ServerAxis

ServerAxis is a web server company based in Chicago and formerly in Miami as well. It was founded in 2001. In February 2016, they caused controversy when their Miami-based servers were taken completely offline without notice. According to various reports, ServerAxis physically removed their servers from the Miami colocation office at CoreSite on February 29 with no announcement or explanation, taking thousands of sites offline. They did not respond to any communications, and as of March 8 still have not, jeopardizing the existence of numerous websites, many of which relied on ServerAxis for their backups as well. Several different hosts relied on ServerAxis for their servers - all were impacted. They attempted to serve as liaisons between the clients and ServerAxis, but have reported no response. On March 10, ServerAxis broke ten days of silence by sending a communication to all clients stating they were recovering from a "catastrophe" in Miami and that the servers would be in their possession in Chicago shortly. Service was never restored.
In spite of this, ServerAxis's website still listed servers for sale in their Miami datacenter as of March 8, but removed them a few days later.
Impact on women's basketball
Several sources, including Forbes and FiveThirtyEight reported that ServerAxis's extended outage had a major impact on women's basketball statistics and coverage of the sport. The outage occurred about two weeks prior to, and continued during, the 2016 NCAA Women's Division I Basketball Tournament, and among the sites that were taken down was Women's Basketball State, which was by far the most comprehensive statistical guide to the sport. Its sister site, Basketball State, which covers the men's game, was also forced down although numerous other sites exist for that purpose, unlike in the women's game. Although the NCAA website contains some basic statistics, the data at Women's Basketball State was far more extensive and not available anywhere else. This had a major impact on coverage of the tournament, as journalists were unable to look up advanced statistics and had to go with what they could find. Coverage of conference tournaments leading up to the NCAA Tournament was also impacted, as those occurred after the outage started. WBBState later announced it was pursuing legal action against ServerAxis, but was currently in the process of rebuilding its site and would relaunch on May 15, the opening day of the 2016 WNBA season.

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