Byline: Christina Torode

San Francisco - For a small IT shop, hosting a few Web sites and e-mail accounts required just a deft management touch. But when dozens and then hundreds of businesses started calling on Server Central, things got out of hand.

"We were unable to continue our growth," said Jordan Lowe, CEO of Server Central, a solution provider in Chicago. "We were growing at too fast a rate, and our current systems couldn't handle it."

The company was flooded with as many as 100 new customers a day after running a series of promotions. The start-up today has nearly 5,000 customers and is still picking up new clients.

Server Central solved the problem by reaching out to service provider SWsoft, which is finding many other hosting providers swamped by the details of running a service.

Over the past 18 months, SWsoft has developed a hosting solution designed to take the management strain off hosting...