Our name - ORCS Web - is a point of curiosity, and sometimes confusion, for some people.
Here is some background on it:
In the 1980's I ran a dial-up BBS on a Commodore 64 in the Washington DC area named "The Outer Reaches".
In the early 1990's I was running a BBS again, this time on a PC using various flavors of operating systems and software. (Does anyone remember OS/2?)
Around 1995 I started doing web development (Visual Basic) for a number of customers who wanted to leverage interactive technologies on Microsoft platforms (I wrote a lot of front-ends to JET data sources). Later that year and in early 1996 I started writing web applications for customers - still Microsoft platforms (IDC/HTX files at first) and still front-ends to JET (even with its scalability issues [note the KB article attributed to my early dealings with JET]). During this 1995/1996 desktop-to-Internet transition I renamed to The Outer Reaches Computer Solutions. (Starting to see a pattern? [O...R...C...S... :>]).
Mid-1996 my development customers were complaining more and more about the incredibly poor choices in Microsoft platform web hosting. Wanting to make sure my customers were happy, I bought my first server and started hosting them myself. In 1998 I stopped doing web development to focus only on web hosting and at that time changed the name to ORCS Web, Inc.
Now that you have the background. What are your thoughts about the name? Some people call us O.R.C.S. Some call us Orcs. Some call us Orcas. I've heard from some people who say names don't matter - just keep up the great service and support. I've heard from others who hate the name and, while they still say keep up the great service and support, they think a better name would be worth considering.
We have a great reputation tied to the name, but still, I want to put it out to anyone reading - what are your thoughts on the name? Love it? Hate it? Change it? Keep it? I'm just curious of my blog reader's opinions on the topic.
Oh, hey, if you need great Managed Hosting from a company specializing 100% in Microsoft platform hosting expertise, let us know. We'd love to put you in touch with some references for you to get a feel for the difference in our services versus the general hosting market.
Brad Kingsley
Founder and CEO
www.orcsweb.com
Managed Hosting Solutions
#1 in Service and Support