About ServerVault Corp. Founded as a secure hosting company, ServerVault is still remembered by many people as the company with the giant Hummer H-1 (not one of the cushy new ones but the original military-style model) cruising around town bearing the ServerVault logo. Now under the leadership of CEO and President John Kraft, ServerVault is a leading provider of highly secure, federally compliant hosting and IT infrastructure management services for government agencies, commercial enterprises and system integrators with sensitive, security-driven applications.

John Kraft on Turning the Corner

“When I joined ServerVault as CEO in 2003, the challenge wasn’t how to generate flash and attention (hence we no longer needed the Hummer with the giant ServerVault logo on it), but rather to rebuild the operation and the company’s market legitimacy. Together with great leaders like Seth Finkel, who I worked with at PSINet, and John Curran, who had been CTO XO Communications and BBN/GTE Networking, we retrenched not only operationally but strategically.”

“Hosting as a standalone business had changed. You either had to achieve massive scale as a collocation or infrastructure provider or find a niche in a growing segment. We chose the latter approach based on a careful analysis of the market’s requirements and ServerVault’s assets and strengths, including:

• Legacy positioning in secure, bulletproof hosting, including the ServerVault name;
• Industry-leading physical, logical and procedural security;
• Proximity to the booming federal IT market; and
• Proliferation of federal IT security regulations, notably FISMA.

“Building on our strengths in secure hosting–which was a solid positioning but not enough to distinguish ServerVault from much larger players–ServerVault is now a leader in providing secure and compliant hosting and management services that help government agencies and corporations save time and money meeting major IT security regulations such as FISMA, DITSCAP / DIACAP and DoD 8500.2.

“As a result our clients save time and money by outsourcing their sensitive applications rather than having to build compliant data center facilities. While we can’t divulge much of the work we do for clients for security reasons, we have announced deals with IBM to provide secure, compliant infrastructure for the DISA NCES system, the military’s major new collaboration platform and with Northrop Grumman to secure, maintain and operate the DoD’s Web-based travel system.

“The results have been terrific in terms of customer wins, revenue and margin, and ServerVault is better known than ever in the federal IT sector–both agencies and system integrators. The future looks bright indeed.”

Read related post: John Kraft on London, Ink.

Bob London is president of London, Ink, a Maryland-based marketing and communications consulting firm, and serves as a Virtual VP of Marketing for growth stage companies that need an injection of marketing experience and leadership to drive key initiatives and results.

Tags: ceo, client, john kraft, marketing, servervault, strategy, testimonial

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