Infinitely Virtual

Corporate History

Adam Stern started Altay Corporation in 2003, the same year he completed a business degree from California State University, Northridge. Stern previously worked for CallOne, Inc., a value-added reseller of computer equipment and professional services. From 1997 to 2000, Stern led CallOne as the Vice President of Operations. He then worked for 3Com in 2000.

In forming Altay Corporation, Stern’s purpose was to provide professional services to small- and medium-size businesses (SMBs). Altay Corporation experienced rapid growth as it provided companies such as Tutor-Saliba Corporation, now Tutor Perini with Windows and VMware solutions. Changes were already afoot in that sector; there were freelancers in abundance, zeroing in on the SMB market. Against that competitive backdrop, Stern’s company was able to forge substantial relationships with a number of larger companies. As Altay developed, Stern gained valuable insights as a business leader. Over the next few years, he began to recognize that virtualization would be the future of computing. In 2007, he created Infinitely Virtual as a subsidiary of Altay Corporation to provide Virtual Dedicated Server solutions to growing enterprises.

Stern went all-in for virtualization well ahead of the time the technology achieved the status of a trend. With roots in the enterprise computing space in the early 2000s – years before cloud computing and virtualization were in the vernacular – Stern saw higher Internet speeds to the office and how businesses (especially the SMB market) were using dedicated servers. He had little interest in building a business that looked like other virtual server companies. Instead, he recognized that no one was looking at the virtual dedicated server concept – what became the “Infrastructure as a Service” model – where servers and prefab packages effectively take the place of IT professionals, a benefit for small and midsize businesses.

Stern chose Angela Terry to lead Infinitely Virtual’s financial operations. Terry’s educational and professional backgrounds matched well with the company’s needs. She received her BA in Economics from UCLA in 1982 and passed all four parts of the CPA exam on her first attempt. After working for public accounting firms, she took time off to raise a family and eventually started her own accounting practice. When Stern launched Infinitely Virtual, he sought out Terry for her financial expertise.

In the ensuing year, Stern used nearly all of his credit to fuel the growth of Infinitely Virtual. And by the end of the next fiscal year, he had paid off all of his debt and Infinitely Virtual was in the black. Infinitely Virtual experienced significant growth during the worst of the recession, in part by offering technologies and services that enable client businesses to grow and meet their revenue and productivity goals during economically challenging times.

As an early adopter, Stern quickly concluded that small and medium-sized businesses had much to gain from virtual hosting services. Yet the technologies were too complex to handle in-house. As a result, Infinitely Virtual focused on this market, which grew exponentially over the next few years.

Infinitely Virtual Begins

Infinitely Virtual began with a pilot virtual environment at the One Wilshire data center in downtown Los Angeles, using Hewlett-Packard dl360 servers and offering Windows and Linux virtual dedicated servers. Deployed in 2006, this was essentially a cloud computing platform before the term existed.

With further development, services such as Virtual Terminal Servers, Virtual Office Networks and other customized configurations were offered to customers as well.

In 2009, Infinitely Virtual moved its primary data center from the One Wilshire collocation site to the Wilshire Annex in Los Angeles. This move enabled the company to continue offering technologically sophisticated Virtual Dedicated Servers while keeping prices low. Due to increased growth, a secondary data center at the AmericanIS Lightwave Data Center was brought online in San Diego. Products and services included Privately Hosted Exchange, Virtual Terminal Server and Virtual Dedicated Server, running on HP c7000 Series bl490c blade servers.

Corporate Responsibility

Corporate responsibility and environmental consciousness are high priorities for Infinitely Virtual. All products and services feature low-power consumption, in many cases under 10 watts per server. Infinitely Virtual minimizes its impact on the environment by being both a provider and a consumer of cloud-based services.

The company ethos—treat customers/vendors/employees the way you wish to be treated—extends beyond the workday. Infinitely Virtual is an active supporter of YouthLinc, and has sponsored a young person’s participation in a trip to Kenya. The company has also made its mark in one of Eastern Europe’s rebounding economies, donating cloud-based infrastructure services to an advanced computer science class at the International Christian School of Budapest, an American school in Diosd, Hungary.

