Highwinds Network Group

Highwinds Network Group, Inc. (Highwinds) is a company that was founded in 2002 and offers IP services including CDN, cloud storage, IP transit, transport and colocation.[1] The company headquarters are located in Winter Park, Florida, United States. Highwinds maintains Network Operations Centers (NOCs) in Winter Park, FL, Phoenix, AZ, and Amsterdam, Netherlands as well as offices in Costa Mesa, CA, São Paulo, Brazil and London, England. The Highwinds network, called RollingThunder, consists of more than 70 points of presence[2] throughout North America, South America, Europe, Asia and Australia.[3] Highwinds provides video streaming services to media companies including Blip.TV[4] and Hudl,[5] delivers online games for publishers such as Valve[6] and CCP Games[7] and distributes advertising assets for leading platforms including Facebook's LiveRail.[8]

Highwinds Network Group
Private
IndustryInternet
Founded2002, Acquired 2017
Headquarters941 W. Morse Boulevard, Winter Park, Florida, United States
Key people
Steve Miller, Lance Crosby
ParentStackPath
Websitehighwinds.com

Financing announcements

On March 11, 2008, Highwinds announced it had closed a $55 million[9] round of equity financing led by General Catalyst Partners[10] and Alta Communications.[11] The funds will be used to expand the Highwinds CDN and RollingThunder network.

On May 4, 2011, Highwinds announced that it had secured a $50 million[12] credit facility with Silicon Valley Bank and Comerica Bank. According to the press release from the company, the new credit facility allowed Highwinds to achieve a more attractive all-in cost of capital and was evidence of the company's impressive financial profile.

On August 8, 2013, Highwinds announced that it had secured $205 million[13] in new financing. The transaction was led by Cerberus Business Finance, LLC and Goldman Sachs BDC, Inc., an investment fund managed by Goldman Sachs Asset Management, L.P., with participation from the company's existing equity sponsor, General Catalyst Partners, and the company's management team. The funding positioned Highwinds for massive growth of its global CDN.

On February 4, 2017, Highwinds was acquired by StackPath, a cloud services company.[14] Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed. As quoted in their blog, "Highwinds' services and platform will be integrated with existing StackPath offerings and operations to create a single global platform with the industry's best security features and performance."

Omicron Media, the former owner of Highwinds, maintained ownership over the Usenet portion of Highwinds and maintains their operations under the name HW Media.[15] HW Media currently provides Usenet services to ISPs and resellers. HW Media is consistently in the Top 10 out on the TOP1000 Usenet Servers.[16]

HW Media anticompetitive practices controversy

HW Media (the part of Highwinds still owned by Omicron Media) is well known for its reseller services and claiming to be the Usenet server with the largest retention. However, resellers of HW media fail to disclose that they work with the company. Most people who buy multiple accounts for increased binary completion end up buying multiple accounts from different HW resellers. This leads to people paying multiple times for the same service. This has drawn criticism from Usenet users that HW Media is trying to deceive customers by not making their resellers disclose their affiliation with HW Media. The list below is non-exhaustive list of HW Media resellers:

  • Easynews
  • NewsgroupDirect
  • Newsgroup.Ninja
  • Newshosting
  • UsenetServer
  • Tweaknews
gollark: d i s l i k e d !
gollark: i s u n i v e r s a l l y
gollark: T h i s
gollark: Use fibonacci indentation.
gollark: Maybe it doesn't like tabs.

See also
  • Content Delivery Network

References
  1. "IP Transit".
  2. "CDN - Highwinds Content Delivery Network - Highwinds". CDN - Highwinds Content Delivery Network.
  3. "StackPath".
  4. "Blip Launches New Apps for iOS, Android, Xbox and Kindle". 4 January 2013.
  5. "Highwinds Streams Professional and Collegiate Sports Video to Hudl Users".
  6. "CDN - Highwinds Content Delivery Network - Highwinds". CDN - Highwinds Content Delivery Network.
  7. "CCP Games Taps the Power of Highwinds Game Delivery Network for EVE Online".
  8. Clancy, Michelle. "LiveRail selects Highwinds for CDN - Online Video - News - Rapid TV News". www.rapidtvnews.com.
  9. "CDN - Highwinds Content Delivery Network - Highwinds". CDN - Highwinds Content Delivery Network. Archived from the original on 2012-05-29. Retrieved 2012-02-17.
  10. "Omicron Media - General Catalyst".
  11. Alta Communications Digital Media Portfolio
  12. "CDN - Highwinds Content Delivery Network - Highwinds". CDN - Highwinds Content Delivery Network.
  13. Lawler, Ryan. "Content Delivery Network Highwinds Raises $205 Million in Debt From Cerberus, Goldman Sachs, And General Catalyst".
  14. Highwinds joins StackPath
  15. "Global Usenet Cloud Access Provider | HW Media, Inc". highwinds-media.com. Retrieved 2020-02-27.
  16. Ghane, Sameh. "Top1000". Top1000 Usenet Servers.
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