News and Events

Percept Research Upgrades Data Center with Hosted Solutions

Posted by Brian Mahoney on Thursday, Aug 26, 2010

 

RALEIGH, NC, July 29, 2010 – Hosted Solutions, the East Coast’s premier provider of enterprise-class managed hosting solutions, announced that Percept Research, a worldwide source for high-quality marketing research and consulting services in both the commercial and academic sectors, has selected Hosted Solutions to deliver a full range of managed hosting services. 

The companies said that Hosted Solutions is providing a dedicated server solution for Percept Research, which includes remotely operating the company’s information security and storage platforms, as well as running a virtualized dedicated application server from Hosted Solutions’ secure SAS-70 Type II data center in Raleigh.  The Raleigh center is one of five such faclities operated by Hosted Solutions along the East Coast.  The services allow Percept to better concentrate on its core capabilities, and spend less time on IT administration.

“We want to focus on building our business rather than our infrastructure,” said Brian Mahoney, Percept Research’s chief executive officer.  “While we conduct research on several different levels, 85 percent of what we do is web-based.  We needed to work with a trusted partner.”  Mahoney noted that one of his company’s clients is a Fortune 50 enterprise, for whom Percept Research conducts between five and six thousand customer satisfaction surveys each month.  “We consider their brand to be sacrosanct.  If there’s a problem, it reflects on them, not us.  Downtime and problems are not an option.”

In addition, Mahoney said that Percept’s “MBA Lifecycle” consultancy, delivering benchmarking assessments specifically tailored to schools offering graduate management degrees, required a consistent level of service as well, since the company works with more than 200 universities and 300 MBA programs worldwide.  He said Percept’s previous provider was unable to handle the enormous global scope of his company’s services; “It got to the point where one of the world’s largest business schools was unable to reach us by email, because the provider had blocked incoming emails from their country.  They had to send us a fax.  This was not acceptable for anyone,” Mahoney added.

Mahoney and Percept Research took advantage of Hosted Solutions’ “Hi-Touch” customized approach, in which Hosted Solutions experienced technical staff helped them implement a design meeting their specific needs, giving Percept the specific blend of reach, technology and reliability the company requires.   Hosted Solutions also helped Percept Research smoothly manage the data center migration from the previous provider in less than a day, with no issues.

“Percept Research is a perfect example that even smaller firms have big clients and substantial responsibilities,” said Kip Turco, Hosted Solutions’ chief operating officer.  “They needed, and we were able to provide, a company that won’t quit on them, services that deliver at a fraction of the cost of doing it themselves, and people who understand their future requirements and are ready to map out a pathway that will help them easily manage their growth.”

About Hosted Solutions
Hosted Solutions is the East Coast’s premier provider of enterprise-class managed hosting solutions.  Its high quality data center and managed hosting services, including a dedicated server offering, managed colocation and its exclusive Stratus Trusted Cloud™suite , maintain and protect customers’ mission-critical IT systems and applications, enabling them to reduce operating costs, lower the risk of downtime, focus on core competencies, and achieve their top business objectives. The company operates five SAS 70 Type II certified data centers in Boston MA, Charlotte NC, Raleigh NC, and Cary NC, providing best-of-breed data center operations with hardened physical infrastructure, the highest level of security.  It also offers a complete managed services portfolio, including enterprise storage, network, OS management, middleware server management, DBA services, security and disaster recovery.  Hosted Solutions is backed by Boston-based private equity firm ABRY Partners. 

About Percept Research
Percept Research provides high quality marketing research and consulting services with cost-effective approaches. Based in Charlotte, NC, Percept Research offers a large variety of market research and data management methodologies uniquely tailored to the needs of its clients. Whether an individual project or a large-scale research program, its flexible solutions meet a wide variety of research needs, ranging from traditional data collection to cutting-edge Internet solutions.  

Percept Research is a global leader in conducting higher education market research.  The firm also provides MBA program benchmark assessments with its MBA Lifecycle Survey Suite.

