In 1995, a financial information company called Bridge had a business problem: How to collect financial information from around the world, consolidate that information, and deliver it as part of a powerful trading system to hundreds of thousands of terminals. The big IT and telecom suppliers of the time could not provide a solution to meet Bridge’s requirements. So Bridge built a real-time infrastructure that extended to 45 countries and delivered high reliability to trading terminals at excellent price points.

Around the same time, DiamondNet was formed to fix the Internet performance problem by building a better Internet that avoided the public networking points that often got bogged down or targeted by viruses.

In 1996, DiamondNet changed its name to Savvis, and in April 1999, Savvis was acquired by Bridge. The combination of Bridge’s global, high-performance, secure private IT infrastructure and Savvis’ high-performance Internet represented a new breed of IT that attracted the interest of customers and Wall Street. Savvis made its initial public offering (IPO) in February 2000 and acquired the combined IT structure simultaneously with its IPO.

Since that time, Savvis has grown significantly, both organically and through acquisition. In 2002, when Intel decided to exit the hosting business, Savvis was selected by Intel to provide hosting and network services to their clients. In 2003, Savvis acquired the commercial business of WAM!NET and gained a significant footing and powerful application tools for the media and entertainment, print and publishing, retail, and consumer goods verticals. In 2004, Savvis acquired the assets of Cable & Wireless USA, which included 3,000 marquis enterprise customers, 15 data centers, and significant consulting experience from Exodus Communications, a Tier 1 backbone. Today, Savvis has over 2,000 employees and 28 data centers.