Both LightEdge and OnRamp have been in business for over two decades. Having extremely similar journeys, our paths crossed in July of 2018 when LightEdge acquired OnRamp. Since then, the two companies have been working as one to bring customers the best in highly compliant and secure cloud and colocation services.
Each company has experienced countless product launches over the years based on market demand and cloud evolution. With all of these changes, one thing has remained the same: our dedication to providing the most secure cloud and colocation services in the industry for our clients. This leads us to today. LightEdge now owns seven data centers across the country:
- Des Moines, IA (2 data center facilities)
- Kansas City, MO (1 underground data center facility)
- Omaha, NE (1 data center facility)
- Austin, TX (2 data center facilities)
- Raleigh, NC (1 data center facility)
In addition to the three new data center facilities, the combining of forces has doubled the size of our staff and has brought us some incredible new partnerships. As a result of the acquisition, LightEdge has taken this time to evaluate the solutions we are offering and the processes we have in place across both organizations. It’s been a wonderful opportunity to reflect and grow when it comes to implementing fresh tactics to continue to raise the bar for our clients and partners. We couldn’t be prouder of the great group of individuals we have on board all working together towards achieving a united goal for the best in client experience and compliant offerings.
Until the end of the year, OnRamp is operating as “OnRamp – A LightEdge Company”. Come January, OnRamp will officially be integrated into the LightEdge brand name. As we get closer to this full transition, we wanted to take this time to dive into LightEdge’s and OnRamp’s combined history (for those who aren’t familiar with our backgrounds and those who have been a part of this exciting journey with us through the years to reminisce) and how it has shaped us into who we are today. We are excited to share this story with you as we enter this new chapter of our combined journey.
If you haven’t read Pt. 1 of this blog series, Who is LightEdge: Our Transformational Story, you may find it helpful to go back and read it first.
The Early Beginnings of OnRamp and LightEdge:
One of the biggest draws that LightEdge had to OnRamp was the direct parallels each company had to each other through their histories. With so many similarities and a united vision for the future, this acquisition was a match made in heaven.
Take a look at the likenesses of each company in the early days of business:
The Beginning of OnRamp
OnRamp was founded in 1994 as one of the first Internet Service Providers (ISP) in Texas. This gave OnRamp a strong rooted background and expertise in networking. To market the business, the founder would often set up a kiosk at the Highland Mall and talk to passersby about his operations. He was a leader in the Internet community, and has been a founding member, President and Legislative Chair of the Texas Internet Service Provider Association. He is also a recognized expert on ISP issues and has testified in front of the Texas House of Representatives, the Texas Senate, and the United States House Telecommunications Subcommittee on a variety of Internet related topics.
From the beginning, OnRamp’s headquarters remained in Austin, TX. As a combined company under the LightEdge name, the company headquarters will be in Des Moines, IA with supporting offices in Austin, Omaha, Kansas City and Eastern Iowa.
From day one, OnRamp had a strong focus on security and was committed to providing its customers with the best customer services around. In 1995, OnRamp collocated its first customer server from Instasports.com. It was a unique business partnership as Instasports offered an interactive baseball game with nearly real-time statistics. It was very cutting edge for its time.
Although the company served customers across numerous industries, OnRamp specialized in meeting healthcare demands through its compliant hosting solutions, specifically designed to meet HIPAA regulations. Overtime, customers from other regulated industries, such as financial services chose OnRamp due to their physical and logical controls and certifications like PCI-DSS.
The company then went on to commission its first data center facility in 1996. This was also the year that LightEdge opened its doors for business. While OnRamp was busy leading the way in Texas for data center colocation services, LightEdge was getting its start in Des Moines, IA.
The Beginning of LightEdge
LightEdge opened its doors back in April of 1996 as Lighthouse Communications. Just as it remains today, LightEdge was headquartered in Des Moines, IA with offices across the Midwest. In the early days, LightEdge focused on providing network services and managed hosting for regional clients, similar to OnRamp.
It was in 2003 when Jim Masterson packed up his family and drove across the country to assume the helm of CEO for this Midwest Internet Service Provider (ISP). Jim was able to completely steer the direction, product vision, and success of the organization into who we know as LightEdge today.
While our offerings have been drastically refined over time, LightEdge’s solutions have always been backed by one of the strongest service guarantees in the industry, and we remain committed to providing the best possible local service for our clients 24x7x365. Our roots in networking provided a deep expertise and major differentiator that is still invaluable today when it comes to delivering a true Hybrid Solution Center rich in leading infrastructure, connectivity, security, compliance, and control.
In 2008 LightEdge was purchased by the Anschutz Investment Company. This group is known for owning the Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG) and Regal Entertainment Group, along with the Sprint Center in Kansas City, Qwest Communications, and the LA Kings. The founder, Phil Anschutz, has built fortunes in oil, railroads, telecom, real estate and entertainment over the past five decades.