For more information:

Noreen Allen
919.882.3048
Hosted Solutions
nallen@hostedsolutions.com

Steve Friedberg
610.518.7474
MMI Communications
steve@mmicommunications.net

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Topics: Brian Mahoney, press release

Percept Research Attends EMBA Council Midwest Regional Meeting

Posted by Brian Mahoney on Monday, Jul 19, 2010

Brian Mahoney, Managing Partner at Percept Research, attended the Midwest regional Executive MBA Council meeting.  The meeting was hosted by the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management on July 13-14, 2010.

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Topics: EMBAC, Conference, MBA Student Exit Survey, GME Lifecycle

Percept Research Attends EMBA Council Southwest Regional Meeting

Posted by Brian Mahoney on Friday, Jun 18, 2010

 

Brian Mahoney, Managing Partner at Percept Research, presented council updates on the association's MBA research initiatives at the Southwest regional Executive MBA meeting.  The meeting was hosted by the SMU Cox School of Business on June 14-15, 2010.

Percept Research serves as the research partner to the Executive MBA Council which supports these collaborative regional meetings.  The Executive MBA Council maintains an organizational culture that promotes collegiality as defined by open communication, respect for each other, and sharing of best practices. 

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Topics: EMBAC, MBA Student Exit Survey

Research Psychologist Rose Etheridge Joins Percept Research

Posted by Brian Mahoney on Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Percept Research, a leading market research consultancy catering to graduate management education, announced today that their research operations team continues to grow with newly appointed Rose Etheridge, Ph. D. as the firm's Research Psychologist.  Dr. Etheridge's role will include methodology guidance, survey instrument design, and advanced data analysis.  She will collaborate with the firm's corporate and higher education market research clients.

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Topics: Staff, Rose Etheridge

Executive MBA Trends Presented at Northeast Regional Meeting

Posted by Brian Mahoney on Monday, Apr 26, 2010

Brian Mahoney, Managing Partner at Percept Research, presented industry trends at the Northeast regional Executive MBA meeting, hosted by the Yale School of Management, on April 19-20th, 2010.

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Topics: EMBAC

MBA Lifecycle Brochure Wins ADDY Award

Posted by Brian Mahoney on Monday, Mar 15, 2010

Percept Research is proud to announce that our recent print brochure called “Merely an Outline” focused on the MBA Lifecycle recently won the ADDY® Silver award by the Raleigh-Durham chapter of the American Advertising Federation for creative excellence.

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Topics: Marketing Communications

Percept Research Attending EMBA Council Southeast Regional Meeting

Posted by Brian Mahoney on Friday, Mar 12, 2010

Brian Mahoney and Leah Dew of Percept Research will attend the Southeast Regional EMBA Conference, hosted by Emory University, on March 14-16th, 2010.  Percept Research serves as the research partner to the Executive MBA Council which supports these collaborative regional meetings.

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Topics: Brian Mahoney, EMBAC, Leah Dew

MBA Lifecycle Survey Suite: New Topline Summary Format Announced

Posted by Brian Mahoney on Tuesday, Mar 2, 2010

Based on feedback from participating MBA programs, we have enhanced the Topline Summary to display more metrics in an 'at-a-glance' format while significantly reducing the overall length of the survey summary.

Frequencies are no longer displayed for scale questions. Instead, the Topline Summary provides the mean of each question trended for 3 years, standard deviation, minimum and maximum response values and N sizes (number of respondents).  These adjustments allowed us to reduce the number of pages by 85%!

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Topics: GME Lifecycle

Percept Research Presents 2009 Global EMBA Trends

Posted by Brian Mahoney on Sunday, Oct 18, 2009

Brian Mahoney and Leah Dew of Percept Research attended the 2009 annual conference of the Executive MBA Council from October 18-21 in San Diego, CA.

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Topics: Brian Mahoney, EMBAC, George Bobinski

Percept Research Presents Executive MBA Midwest US Regional Trends

Posted by Brian Mahoney on Wednesday, Jul 15, 2009

Brian Mahoney, Managing Partner of Percept Research, presented executive MBA trends at the 2009 Midwest regional meeting of the Executive MBA Council.  The regional meeting was hosted by the University of Michigan Ross School of Business from July 15-16th, 2009. 

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Topics: Brian Mahoney, EMBAC