Aplus.Net

Aplus.Net is the commonly used name for Abacus America, Inc. which legally does business as Aplus.Net Internet Services. The company is a web hosting provider, domain name registrar, information technology company, and self-described “Internet solutions” provider that was founded in 1993 by entrepreneur Ivan Vachovsky in San Diego, California.

The company moved its corporate headquarters to Overland Park, Kansas, in the Kansas City Metropolitan Area, early in 2007 after its acquisition by Catalyst Investors in mid-2006. Gabriel Murphy, a co-investor, was appointed to the position of Chief Executive Officer and to the board of directors, with long-time associate Ryan Elledge serving as Chief Operations Officer.
Mr. Murphy was already a web hosting industry veteran; he co-founded CommuniTech.Net in 1997 and won the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2001 for that company’s success. (In February 2002, CommuniTech was sold to Interland; Interland subsequently changed its name to Web.com after acquiring that firm in 2005.)

Aplus.Net has more than 90,000 customers worldwide and four bases of operations: The company retains an operations center and data center in San Diego, and also has offices in Phoenix, Arizona and Sofia, Bulgaria.

Company history
The company was founded in 1993 as Abacus America, Inc. by entrepreneur and inventor Ivan Vachovsky, a native of Bulgaria who had emigrated to the United States following the end of the Cold War. The company began as a computer repair and sales firm, but soon evolved into an Internet access company (in 1995). By the late 1990s, Aplus.Net had also evolved into a shared web hosting provider, and in 2001 began offering dedicated hosting.

The company was acquired by Catalyst Investors in 2006 and relocated to Overland Park, Kansas in 2007. Aplus.Net acquired Web Image, a White Plains, New York-based company in August, 2007. Tyler Newton of Catalyst Investors serves as chairman of the board of Aplus.

Gabriel Murphy
As of July 2006, Gabriel Murphy is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Aplus.Net, as well as a shareholder and member of the board of directors.

Prior to his tenure at Aplus.Net, Mr. Murphy was already a well-known entrepreneur in the Kansas City area for having founded or co-founded several successful Internet-related start-up firms, including CommuniTech (now a part of Web.com) and iNET Interactive, LLC. He is also founder of Murphy Properties, LLC, a commercial real estate brokerage firm that holds five office buildings consisting of more than 500,000 square feet of multi-tenant office space throughout the Kansas City area.

Mr. Murphy also is a shareholder and sits on the board of directors for Catalyst Repository Systems (formerly CaseSHARE Systems, Inc.), a Denver-based investment brokerage. He is also a major owner and director of Kansas City-based CobraGuard, a provider of web-based COBRA compliance services, and shareholder and advisor to email service provider FuseMail.com.

A native of Saint Joseph, Missouri, Mr. Murphy is a 1999 honorary graduate of Cornell University, where he obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Management and Marketing.

Brand
Rodopi Software, Inc., was a sister company to Aplus.Net and utilized the same base of operations, was also founded by Ivan Vachovsky (in 1998) and operated under the Abacus America corporate umbrella. Rodopi was separated from the Abacus America corporate umbrella prior to the Vachovskys selling the company. Also included in the Aplus.Net family are Cedant Web Solutions, a web hosting company; Web-a-File, a consumer file storage management service; and Web-a-Photo, a consumer photo storage and viewing service. The newly acquired Web Image design service is currently being incorporated into Aplus.Net’s product suite.

Awards
Aplus.Net has won a number of web hosting industry, tech industry and general business awards and has also been a finalist for many others. These awards include:

Most significantly, Aplus.Net’s Solo XR (its best-selling shared hosting plan) won the CNET Editor’s Choice Award in April, 2003.

In September 2006, Aplus.Net was named among the 50 fastest-growing technology companies in the San Diego Metropolitan Area, receiving the Deloitte & Touche Fast 50 award, a regional version of the Deloitte Fast 500 award.

In September 2006, Aplus.Net received the Fast 100 award from the San Diego Business Journal, ranking number 69 among the list of 100 Fastest-Growing Privately Held Companies in the San Diego Metropolitan Area.

In October 2006, Aplus.Net was named as a finalist for the 13th Annual High Tech Award for Internet/Web Commerce, as held by the San Diego chapter of the AeA (formerly known as the American Electronics Association).

In addition, Aplus.Net regularly receives a host of web hosting industry-specific awards from such organizations as TopHosts, HostReview, and Web Host Directory.

Controversies
Under its previous ownership, Aplus.Net was caught engaging in unethical business practices, which it subsequently admitted to. In 2004 the company issued a press release acknowledging that it had engaged in "Google bombing". According to the press release, the questionable practices were due to the actions of a third-party contractor hired to optimize the company’s search engine rankings. Aplus.Net issued an apology and accepted its penalty.

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