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Hosting company LeaseWeb doubles the size of its organisation

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‘All employees share in the profits of the company’


LeaseWeb, the largest business web hosting provider in the Netherlands which ranks among the top 30 companies in the world, has doubled the size of its workforce last year from 30 to 60 employees. In addition to this rapid growth LeaseWeb starts the first quarter of 2008 with another 35 vacancies.

The gigantic growth of the organisation is confirmed by its 18th position in the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 and a position in the Fastest Growing Company Top-10 of the American magazine HostReview. LeaseWeb was incorporated in 1997 and has since its incorporation devoted all its efforts to building a stable organisation and an extensive and technologically advanced hosting network based on Cisco technology.

HRM policy: matrix structure
In the past year, LeaseWeb found itself at the crossroads of a successful switch from a relatively small enterprise to a medium-sized organisation, with as future goal a market position as a large-scale enterprise. Certifications such as ISO and a well thought-out HRM policy ensure that the current expansion of the organisation is channelled in the right directions.
The organisation is characterised by a proportionally high productivity per employee and a remarkably low absenteeism rate. A so-called matrix structure has been put in place, to ensure that these favourable HR statistics will be preserved in the future. “We consciously opted for a non-hierarchical structure,” says Con Zwinkels, Managing Director of LeaseWeb. “Individual employees bear joint and equal responsibility for certain decisions. We expect that this will have a positive influence on the motivation of our employees.”

An up-and-coming organisation
LeaseWeb intends to preserve its intimate organisation culture despite its rapid growth. “Therefore, we continue to use a flat and informal structure with short reporting lines where we rate the personal and enterprising contributions of our employees at their true value,” comments Zwinkels. “The matrix structure ensures that our enterprising character will also be preserved after we have grown into a large-scale enterprise.”

Everyone shares in the profits
The individual employees of LeaseWeb all contribute to the success and the rapid growth of the entire organisation. Zwinkels: “We are fully aware of this. Therefore all employees of LeaseWeb share in the profits of the company, whether they are help desk assistants or top account managers, so that everyone is rewarded and not only the commercial staff. We are convinced that you can only keep your employees happy and motivated with a balanced remuneration package and shared responsibilities. This fosters a common ambition to work towards the further growth of our organisation.”

United States, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong
The end of the current growth is nowhere near. “That is the most interesting thing of providing hosting services,” claims Zwinkels. “Especially when you have your own stable network with good connections to the rest of the world. Our network enables us to serve customers internationally in the United States, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom and so on. Our growth opportunities in this worldwide market are immense.”

HostReview.com
The growth and the ambition level of LeaseWeb did not go unnoticed in the United States. In December 2007 and in January 2008, LeaseWeb ranked fourth and third, respectively, on the list of the fastest growing companies (Fastest Growing Company) of the American hosting magazine HostReview.com. Zwinkels: “In any case, it is evidence that our boundless ambitions are also visible in the market. There is continued widespread recognition for the giant steps that we are taking in growth and worldwide expansion.”

Strong growth of the hosting network
Not only the size of the LeaseWeb organisation is growing. The worldwide hosting network of LeaseWeb is growing just as fast. In 2006, LeaseWeb used 40 Gbps (Gigabit per second) of bandwidth. Currently, the total bandwidth of LeaseWeb is 75 Gbps. LeaseWeb’s philosophy is that the total network capacity should always be twice as large as the capacity used by customers. LeaseWeb’s network now has a capacity of a minimum of 150 Gbps. It also means that LeaseWeb’s network should grow faster than the Internet traffic of customers. “Therefore, we not only grow fast in size,” says Zwinkels. “The network is easily scaleable as a result of our technological investments in the past years. These investments will also allow us to live up to our philosophy in the future.”



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