OnRamp’s Data Center Facilities
In 1996, OnRamp commissioned its first data center and went on to deploy its first managed server in 2000. From there, OnRamp built its first data center in 2003 that delivered 2N power to their customers.
Business continued to boom for OnRamp, eventually pushing them to complete a data center expansion of their Austin I data center in 2012. During this time, they also started building their second data center facility in Austin. OnRamp started standing out amongst competitors because of their strong focus on compliant data centers and cloud hosting.
A year later in 2013, OnRamp opened its data center in Raleigh, NC. It was a strategic move towards redundancy as the facility is located on the Eastern U.S. power grid, in addition to their presence on the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) grid, and away from the coast. The location allowed OnRamp to strengthen its disaster recovery offering.
In addition to their Austin facility, Raleigh was the perfect location because it was in the heart of the Research Triangle Park, the largest research park in the country, just seven minutes from the Raleigh-Durham International Airport.
Finally, in 2014 the construction on OnRamp’s second data center facility in Austin was completed. OnRamp’s Austin colocation services are strictly maintained to HITRUST CSF, SOC 2 & 3 and PCI standards to maximize customers’ security and compliance choices.
LightEdge’s Data Center Facilities
As Des Moines continues to be a booming hub for technology companies and data centers, LightEdge was proud to be the first company to build a data center facility in Altoona, IA in 2006. Since then, companies including Facebook and Microsoft have followed in our footsteps constructing nearby facilities of their own.
In April of 2014, LightEdge opened its underground data center facility in the SubTropolis Technology Center in Kansas City, MO. The limestone mine that houses LightEdge’s Kansas City Data Center, SubTropolis, is the largest underground business complex in the world and a staggering 100+ feet underground.
In July of 2017, LightEdge opened its second Altoona, IA data center. The construction took place on a 7.3-acre plot of land, directly adjacent to its flagship 30,000-square-foot building. Similar to the original facility, the second data center was designed to be broken out into four separate quadrants. It currently has two completed 10,000-square-foot data center suites and spans 48,000 square feet. It has the capacity to expand to a staggering 72,000 sq. ft. based on market demand.
In September of 2017, LightEdge acquired the Cabela’s data center facility in Omaha, NE. LightEdge took over the existing state-of-the-art Omaha data center and retrofit it to support LightEdge’s cloud and colocation services. The 16,925 square-foot facility was originally constructed in 2010 and sits on 4.18 acres of land. It was retrofit in Spring of 2018 to complement LightEdge’s other data center facilities across the Midwest.
In September of 2018, LightEdge announced the expansion of their Kansas City data center facility in the SubTropolis Technology Center. Our plans are to expand the facility by 20,000 sq. ft. Of this latest expansion, 13,000 sq. ft will be dedicated to white floor space with the additional power to support it. Construction is slated to be completed by late March in 2019.
In addition to the Kansas City data center expansion, LightEdge also announced the expansion of our Omaha Compliant Colocation facility that opened earlier this year. We purchased the facility from Cabelas in Fall of 2016 and have completed all modifications and audits on the facility for multi-tenant hosting of colocation and cloud customers, including SOC 1, SOC 2, SOC 3, ISO 27001, and ISO 20000-1.
OnRamp’s Security and Compliance
In 2010, OnRamp began to heavily focus in on compliant cloud and colocation offerings. The security badges that OnRamp started working towards and still uphold today include:
- HIPAA
- HITRUST
- PCI DSS
- EU-U.S. Privacy Shield
- Additional compliant, secure hosting
OnRamp helps to eliminate gaps and failures, and empowers customers to achieve the highest levels of security matched to their unique and specific compliance requirements. OnRamp fully addresses their customers’ IT compliance challenges and processes high security configurations.
LightEdge’s Security and Compliance
Like OnRamp, LightEdge has made compliant cloud and colocation solutions our number one priority. It has also become our strongest differentiator amongst other data center providers across the nation. The security badges that LightEdge has been successfully audited against include:
- HIPAA
- PCI DSS
- ISO 27001
- ISO 20000-1
- SSAE 18 SOC 1 Type 2, SOC 2 Type 2 and SOC 3
LightEdge also offers up direct access to their Chief Security and Compliance Officer as an included service for all of our clients. He is there to advise clients on the world’s top compliance standards, including NIST, FISMA, FedRAMP, NERC-CIP and all of the above-mentioned certifications, to ensure audit readiness for our clients. LightEdge is here to deliver true Compliance as a Service (CaaS) and the ability to check audit boxes on our customers’ behalf. We save you time, money, and the stress from annual audits and constantly-evolving compliance standards.
LightEdge’s highly-trained compliance and security experts take the guesswork out of keeping your business protected. Customers trust our expertise to ensure they are covered through our security and compliance services, including risk management, information security, audit preparedness and support.
LightEdge and OnRamp are currently in the process of combining their security and compliance portfolio to bring our customers the most sophisticated compliance offerings available in the marketplace.
