family type outfit that provided a reliable service in addition to a good price. From the discussions I read it would seem problems started when they were not taking care of the bottom line and it really got bad over the last 18 months. Diginet is basically still Burstnet, except repackaged, and now under management of a debt investor specialist who basically baled them out financially, but probably is going to ask for the proverbial pound of flesh in return. He doesn't seem to know much about IT though and I think he must have made decisions that were responsible for the worst and most catastrophic ever datacentre move in the history of the US.

Looks as though the service that is being provided after the big upheaval is not that bad. I know of one free host who seemed to have survived the datacentre move with 100% up since it became reconnected.. Except of course whoever is still with BurstNet/Diginet (and they would probably be there because of price) should make loads of backups and store the back-ups at other data centres.

 

[Genesis]

So the saga continues. Just noticed another thread at Webhost talk the other day - Burstnet is completely coming to an end, those accounts that had been transferred to North Carolina have been given notice. Also the staff that were relocated from Burstnet from Philadelphia to North Carolina lost their jobs. Totally unscrupulous Venture Capitalist getting his greedy fingers in a genuine hosting business. Milking its assets for what it was worth and discarding it after it got as much as it could out of it.

Here is a new thread that started in June when the notices came through for end of July terminations.
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1387621&page=27

Dear BurstNET client,

It is with great regret that we inform you that all of your services with BurstNET will be terminating on your next billing cycle/renewal/current expiration of purchased services but in all cases no later than July 25th, 2014.

If you are a CO-Location client you can disregard this message. Your services will persist.

You will have until July 24th to migrate your services to other providers. On July 25th all services will be terminated.

We apologize for any inconveniences and wish you and your businesses great success.

Sincerely,

BurstNET

Except the very day after this notice all services got shut off in LA. Then restarted. And then a white knight - hostwinds.com - stepped in and is presently baling out clients.

This post is a good summary of how it went down:

Why is it the first thing that ever went smooth for me with Burst is their death? When everything "went down" back in March I moved all of my primary services away, but left my "backup" VPS over at Burst because all it did was DNS and hold backup copies of all of my CPanel sites (and they were cheap and I wanted a front row seat to their future). Well - I get the message about them dying, then I get the migration to Hostwinds Email, then Hostwinds transferred my VPS host, got it all setup within the 72 hour time frame they said they would, and not a beat was missed.

So - for once - I'd like to say thanks to Burst/Digi for finding a home for all of the VPS clients (which, in all honesty, their financial backers had no reason to do - customer service is the last thing companies worry about when shutting the doors), and even more - a big "Thank You!" to Hostwinds for picking up Burst's mess and making everything just work. If their service and customer service continues to be as good as it has been during this transition, I'll be buying more services from them soon. Their prices are good and their services don't seem to be over provisioned from what I can tell.

Source: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showpost.php?p=9163498&postcount=295