Founded in a college dorm room in 1994,
Atlantic.Net has grown into a trusted provider of secure, high-performance cloud solutions for businesses worldwide.
Website Planet spoke with CEO
Marty Puranik to learn more about the company’s journey, its latest innovations like Secure Block Storage v2, and how it continues to lead in compliance-focused hosting.
Can you please give us a brief overview of Atlantic.Net as a company and its backstory?
Founded in 1994 by University of Florida students Manoj Puranik and Jose Sanchez, Atlantic.Net (originally Internet Connect Company Computers) began as a small dial-up and web hosting provider operating from Puranik’s dorm room. Rapid growth in the 1990s, fueled by acquisitions such as First Coast Internet and Worldwide Internet, led to the formation of Atlantic.Net and expansion into Tampa and Orlando, Florida.
In the 2000s, Atlantic.Net diversified, adding webmail, DSL, and private networks before entering the VoIP market in 2005. Atlantic.Net also opened its first data center in Orlando, shifting focus to dedicated servers, colocation, and managed services.
Recognizing the rise of cloud computing, Atlantic.Net launched cloud hosting and virtualization services in 2010. The Atlantic.Net Cloud Platform (
cloud.atlantic.net) launched soon after. Strategic partnerships with Microsoft, Intel, and NVIDIA — to name a few — help Atlantic.Net provide access to cutting-edge technology, ensuring our clients benefit from the latest tech, including our latest upgrade for GPU Hosting for AI/ML workloads.
You have recently announced the launch of the upgraded Secure Block Storage (SBS) solution. What motivated the development of the new Secure Block Storage v2, and what specific market needs were you aiming to address?
As global market volatility continues to impact everything from supply chains to tariffs, Atlantic.Net is offering businesses something rare: stability and security in the cloud. The company announced the launch of its upgraded Secure Block Storage (SBS) solution (
www.atlantic.net/cloud-platform/block-storage), designed to be ultra-fast, scalable, affordable, and resilient, giving peace of mind in uncertain times.
The development of Secure Block Storage (SBS) v2 was primarily driven by changing customer requirements for significantly higher performance and more sophisticated security, alongside new storage methods that allowed us to meet these demands. We recognized a clear need to provide a more dependable, well-performing, and future-proof solution. Our customers were increasingly running data-intensive applications that pushed the limits of existing storage.
SBS v2 aims to address key market needs by delivering ultra-high-performance storage suitable for modern workloads like AI/ML and real-time analytics. It works hand-in-hand with our GPU hosting service and provides comprehensive, multi-layered security features, including advanced encryption options and tools to simplify compliance.
SBS v2 caters to the demand for agile and cost-effective scalability, allowing businesses to adapt to fluctuating data volumes and performance requirements without over-provisioning. This includes improved data safety to ensure business continuity and simplified IT operations.
Can you explain the 99.999% availability architecture and how it protects against downtime or data loss?
While Atlantic.Net’s infrastructure is engineered for an impressive 99.999% overall availability, this strong foundation is precisely what enables us to offer an actual 100% Uptime Service Level Agreement (SLA) (
www.atlantic.net/hosting-services-provider/100-uptime-sla)for key operational components. This exceptional reliability is built upon multiple layers of redundancy and proactive protection designed to prevent service interruptions and data loss.
Key to this are N+1 redundant power and cooling systems, ensuring continuous operation, and a multi-carrier, redundant network design that prevents connectivity loss. Data integrity and accessibility are maintained through RAID storage configurations, protecting against drive failures. Also, continuous 24/7 monitoring by our Network Operations Center, along with automatic failover mechanisms, means potential issues are rapidly addressed, often before they can affect client service.
It’s this comprehensive design—from fully redundant physical systems and strong data protection to immediate failover capabilities—that allows Atlantic.Net to confidently guarantee 100% uptime for the network, fundamental infrastructure (like power and cooling), and ensure rapid hardware replacement. For these fundamental areas, our commitment, backed by our SLA, is for zero downtime, built upon a system designed to prevent nearly all interruptions and safeguard your data.
How does the snapshot functionality work, and what kind of recovery timeframes can clients expect?
Snapshots (
www.atlantic.net/cloud-platform/backups) capture a point-in-time image of your Cloud Server’s local storage. These snapshots can be used to restore your server to the exact state it was in when the snapshot was taken. They can also be transferred to other locations or used to create new Cloud Servers.
The snapshot process is automated and can be scheduled at various intervals to meet different Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs):
- Every 5 minutes for high-priority servers
- Every 15 minutes for business-critical systems
- Hourly for file or application servers
- Daily for lower-priority systemsThis flexibility allows clients to balance data protection needs with resource utilization.
Atlantic.Net offers two primary recovery methods:
- File-Level Recovery: Allows for the restoration of individual files or folders from any backup point without the need for a full system restore. This granular approach enables quick retrieval of specific data.
- Full System Restore: Enables the restoration of the entire Cloud Server to a previous state with a single click, facilitating rapid recovery in the event of major system failures or data corruption.
These recovery options are designed to meet stringent Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs), ensuring that clients can resume operations promptly after an incident.
To enhance data protection, Atlantic.Net offers off-site snapshot backups across all its data center locations. Clients can choose where their data is stored, providing resilience against local disasters. Additionally, snapshot replication services can replicate your Cloud servers to one or more failover computing nodes, ensuring high availability and quick recovery in unforeseen circumstances.
Atlantic.Net is known for HIPAA-compliant hosting—how does Secure Block Storage v2 fit into your broader compliance strategy?
Atlantic.Net’s Secure Block Storage v2 is a key part of our comprehensive approach to supporting customers with their HIPAA compliance needs (
www.atlantic.net/hipaa-compliant-hosting). It’s specifically designed with features that help healthcare organizations and any entities handling Protected Health Information (PHI) to store and manage this sensitive data in line with HIPAA’s technical safeguard requirements.
Here’s how Secure Block Storage v2 contributes:
- Data Encryption: Secure Block Storage v2 uses strong encryption methods to protect data when it is stored and when it is being sent. This helps ensure that PHI stays confidential and is protected from unauthorized viewing or use.
- Access Controls: The system includes strict access control tools. These allow only authorized individuals to access sensitive data, which lines up with HIPAA’s rules for controlled access to PHI.
- Audit Logging: Detailed logging features allow for the tracking of who accesses data and any changes made. These logs are very important for checking on compliance and looking into any security events that might happen.
- Data Redundancy and Backup: Secure Block Storage v2 provides data redundancy and regular backups. This helps ensure data is available and its integrity is maintained, which are necessary parts of HIPAA’s technical safeguards for protecting information.
- Business Associate Agreement (BAA): As part of our broader compliance support, Atlantic.Net offers a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) to clients using services like Secure Block Storage v2 for PHI. This agreement confirms our commitment to HIPAA rules and clearly defines our responsibilities for protecting PHI, making SBS v2 a suitable component within a customer’s overall HIPAA compliance plan.
Is there anything else about your work that you’d like to share that we haven’t covered?
Atlantic.Net has been a profitable and growing company since 1994. We have recently introduced GPU Cloud Server Hosting (
www.atlantic.net/gpu-server-hosting) service, which enables developers and engineers to provision a GPU server in less than 60 seconds. Atlantic.Net has built a strong reputation for providing excellent service for over 31 years, and we continue to adapt and change to continue to enhance our service.