The Acquisition
With an extremely similar background and company culture, partnering with OnRamp and joining forces was a clear choice.
LightEdge and OnRamp both bring over 20 years of experience to the industry. We have both built deep expertise in achieving the world’s top compliance and security standards for our operations and our customers by hosting complex workloads for highly-regulated sectors like healthcare, financial services, education, and manufacturing.
The acquisition expanded LightEdge’s team to both the Austin, TX and Raleigh, NC areas. This acquisition also puts LightEdge on the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) power grid, in addition to their presence on the Eastern grid. This dual-coverage and increased reliability will offer more value and flexibility for LightEdge customers.
The Combined Company’s Future
From now until January 1st, 2019, OnRamp will operate as OnRamp- A LightEdge Company. Once January comes, OnRamp be completely combined with the LightEdge brand. Both companies will function together under the LightEdge name.
In the new year, OnRamp’s website will no longer be available and will redirect back to our combined company’s website at www.lightedge.com.
Where to Find Us
If you want to stay updated on the latest news, blogs, products and partnership be sure to start following the various LightEdge accounts.
In addition to the OnRamp website phasing away in the new year, so will their social media channels and blog. Our combined company will share unified company updates from one set of social media channels. Be sure to follow LightEdge’s LinkedIn, LightEdge’s Facebook, and LightEdge’s Twitter. We post updates throughout each business day about events, product updates, breaking industry news, technology best practices, and more!
To contact us in the future, go to the LightEdge Contact Us page. In the upcoming year, OnRamp’s phone numbers and email addresses will be absorbed under LightEdge. To get ahold of anyone on the team, check out our updated contact information:
- Corporate Phone number: 1.877.771.3323
- Corporate Email: info @lightedge.com
- 24×7 Support Line: 1.877.589.3654
- MyLightEdge Customer Portal: https://my.lightedge.com/auth
On the Contact Us page of the LightEdge website, you can view all of our LightEdge data centers and office addresses. You can also contact us by entering your name and email address. A LightEdge representative will then reach out to you as soon as possible.
Events to Keep on the Calendar
When January comes, and our two companies are fully united, we will get to see you at double the number of events! We plan on attending, sponsoring, and hosting almost all the same events that OnRamp and LightEdge have participated in, in the past.
A new networking event that LightEdge is excited to start implementing in each of our markets is the High-Tech Happy Hour that OnRamp has hosted in Austin the past couple of years. This will be a great opportunity for technology experts in each community to get together and discuss latest trends over drinks and hors d’oeuvres. Be sure to keep an eye out for this event in the coming year!
Partner Program Opportunities
With the relationships and partners that OnRamp has brought with them, LightEdge’s Partner Program is gaining more and more traction. By becoming an official LightEdge partner, we will provide you with the tools necessary to build a lucrative referral and/or reseller stream that incents you and your customers for doing business with LightEdge. We work closely with every partner to develop a personalized plan for success.
LightEdge’s Partner Program was designed to reward our partners with aggressive incentives and generous volume discounts on our enterprise data center services. Our program enables businesses across all industry verticals to incorporate data center services into their current product and service offerings to build a more robust solution for their end-users.
If you are interested in becoming a LightEdge partner, you can apply here. Stay tuned as we will be rolling out a brand new partner portal in the new year with direct access to co-branded collateral, training tools, deal reporting, and lead status updates.
About LightEdge
With over 20 years in business, LightEdge offers a full stack of best-in-class IT services delivering flexibility, security, and control. Our solutions include premier colocation across seven purpose-built data centers spanning Des Moines, Kansas City, Omaha, Austin and Raleigh, industry-leading private Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and cloud platforms, and the top global security and compliance measures. Our owned and operated facilities, integrated DR solutions, and premium compliant cloud choices make up a true Hybrid Cloud Solution Center. LightEdge’s strong financial backing of the Anschutz Group empowers us to invest heavily in our markets. LightEdge annually undergoes third-party audits for ISO 20000-1, ISO 27001, HIPAA/HITRUST, PCI-DSS 3.2, and SSAE 18 SOC 1 Type II, SOC 2 Type II and SOC 3. For more information, visit www.www.lightedge.com.
About OnRamp-A LightEdge Company
OnRamp-A LightEdge company, offers HITRUST-certified data center and cloud services with a focus on delivering highly available and secure hybrid hosting. Their solutions help organizations in healthcare, financial services and educational services meet strict compliance standards including, HIPAA, PCI, SOX, FISMA and FERPA. LightEdge annually undergoes third-party audits for maintaining ISO 20000-1, ISO 27001, HIPAA, PCI-DSS 3.2, and SSAE 18 SOC 1 Type II, SOC 2 Type II and SOC 3.
The combination of OnRamp and LightEdge creates the strongest compliance and security solutions portfolio on the market. They operate seven enterprise-class data centers to deploy hybrid solutions built on private cloud, managed hosting, managed services, and colocation. Visit www.onr.com or call 888.667.2660 to learn more.
