Web icon passes away

[Onkel Neal]

Just heard about this, his company Rackspace was the first mainstream dedicated server I ever leased.


Saying Goodbye To Web Hosting Icon, Head Surfer Robert Marsh
https://www.i2coalition.com/saying-g...-robert-marsh/

If you’ve been in the web hosting industry for less than fifteen years, you may not have heard of Robert Marsh. If you were around at the turn of the millennium, or anytime before, you couldn’t have possibly missed him. In the mid to late 1990s, only small businesses paid any attention to web hosting. Those businesses were carved into two factions, those who did ‘shared’ webhosting – multiple accounts on a single piece of hardware – and those who sold ‘dedicated servers’, which gave you the power of an entire web server.


From the moment Robert opened Rackshack, you could tell he was trying to change the industry. His prices were the lowest, his setup fees were lower still, and his servers were available within hours of purchase, rather than days or weeks. Gone were the heavy customizations – choices were simple and standard. It was the first successful attempt by anybody to move dedicated servers into the mainstream. Part of that came from Robert being a businessman who knew how to take things to scale. However, I’m convinced most of his success came from a willingness to put himself out there, as a transparent and open industry leader willing to accept personal responsibility for what he provided to the world.