Christopher Faulkner, CEO of C I Host, has been named a finalist in the 2007 Southwest Area Entrepreneur of the Year® Program sponsored by Ernst & Young

The awards program honors leaders of companies who have shown excellence in promoting growth, creating successful marketing strategies, developing a positive corporate culture and giving back to the community.

This is the second year Faulkner has been a finalist in the program. "I am honored to be a finalist in this prestigious program," Faulkner said. "Ernst and Young certainly epitomizes the level of creativity, excellence and innovation that all of us aspire to in our business lives."

Finalists will take part in a Finalists’ and Judges’ Reception at the Hotel Crescent Court in Dallas on May 22 and will be honored at the Annual Awards Banquet on June 30 at the Dallas Market Center Complex.

C I Host celebrated its 10th Anniversary in April. Faulkner, 30, founded the company as a college student, first running it out of his dorm room, and has led it ever since. In 2006, C I Host added more than 60,000 new clients all over the world and lowered its churn rate to 2 percent, less than half of the rate in 2005 and considered the lowest in the web hosting industry. Revenues increased more than 20 percent and profits increased more than 25 percent.

The main data center in the Dallas-Fort Worth area was expanded for the ninth time in ten years and the company has contracted for another 60,000 square feet of space. All this expansion has been supported from the organic growth of the company with no use of venture capital, bank loans or outside investments.

The company is known for its innovative marketing strategies, its customer-centered focus, its supportive corporate climate and its leadership in keeping the Internet secure, robust and accessible. "We are extremely happy to be at this juncture in the growth of our company," Faulkner said. "The combination of a solid financial footing and a supportive customer base bodes well for our future."

About C I Host
C I Host ( www.cihost.com ), based in the Dallas/Fort Worth market, is a Web hosting and Internet solutions provider, domain name registrar (DNR) and application service provider (ASP) hosting 330,000 domains in 190 countries worldwide. C I Host creates business-class Web hosting solutions for the small- and medium-enterprise (SME) market, with the broadest portfolio of managed hosting and value-added services in the industry. C I Host is accredited by ICANN to register domain names.

C I Host is HIPAA-compliant and has passed SAS 70 Type I & II audits. C I Host has been ranked #1 in speed by the Adoloma Web Hosting Guide. C I Host has been consistently ranked among the Top 5 Web hosting companies out of 16,000 around the globe by c|net's Ultimate Web Host List, HostPulse, WebHostsOnline.com and HostChart.com. C I Host was named among the Top 25 Web hosting companies by HostIndex.com.

C I Host offers turn-key services ranging from initial domain name registration to custom dedicated servers for e-commerce on today's Web. The company offers innovative packages and services to the Internet community.

C I Host operates four diverse data centers across the United States, with its main facility and Network Operations Center in Bedford, Texas. C I Host also has offices in Los Angeles, Chicago, Newark and London. All telco-grade, tier-1 data centers are wholly owned and operated by C I Host and consist of redundant diesel generator backups and a temperature-controlled secure environment with fully redundant UPS capability. All server hardware is fully tested and configured for optimal performance. Daily Web server backups and full fire protection guard against any data loss. To deliver speed and reliability, C I Host's servers are connected to five diverse Internet backbones for a total of more than 5 Gigabits of available bandwidth.