amuck-landowner

miniVPS has been sold.

MartinD

MartinD

Retired Staff
Verified Provider
Retired Staff
Code: 
A few of you that I speak to regularly already know about this but as of this afternoon/evening, it will become official. I had been considering such a move for a while now and felt the time had come to draw a line under this particular project. I can now spend a bit more time with family instead of being glued to a computer screen 24/7.

A big thanks to those of you that made it such a success while I was at the helm. I'm quite sure it will grow even stronger in the years to come.

I've pasted a part-copy of the announcement email below so this community is the first to find out in an official capacity. The email itself will be sent out to all customers later today.

It's been a blast!

Martin


*****************************************************************

Today we have an exciting announcement and good news to bring you.

Effective immediately the MiniVPS and MiniWebHost brands have become part of the growing family of services operated by Astutium Ltd, a leading UK hosting provider based in London, UK.

After many requests for additional virtualisation services and features, as well as alternative domain extensions and new hosting packages, the MiniVPS and MiniWebHost brands have now joined Astutium in order to expand the range of services offered and to provide our customers with enhancements to their hosting experience.

As part of Astutium the MiniVPS and MiniWebHost customers can now access an extended range of services including :

* Broadband network access
* Over 1200 ccTLD and gTLD domain registration types
* High-availability email and web hosting
* Dedicated Minecraft hosting
* OVZ virtual private servers
* KVM and Xen virtual dedicated servers
* Private cloud services
* Managed (and Unmanaged) fully dedicated servers
* London colocation
* IP Transit
* Control Panel licences
and much more

If you cant find the answer you are looking for, please don't hesitate to reach out and contact us for any reason by raising a ticket, dropping us an email or giving us a call.

We want to thank you for your business and we look forward to providing you with reliable service for many years to come.

Sincerely,

Martin Diver
MiniVPS and MiniWebHost
Astutium Ltd
Number One Poultry
London
EC2R 8JR

[URL="https://www.astutium.com/"]https://www.astutium.com[/URL]

Phone (UK): +44 20 3465 2555
Phone (US): +1 607 264 2555
Fax: (UK): +44 20 3475 2666
 
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J

joepie91

New Member
Bit of background on Astutium:

  • Previously called Othello Technology Systems, and there exists a thread on LET about them.
  • ICANN Registrar Accreditation Agreement breaches in 2013 and 2015.
  • Their acquisitions are listed publicly, as mentioned in this thread before, but not updated for 2015.
  • They acquired a host with issues; it's unclear whether the issues started to exist before or after Othello Technology Systems acquired them.
Note that I'm not making any judgments here, just collecting information.
 
OSTKCabal

OSTKCabal

Active Member
Verified Provider
Congrats, Martin! I hope the change goes smoothly and that your customers/brands are well cared for.
 
MartinD

MartinD

Retired Staff
Verified Provider
Retired Staff
Just to clarify, I didn't sell out to the highest 'bidder' as it were. I sold to the company I felt were best placed to look after the customers as well as they have been so far and maintain or excel the current support level.
 
OSTKCabal

OSTKCabal

Active Member
Verified Provider
MartinD said:
Just to clarify, I didn't sell out to the highest 'bidder' as it were. I sold to the company I felt were best placed to look after the customers as well as they have been so far and maintain or excel the current support level.
Click to expand...

That's good on you, it really is. Unfortunately, I still hold on to my convictions that acquisitions never allow the acquired business(es) to maintain their quality, and generally the movement isn't an improvement. HOWEVER, only time will tell and I'm just spouting.
 
DomainBop

DomainBop

Dormant VPSB Pathogen
Just to clarify, I didn't sell out to the highest 'bidder' as it were. I sold to the company I felt were best placed to look after the customers as well as they have been so far and maintain or excel the current support level.
Click to expand...

Question #1: Has the company's finances (Astutium Ltd) improved since the latest publicly available annual report (2013) was filed which showed an operating loss of £-63.9k, a negative net worth of £-97.1k,  liabilities of £145.8k, and assets of just £6.7k?

Question #2: will you be switching to their AS...i.e. will there be an IP renumbering for existing customers?
 
QuadraNet_Adam

QuadraNet_Adam

Active Member
Verified Provider
I assume the NodeDeploy brand was included in this sale as well? 

Will you be working for Astutium Ltd? Anyhow, congratulations and all the best.
 
QuadraNet_Adam

QuadraNet_Adam

Active Member
Verified Provider
MartinD

MartinD

Retired Staff
Verified Provider
Retired Staff
Question #1: Has the company's finances (Astutium Ltd) improved since the latest publicly available annual report (2013) was filed which showed an operating loss of £-63.9k, a negative net worth of £-97.1k,  liabilities of £145.8k, and assets of just £6.7k?

Question #2: will you be switching to their AS...i.e. will there be an IP renumbering for existing customers?
Click to expand...

Q1) You should know that the financial information that's available from CH open accounts has no real bearing on what's actually going on. Aside from that, I'm not a director so wouldn't be privy to that information.

Q2) I won't be switching anything. Also, minivps and miniwebhost has been sold, not Xavvo Ltd. Xavvo holds the IP assets however they are being leased to the new owners so that customers can retain their current IP's.
 
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G

gxbfxvar

Member
Looks like there was a quite big increase in service prices. My miniwebhosting.co.uk £18.00/year cpanel service was mapped to Astutium's Business-CPanel-1 service, which costs £14.95/month. Likewise, my minivps.co.uk £50.00/year KVM server was mapped to VDS-KVM-4, which costs £68.40/month. I assume that I can continue using my existing services at their old price levels, but spinning up a new identical server will cost a lot more.

While I received excellent service from MartinD and minivps, I'll most likely migrate away from Astutium at some point. Their prices just are too high for hobby purposes.
 
MartinD

MartinD

Retired Staff
Verified Provider
Retired Staff
I can't really comment on that as I'm no longer in control unfortunately.

Feel free to drop me a PM if you have any pressing concerns though.
 
MartinD

MartinD

Retired Staff
Verified Provider
Retired Staff
GIANT_CRAB said:
Hey Martin, congrats! :)

Just a quick question, will you still be involved in this company and if yes, what role will you be involved as?

Thanks! =)
Click to expand...

Nope - I'm now (or shortly will be) and entirely free agent. An unemployed bum as it were.
 
MartinD

MartinD

Retired Staff
Verified Provider
Retired Staff
Thanks all.

Spending time doing naff all and being generally bored for a bit.

Have been going for long ass walks with the dog though :) 
 
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