Seattle's Earthquake Shakes Cobalt HQ But Client Service Continues Uninterrupted
SEATTLE--March 1, 2001--Following yesterday's major earthquake in Western Washington, The Cobalt Group reported that service to its 13,000 automotive dealer clients was not impacted, and that all of its Seattle employees escaped unharmed. Cobalt , a leading provider of e-business products and services to the automotive industry, is headquartered in Seattle, Wash., at 2200 First Avenue South in Seattle's SODO district.
"We are very relieved that all of our employees are safe following yesterday's earthquake. While our headquarters building sustained minor damage, we do not foresee any interruptions in Web site and applications services to our dealer clients," said John Holt, president and CEO of The Cobalt Group. "Cobalt currently serves over one million Web pages per day for our dealer clients and this earthquake put our systems to the test. It is a wonderful testament to the strength of our technology infrastructure and hosting environment that we did not experience any loss of service to our customers and that all of our servers are up and running."
Cobalt's Web site and database servers are located at an off-site, state-of-the-art earthquake proof facility operated by Internap. Cobalt has invested more than $8 million in its server and database farm, which provides real-time redundancy and load balancing for client Web sites.
Cobalt occupies 75,000 square feet in a renovated 1916 cold storage building. The building, owned by Zarett Properties, was fully renovated and seismically upgraded in 1999, prior to Cobalt occupying the building. Approximately 400 of Cobalt's 600 employees were in the building at the time of the earthquake, which measured 6.8 in magnitude. All employees were immediately evacuated and customer service was relocated to a new facility. Starting Thursday, March 1, Cobalt's eCare service group is available to clients at a slightly reduced capacity, but client needs will be addressed during the same business day. Clients can access the company through the same eCare service number as they always have: 206/269-6363 or toll-free at 800/909-8244.