Crucial Cloud Hosting | About Crucial Australia’s #1 Web Hosting Company

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Our Story

Crucial is a business built around its customer's needs; we're friendly, flexible and honest.

Crucial is an Australian owned, privately held Cloud Hosting company that has been operating since 2003. We have built a strong brand by offering reliable solutions and high levels of customer support.

Business hosting is something we are passionate about, thats why our privately owned network includes world-class Cloud infrastructure and over 200 physical servers, hosted at the Equinix SY3 datacenter in Sydney. Its this dedication and commitment that allows us to host over 15,000 business websites and find solutions for over 4,000 customers, every day.

We continue to disrupt markets by pioneering new technologies and by delivering new innovative ways to ensure that our customers always have the most simple, easy to use online experience.

At Crucial, all of the work we do revolves
around two simple beliefs:

Our Purpose

Crucial exists to help everyone succeed online

Our Vision

To make web hosting
easy and reliable

2003

Managing Director Aaron Weller begins his web design and development business, catering for clients located in both Australian and the US.

2004

Aaron starts Crucial Paradigm Web Hosting to cater for his web design customers who needed a reliable hosting solution for their websites.

2005

2006

Aaron’s long time friend Ijan, now the Director of Sales & Finance, joins his fast-growing web hosting business.

Aaron and Ijan move into an office on Hunter St, Sydney. The two quickly establish a strong partnership.

2007

Crucial Paradigm Australia is launched (www.crucial.com.au), hosted at the Equinix SY1 Datacenter in Sydney. Crucial now offers hosting located in the US and Australia.

2008

Crucial is first-to-market with its new Forex VPS, a service that allows traders to virtually host their FX trading. Linux and Windows Virtual Servers are also launched, which will become a core part of the growth of the business.

2009

Now Operations Manager, Ross; is added to the entourage and the tripod move into a larger office on Foveaux St, Surry Hills.

With the addition of a PS3, gaming projector and Modern Warfare 2 to the office, Halo 3 is left to collect dust.

2010

A youthful and uber-talented programmer by the name of Karl joins the team, new innovations begin to roll out the door.

2011

To support the fast-growing customer base, team Crucial doubles in size with the addtion of Hendrik, Vikram, Scott, Andrew and Jada.

The Operations team endures a lengthy but successful Datacenter migration from Equinix SY2, to Equinix SY3. The increased capacity allows for heavy investment into new infrastructure.

Crucial launches the high-performance Cloud VPS, offering customers with truly elastic Virtual Server solution. Over the course of the next year, over 1000 Cloud VMs will be deployed for customers located world-wide.

2012

The team moves once again to Commonwealth St Surry Hills, offering 5 times the floor space and more room to grow. Crucial also welcomes its locally based customers to an office-warming party in February, with cheers all round.

Crucial shakes up the market with the launch of its new Cloud, becoming the only service provider in the southern hempishere to offer SolidFire all-SSD SAN storage.

Crucial Paradigm relaunches as Crucial Cloud Hosting. Improvements include a brand new website and support process, a new Cloud VPS product and the new PAYG Public Cloud.

Meet the team

Aaron Weller

Managing Director

The founding father of Crucial and brains trust of the operation, Aaron holds the key to all information that has ever passed through these doors. Originally from Adelaide he spent much of his school years internationally, generating a wealth of experience dealing with people from different facets of life. His industry knowledge, backed by his Bachelor of IT degree (UTS) provides him with the skills that continually drive and develop the business both here in Australia and the US. Aaron is passionate about the hosting industry and is regularly partaking in industry events and seminars around the world.

Ijan Kruizinga

Director of Sales & Finance

A close and long time friend of Aaron, Ijan has contributed enormously to the commercial growth of the business both locally and overseas. His ‘work 24 hours a day’ attitude, business prowess and ability to network with people from any area of globe means he’s constantly in the air or on the road, in search of the next partnership or deal. Ijan’s other passion in life is personal development so when he’s not overseas or working on the business you will find him glued to books, videos, at seminars or dedicating his time to everyone around him. More than a decade of experience has come to fruition, and when he’s not overseas he spends most of his time exercising, spending time with friends or drawing up new innovative plans for driving the business forward.

Ross Cheetham

Operations Manager

Another cornerstone of Crucial, Rosco is Crucial’s Systems Administrator resident. With humble beginning of desktop support he has honed his skills to become one of the best in the business and knows the Crucial Network like the back of his hands. With accreditation from VMware, Citrix and Microsoft, Rosco can ninja even the most difficult of software, network or hardware issues before you can say ‘to the cloud!’ (not that we ever say that). Ross has dedicated a wealth of time to the Crucial brand and has helped it flourish since joining the team in 2009.

Hendrik Kruizinga

Marketing & Accounts Manager

The younger brother of Ijan, Hendrik joined team Crucial in early 2011. His experience includes a background in corporate banking, client services, credit management and account services. Hendrik heads much of the branding and marketing projects at Crucial and is passionate about design, usability and customer interaction. A downright fanatical supporter of the Arsenal Football Club, he’s often found chatting away about football to the annoyance of everyone else in the office. Hendrik also enjoys many out-of-office hobbies such as photography, music, videography and fitness.

