Peak 10 + ViaWest Rebrands To 'Flexential' To Highlight The Increasing Cloud Opportunity Ahead

Peak 10 + ViaWest is now calling itself, "Flexential." The new name combines flexibility, exceptionality and potential, the cloud provider's CEO Chris Downie told CRN.

Charlotte, N.C.-based cloud service provider Peak 10 closed its $1.67 billion acquisition of West Coast-based cloud provider ViaWest in August. The combined company was going by the name "Peak 10 + ViaWest" for the past five months.

"We had two separate companies that had about an 18-year tenure building their own brand in their respective regions, but with the combination, we recognized that we had created something new, and we wanted to settle on a brand that reflected the opportunity ahead," Downie said.

[Related: Peak 10 Closed Its$1.67B ViaWest Acquisition: Here's How The Deal Is Benefiting Partners]

Flexential is now a channel-friendly, national provider offering colocation, interconnection, private cloud, managed solutions and professional services to more than 4,200 businesses customers, the company said. The Flexential footprint includes 41 redundant data center facilities located across 21 domestic and international markets.

The new company has the scale it needs to prospect and serve more customers across new regions, Downie said. Flexential has been able to geographically disperse resources for both partners and end customers in ways that Peak 10 and ViaWest couldn't do separately.

"We now have a true national platform, from Portland, Oregon, to Fort Lauderdale, Florida," he said. "We really look at ourselves as a leader in the Tier 2 cloud market."

Downie said that the new company has plans to further expand its geographic reach into "Tier 1" areas such as New York and New Jersey, Northern Virginia, California, and Chicago.

The cloud provider has been working on integrating the two companies together since the summer, including each provider's respective partner programs. As of last week, Flexential unveiled its unified front office team with more than 200 employees working on marketing and sales support and operations, Downie said.

"In 2018, there's going to be a lot of focus on systems because we really want to come out of this year with one of the best back offices in the business," Downie said.

A crucial part of the integration of Flexential's sales operations was creating a single partner program. The two companies had many partners in common, but at the same time, many "new" partners worked locally with either Peak 10 or ViaWest because of each providers' geographic coverage, Downie said.

"We want [partners] to appreciate the new capacity we have, as well as the investments we've made in the resources that support those environments," he said. "We think we are differentiated in our product suite that we think is a lot more comprehensive than what our peers are offering."