The Planet: Few Customers Lost from Outage

The Planet said it expects "little customer loss" from the lengthy outages last month at its Houston data center, which was damaged by an explosion and fire. The assessment was included in a release about The Planet's second-quarter performance, which included no financial metrics but said the company experienced record growth with 1,700 new customers.

"We had another significant quarter of annualized double-digit growth, accented by continued operational improvements, and again exceeding our plan," said Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Douglas J. Erwin. "The outage we experienced this quarter was clearly serious and difficult, and we recognize the negative impact to our customers. Despite this temporary setback, we continue to exceed the market growth rate estimates, and our outlook is positive."

The largest portion of growth in the second quarter came from the company's current customers, who continued to upgrade and expand their server portfolios, The Planet said. Existing customers who were affected by the outage were offered service credits, along with discounts on additional services.

"The Planet again produced a record quarter, with the highest year-over-year growth rate in more than a year-and-a-half," said Chief Financial Officer Kevin Klausmeyer. "While our outage was challenging, we took every measure to minimize customer impact and believe there will be little customer loss. The majority of the financial impact is fully covered by property and business interruption insurance. Finally, we continue to invest in people and infrastructure to accommodate our growth."

The Planet introduced a managed hosting offering called Planet Northstar on July 7, and previously had acquired Indiana-based Touch Support to provide advanced services for its self-managed dedicated server customers under the Planet Alpha brand.

The Plant said it also appointed Robert Walters to lead its newly formed storage and backup business unit, with responsibilities for leading strategy and developing new products to extend the company's portfolio. Walters joins the company from Rackspace, with previous experience at EMC.

The Planet hosts more than 22,000 small- and medium-size businesses and 7.6 million web sites worldwide in its six data centers in Dallas and Houston.