DreamHost Evicted From LA Offices

In an item yesterday we noted that DreamHost was among the remaining data center tenants at the Garland Building in Los Angeles. We may have spoken too soon. The hosting company has posted a blog item announcing its eviction from its Los Angeles offices, which the company attributes to "a little bit too much bringing alcohol into the building, playing pool, neighbor complaints about loud profanities." What's more, the item (attributed to co-founder Josh Jones) ads that "our new office space isn't even ready yet!" (See the end of this post for an update).

I have to wonder what DreamHost's new landlords will think when they read the blog item. I can appreciate that a humorous, offbeat reputation may play well for some hosting companies. DreamHost has certainly cultivated that image with its blog. But the eviction post (complete with photos) screams the question of whether there are any grown-ups running either the company or the blog.

Ironically, the DreamHost blog bears a badge about its Bloggers Choice Award nomination as Best Corporate Blog. Transparency is great, but does this support the company's business? If it's a joke, it's a bad joke - except to DreamHost's competitors, who are likely e-mailing the link around the web.

Then there's the issue of customer data. From the blog: "Things happened so fast, we ended up just trash compacting about 200 old 36GB fiber channel hard drives that had (private) customer data on them we couldn't let get into enemy hands." Doesn't sound like they got a certification on that data destruction process. Check out features at Network World and ComputerWorld for guidance on best practices on data destruction.

UPDATE, Oct. 6: Several DreamHost employees have added comments to the post saying they were not evicted, but that the company's lease expired and the building opted not to renew. Yet the post continues to state that the company "didn't exactly move ... we were evicted!" and that "situation is all very complicated, and came about pretty suddenly." It seems inexplicable that DreamHost would try to get laughs by pretending a lease expiration was an eviction, but that appears to be today's spin.