Internap provides high level internet infrastructure services to the global business market from a network of well-equipped and energy efficient data centres. It is a significant player in the data centre market, employing over 700 people and serving around 13,000 customers worldwide.
Internap delivers colocation, managed services and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), but also offers plenty of complimentary and support services, such as the IP routing service, to make sure it offers the full package for business customers.
One of Internaps key services is an alternative to multi-tenanted virtual machine based cloud. This means that Internap can offer cloud services to businesses using applications that would suffer from loss of performance over the traditional cloud. Those might include big data apps, or gaming, media and advertising platforms.
Location
Internap has 16 company controlled data centres in North America, Europe and Asia. It also rents space in more than 30 third-party data centres
In North America, its centres are located in Seattle, Los Angeles, Secaucus, New York, Atlanta, Houston, Montreal in Canada, Santa Clara, Boston and Dallas. Not all services are hosted at all data centres. Atlanta, for example, serves as company headquarters but is not cloud enabled, whereas Dallas, New York, Secaucus and Santa Clara offer the full menu.
In Europe, Internap has data centres in London and Amsterdam, and Singapore and Hong Kong in Asia. All Internap controlled data centres offer fully redundant systems, high security and big power densities by design.
Energy
Internap aims to lower its environmental impact and has gained recognition for its efforts from some of the leading certification bodies.
In 2013, the Los Angeles data centre won LEED Gold certification from the US Green Building Council, an award for buildings that have a substantially reduced impact on the environment in comparison with similar buildings. It also won Green Globe certification from the Green Building Initiative soon after opening its doors in 2012. Its Atlanta data centre was awarded the Energy Star Award in 2014, and more recently, its New York Metro data centre bagged the LEED Platinum award in August 2015.
Included in Internaps range of energy efficiency measures are reflective roofing, variable speed automatic CRAC, ultrasonic humidification, Free Air Cooling, recycled greywater and timed lighting. Energy use is also monitored in most data centres and Internap boasts a high energy efficiency rating of almost double the US national average.
Funding/business model
Internap Network Services Corporation is listed on the US NASDAQ stock exchange. It was founded in 1996 and went public in September 1999, and has grown to a $334 million annual revenue company through significant organic growth supported by major acquisitions. Those acquisitions include CO Space in 2000, netvmg and Sockeye Networks in 2003, Vitalstreams Holdings in 2007, Voxel in 2012 and iWeb Technologies in 2013.
Internap has, in recent years, began to suffer from downward pressure on pricing in the data centre market due to increased competition. A new CEO was appointed in 2015 following weak Q1 results and will focus on acquiring new customers, reducing churn and reducing space capacity, which currently stands at just under 50%. Internap holds significant debt from investing in expansion and has also come under pressure from activist investors to sell up.
Customers and partners
Internaps services are aimed at the wider business community, although it differentiates itself by offering the kind of fluidity and scalability of services demanded by companies in the ecommerce, media, gaming, media and advertising and healthcare sectors.
Its most high profile customers are in those industries and include visual effects company Scanline, Lionsgate Entertainment Corporation, AppLovin, Fluid IT Services and healthcare companies Casenet and Treato.
Great service options but an uncertain future
Internap operates in an increasingly competitive market. It differentiates from its competitors by offering more flexible ways to use its services, but it still struggles to reconcile downward pressure on prices with its big debt and investor obligations. It has invested heavily in capacity, power densities and the latest technologies and its green credentials should hold wide appeal too. Whether it will weather its current storm remains to be seen.