Scott Francis

Engineering & Development Manager

At first glance Scott looks like various fast bowlers of days gone by, which is fitting as he’s currently a regular in Sydney first-grade cricket. Joining in 2011, Scott has slotted in seamlessly to the daily processes and projects that occur at Crucial HQ including the rollout of customer interfaces and provisioning networks. With a primary background in communications and digital content delivery, Scott has administered network systems and coordinated projects for major telecommunication companies. A lover of all things engineering based, he thoroughly enjoys leading the team onto bigger and brighter prospects, plus he has no problem getting up in front of the mic whilst bustin out some tunes on his guitar.

Andrew Thorn

Business Development Manager

With a cheek to cheek smile Andrew is the man everyone wants to take on the golf course, an offer he gladly accepts every time. The first true BDM under the Crucial banner, Andrew has brought a wealth of corporate experience to the team and is generating new ideas and leads on a daily basis. With a focus on new deals, social media, web design and SEO; Andrew is constantly out and about meeting new people and developing new contacts. Andrew is keen hosting enthusiast and attends many of the events and seminars in Sydney and also lends a hand to much of the customer relations activity within the walls at Crucial. On the weekends he loves the finer things life and is purveyor of gourmet food and great wine.

Jada White

System Administrator & Datacenter Technician

Jada is the Datacenter technician that delivers the uptime our customers desire. He has a depth of knowledge that extends to mathematics & computer science, he also has a strong background in the hosting industry working with everything from web design and coding through to hardware and networks. An expert with a Samurai sword; Jada indulges himself with HBO documentaries, fitness fiend Tony Horton and authentic Japanese cuisine. Jada also holds the record for the fastest hard drive hot swap, unfortunately thats not Guinness certified much to his dismay.

Daniel Tandowski

Sales & Technical Support

With a resume swelling with Windows and Linux Systems Administration experience, Dan the Man has contributed a lot in a little time. He has a history that includes virtualisation, desktop support & corporate LAN administration. Fortunately for him, Surry Hills is awash with the scent of roasting coffee beans – which is partly the reason why he accepted the job given his unusually high dependency on caffeine. Daniel loves a great read whether it be on astronomy, politics or philosophy. He also enjoys any film that is mildly comedic or contains some outer-space dialogue.

Aden Young

Sales & Technical Support

When he disclosed his taste in music here in the office, we immediately assumed Sales and Technical guru Aden Young was a gen. X’er living in a gen. Y body. Full of Linux know-how and a keen Ubuntu enthusiast, he joined team Crucial and has embraced our way of hosting. With a strong background in web hosting and technical support, Aden is a multi-talented guru who can’t get enough of Reddit other mind-broadening websites. Never one to turn down a brown-eyed girl, Aden kicks back on the weekend to the sounds of Passion Pit, Starsailor and Van Morrison. Just don’t ask him to open the Windows, he doesn’t know how.

Awards

Crucial have recently been nominated as a finalist in the City of Sydney Business Awards for 2012 in the category of Information & Communication Technology.

Crucial’s directors, Aaron Weller and Ijan Kruizinga, qualified for the prodigious SmartCompany Smart50 awards in 2012. Crucial finished a respectable 42nd, Australia-wide.

Also in 2012, Crucial qualified for the CRN Fast 50. Which recognises the fastest 50 growing Resellers that work in the digital and communications space.

Crucial is very proud to be involved in such award programs and would like to recognise the important work that our counterparts and competitors do in the hosting industry that allows us to grow and help Australian business.

Crucial Initiatives

Green Hosting

Crucial has partnered with Carbon Neutral to offset the company's emissions. We also plant one tree for every new paying customer!

Charity / Not for Profit

We offer 50% OFF our business hosting packages for charities and not for profit organizations. Contact us anytime, we want to host your website!

A Greener Hosting Solution

It’s a fact that humans are doing terrible damage to the planet. As a web hosting provider we realise that on a daily basis our business contributes to this damage.

Crucial has led the way supporting Carbon Neutral by turning emissions into trees. We were the first and still are the only hosting company in Australia that has implemented a one new account, one new tree policy.

We support sustainable long term growth by meeting the needs of not only our customers but also our environment; this takes us all one step closer to a greener future.

What can you do?

CAR

Carpool whenever you can to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from our cars.

RECYCLE

The domestic waste we generate has a large impact on greenhouse gas emissions. Reduce, reuse and recycle whenever you can.

RENEWABLE ENERGY

The domestic waste we generate has a large impact on greenhouse gas emissions. Reduce, reuse and recycle whenever you can.

ENERGY EFFICIENT BULBS

Compact fluorescent light bulbs use 80% less energy and last up to 8 times longer than conventional light bulbs.

BE WATER WISE

Treating and transporting drinking water to our homes consumes energy. Plant ‘water wise’ gardens and mulch your garden to minimise water use.

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