If you’ve emailed any of our employees this year, you’ve probably noticed a fancy new email signature that touts 25 years in business. That’s right—LightEdge has been around for a whole quarter of a century.
While many know LightEdge as a key player in the compliant cloud and colocation space, there are few who know the full story. From LightEdge’s humble beginnings as a local ISP to where it is today, a multi-site, cutting-edge solutions provider that proudly serves customers across the nation.
The LightEdge Story: Opportunity in Change
You know we believe that in change, there is tremendous opportunity to grow and evolve to meet new markets. At LightEdge, we’ve done exactly that. In its early days, LightEdge got its start as Lighthouse, an internet service provider (ISP).
LightEdge was founded back in 1996 as the Midwest’s premier ISP out of Des Moines, Iowa. After two decades of innovating and expanding in the network space, LightEdge opened a new chapter in colocation and cloud services. We made massive leaps to develop data centers and compliant cloud services we are known for to support even the most complex IT requirements for highly regulated industries.
What began as a single data center in Des Moines Iowa with a team of scrappy but expert individuals at the helm, is now over twice its original size with seven Tier III facilities across the country. Our facilities in Des Moines, Kansas City, Omaha, Raleigh and Austin are the crown jewels of our operation boasting compliance certifications like HITRUST Inheritance, SOC 1 Type II, SOC 2 Type II & SOC 3 compliance, became ISO 20000-1 & ISO 27001 certified, and successfully completed audits for HIPAA, PCI DSS, and (most recently) NIST. These global compliance standards, combined with our formidable physical security make us unmatched in the cloud and colocation space.
How E.D.G.E. Takes Us to the Future
Our company culture has taken us where we want to go. While company culture can be viewed as “internal use only,” the culture at LightEdge makes it simple to embrace an innovative mindset and put new ideas to action.
You’ll also notice that sometimes the most innovative, disruptive approaches are the sleekest and simplest. That’s exactly what we had in mind for our culture, so we used one word: E.D.G.E. to help us live out our internal culture but also propel us forward. Here’s how it works:
Exceed Expectations
LightEdge, has been exceeding expectations for 25 years. When it comes to our uptime, incident resolution time and even the speed at which some customer care representatives respond is a clear demonstration of our commitment to going above and beyond for our customers, whether it’s handling a minor interruption or suggesting a solution adoption that could save them thousands.
Do the Right Thing
This goes hand in hand with exceeding expectations. It sounds simple, but it can often be harder than you’d expect to do the right thing, especially when nobody is looking. The way we run our data centers, the way we adhere to strict compliance regulations, the way we always put our customer’s needs first.
For example, take a look at our case study with University of Kansas Hospital and how we helped them modernize their IT infrastructure in order to keep their mission critical systems up and on. While your situation may not be a matter of life and death like a hospital, rest assured you will be treated with the same integrity.
Grow through Innovation
As a CEO, I knew that we weren’t going to simply be an ISP forever. There was tremendous opportunity in Iowa and beyond to grow into the full-stack service provider you see today. And the growth is just beginning.
Innovations have come in all forms, from our IBM I Power Cloud to the way we leverage communications platforms to better serve our customers, the sky is the limit and no stone goes unturned.
Embrace Teamwork
At LightEdge, we leave egos at the door and band together to seek the best possible solutions and outcomes for the customers we serve. If you’ve ever had a call with LightEdge, you know that it’s very rare for there to only be one LightEdge employee on the call.
We embrace the unique experience and perspectives that each team member brings to the table and look for ways to leverage individuals’ skills to meet both LightEdge and customer goals, potentially in ways that haven’t been done before.
We’ll Meet You Where You Are… But Won’t Leave You There
As we celebrate 25 years in business, we can’t help but be grateful for our valued customers and partners, and also future customers and partners. Because of our inside-out culture, commitment to innovation and tenacity, we are ready to empower you to meet your larger objectives for cost containment, growth and flexibility.
LightEdge offers a full stack of best-in-class IT services to provide flexibility, security, and control for any stage of a customer’s technology roadmap. Our solutions include premier colocation across seven purpose-built data centers, industry-leading private Infrastructure as a Service and cloud platforms, and the top global security and compliance measures.
Over the last 25 years, we look back in joyfully at what we’ve been able to accomplish with our customers. We’ve been able to empower new clients, renewed complex certifications, and had the opportunity to connect with our customers and with one another. Throughout the challenges and celebrations of this journey, we are more thankful for our incredible team—and our valued customers every single day.
We cannot wait to see what the next decade has in store for us and our customers. To learn more about what LightEdge does, or to get a tour of one of our world-class data centers, set up a time to chat with us. Our compliance, cloud, and colocation experts are always available and ready to answer your most burning IT questions. We are looking forward to growing together with you for years to come.