Market Successes

Infinitely Virtual ranks among the world’s Top 100 Cloud Service Providers (CSPs), according to Penton’s fifth-annual Talkin’ Cloud 100 report. In mid-2015, the company earned the rating of "Enterprise-Ready™" in Skyhigh Networks’ CloudTrust™ Program for four of its offerings: Infinitely Virtual Cloud Server Hosting, Infinitely Virtual Infinite Protect, Infinitely Virtual InfiniteVault and Virtual Terminal Server Cloud Server. The company was named a finalist in the 2013-2014 Cloud Awards Program in two categories – Best Cloud Hosting Provider and Best Cloud Reseller/Reseller Program.

Since 2010, Infinitely Virtual has consistently been voted one of the fastest growing providers in the cloud hosting industry, according to HostReview. The company took the top spot in HostReview’s rankings for March 2013. The publication honored Infinitely Virtual with Top #10 rankings in two categories in the January 2014 Web Host Awards – Best Cloud Computing Provider and Fastest Growing Provider. In October of the following year, Infinitely Virtual ranked first for Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting. In early 2016, Infinitely Virtual ranked 6th among the foremost players in the cloud hosting space for the year, according to HostReview’s Best Cloud Computing Providers Awards, finishing ahead of Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google.

Infinitely Virtual has been named to the Ingram Micro 2015 SMB 500 for three years running. The annual list recognizes the top 500 fastest-growing Ingram Micro U.S. channel partners serving the small and midsize business (SMB) market.

Market Expansion

Along with industry recognition, Infinitely Virtual has expanded its footprint in the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) market. In mid-2012, the company was approved as an Intuit Commercial Host, which enabled IV to provide QuickBooks capability to clients via its virtual server platform; within two years, Infinitely Virtual was named a Premier Reseller for the entire line of QuickBooks products and services.

In March 2013, Infinitely Virtual moved its backup data center from San Diego to Boston, setting the stage for expansion to new geographic and vertical markets. In early 2014, the company entered the manufacturing sector though its partnership with BASIS International Ltd.; Infinitely Virtual subsequently introduced InfiniteERP™, a cloud-based enterprise resource planning suite for manufacturers. Around the same time, the company released its first hosting plan aimed at the education sector. In the fall of 2015, Infinitely Virtual announced its entry into the hosted payroll processing market, a part of the $7 billion payroll processing industry. And in December of that year, the company completed the mandatory HITECH audit, paving the way for its move into the healthcare IT market with a series of HIPAA hosting plans.

Products and Services

Infinitely Virtual specializes in Windows- and Linux-based Virtual Server Hosting, as well as Microsoft Exchange Server Hosting, Office Virtualization, and Cloud Hosting solutions. Infinitely Virtual's products fall into distinct areas:

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Disaster Recovery as a Service(DRaaS)

Desktop as a Service (DaaS)

Storage as a Service (STaaS)

Notable Achievements and Interesting Facts

In October 2014, Infinitely Virtual donated cloud-based infrastructure services to the International Christian School of Budapest, an American school in Diosd, Hungary. The company outfitted an advanced computer science class at ICSB with its Diamond Virtual Datacenter Standard plan, valued at approximately $4,000. Infinitely Virtual supplied 24 students with 48 virtual machines for classroom curriculum as part of an ongoing program. The configuration consisted of 100GB RAM, 1TB storage, 50 Ghz CPU, and 48 Windows Server Standard. The ICSB installation is equipped with onsite and offsite backup using Application-Consistent Snapshot technology.

In 2014 and 2015, Infinitely Virtual founder and CEO Adam Stern moderated two webcasts from ExecSense, a pay-to-view service from the Financial Times:

In 2015 and 2016, Stern served as a judge of the Stratus Awards for Cloud Computing, a program of Business Intelligence Group. The Stratus Awards recognize those companies and individuals innovating in the Cloud and providing offerings that are differentiated in the market.

In 2016, Stern contributed to Recalculating: 97+ Experts on Driving Small Business Growth, a new book from the publishers of Small Business Digest. “Liberate Cloud Computing from Vendors - and Free Your Small Business to Use Technology to Actually Grow”

In the Press