AussieHQ to migrate Hosting Shop servers to Sydney

The web hosting company, said to be Australia's fifth largest, closed the acquisition yesterday.

AussieHQ operates under two brands - its namesake premium brand and a budget offering called Jumba.

The acquisition of Hosting Shop will add "tens of thousands" of customers to the AussieHQ brand's base, according to AussieHQ chief executive officer Michael McGoogan.

"The Hosting Shop brand will be progressively integrated into the AussieHQ business and phased out over the next few years," McGoogan said.

"It will just become known as AussieHQ. But what it will give us is a stepping stone between the current Jumba and AussieHQ products that lets us target the five to 10-person business segment.

"It will allow us to deliver a complete suite of web services to the market."

A series of new plans incorporating the Hosting Shop business will be launched Monday.

AussieHQ will shortly begin data migration from hundreds of Hosting Shop servers located in Brisbane to what McGoogan called "state-of-the-art" servers in Sydney.

"Because they're such a major hosting provider, the relocation of Hosting Shop is going to be no small feat," McGoogan said.

"We're essentially relocating their server fleet from the existing location in Brisbane to brand new servers in Sydney.

"That migration is expected to take between three and six months. Essentially all the data will be moved virtually through a secure tunnel across the internet between Brisbane and Sydney."

One of the main changes for Hosting Shop customers is expanded support, according to McGoogan.

Customers will gain access to AussieHQ's 24x7 phone support at no extra cost. Previously, support was electronic-only between 8am and 8pm weekdays.

"The switch will happen in the coming weeks," McGoogan said.

Both Hosting Shop and existing AussieHQ customers will also gain access to new IronPort anti-spam filtering services to be launched shortly. It will be available as a paid add-on to existing services, McGoogan added.

As part of the acquisition, ex-Hosting Shop staff Paul Cameron has accepted the role of customer service manager and Gary Meadows becomes AussieHQ's customer relations manager.