Gandi

For the Indian independence leader, see Mahatma Gandhi.
Gandi SAS
Société par actions simplifiée
Founded 1999
Founder Pierre Beyssac
Laurent Chemla
Valentin Lacambre
Headquarters Paris, France
Area served
 Worldwide
Key people
 Stephan Ramoin (President)
Nicolas Lhuillery (Head of Product, Gandi SAS)
Leland Vandervort (Director, Technical Operations, Gandi SAS)
Pascal Bouchareine (Director, R&D, Gandi SAS)
Thomas Stocking (VP US Operations)
Services Domain name registration
Web hosting
Blog hosting service
Website www.gandi.net

Gandi SAS (Gestion et Attribution des Noms de Domaine sur Internet - Management and Allocation of Domain Names on the Internet) is a French company providing domain name registration, web hosting, and related services. The company's main office is in Paris.[1]

History

Gandi was founded as a domain registrar in March 2000 by Valentin Lacambre, Laurent Chemla, Pierre Beyssac and David Nahmias.[1]

In 2005, ownership and management was changed to a team led by Stephan Ramoin (formerly of MultiMania/Lycos),[2] and investors Joe White, Eirik Pettersen (co-founders of the online website building service Moonfruit), and Warren Stephens.

In 2008, Gandi launched a Xen-based VPS cloud hosting service, based on a system of "shares" and scalable resources that can be adjusted in real time.[3]

In 2010 the company created a subsidiary in the US, opening a data center in downtown Baltimore, Phoenix, Arizona and business offices in San Francisco, California, as well as creating a customer support center in the US, which until then had been exclusively operated out of Paris, France at Place de la Nation.

As of late 2011, Gandi.net was the 25th largest registrar in terms of the number of domains registered.[4]

In Jul 31, 2014 , Amazon Web Services Partnered with Gandi and Announced Domain Name Registration Through their Route 53 Service[5] [6]

Business model

Gandi does not advertise,[7] relying primarily on "word of mouth" recommendations from existing customers.

The company has a program to provide funds and/or promotion to projects and organizations that meet its criteria of "concrete", "open", and "alternative".[8] It uses and advocates for open-source software,[9] and since September 2010 has supported Creative Commons, providing them with free domain registrations and renewals, as well as VPS services.[10] Other projects that Gandi supports include Electronic Frontier Foundation, Students for Free Culture, The Spamhaus Project, Debian, Dotclear, Paris Web, World Wide Fund for Nature, VideoLAN, Adie, Canard PC, SiteMaker (Moonfruit) which it supplies as an option to customers, International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), Demotix, GoodPlanet, Jamendo, In Libro Veritas, Arrêt sur Images le retour, Software Freedom Conservancy, and Silex website builder.[8][11]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Domain names and VPS Cloud hosting - Who is Gandi?". Gandi. Retrieved 2014-02-08.
  2. ↑ "Portrait of Stephan Ramoin, President of Gandi SAS". Gandi. Retrieved 2014-02-08.
  3. ↑ "Why choose Gandi for your hosting service? - Power on demand". Gandi. Retrieved 2014-02-08.
  4. ↑ "Largest ICANN Registrars". webhosting.info. Retrieved 2014-02-08.
  5. ↑ http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2014/07/31/amazon-route-53-announces-domain-name-registration-geo-routing-and-lower-pricing/
  6. ↑ http://docs.aws.amazon.com/Route53/latest/DeveloperGuide/registrar.html
  7. ↑ Ryan (2010-09-07). "Customer Support at Gandi: Evolution and Future". Gandi. Retrieved 2014-02-08.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 "Gandi supports alternative projects". Gandi. Retrieved 2014-02-08.
  9. ↑ "Gandi GitHub repository". Retrieved 2014-02-08.
  10. ↑ Kinkade, Nathan (2010-09-13). "Gandi.net supports CC".
  11. ↑ "Episode 0x3A: FOSDEM 2013: FOSS Code Goes In And Never Comes Out (time index ~ 1:00:00)". Software Freedom Conservancy. 2013-04-03. Retrieved 2014-02-08.