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Rackspace Lands Hawaiian Airlines

May 31, 2006 – (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Web hosting provider Rackspace (rackspace.com) announced on Tuesday it has made a multi-million dollar hosting agreement with Hawaiian Airlines, one of the largest domestic carriers in the US.

 

Hawaiian Airlines has chosen Rackspace’s Intensive Hosting to run the company’s public and e-commerce Web sites, which handle high volumes of online transactions and revenue. Hawaiian Airlines migrated its Windows-based hosting environment from a colocation facility to Rackspace’s fully managed infrastructure to access the hosting provider’s expertise in application availability and business continuity

“Because Hawaiian Airlines’ Web site is a Microsoft-developed application, they found Rackspace’s Windows expertise and solid partnership with Microsoft a true advantage,” says Glenn Reinus, senior vice president of worldwide sales at Rackspace. “Intensive Hosting takes a consultative approach with our enterprise customers, and our dedicated team of experts build a deep working relationship, effectively becoming an integral component of customers’ IT departments.”

Rackspace says it will provide Hawaiian Airlines with a fully managed hosting solution using advanced custom monitoring services, managed security and intrusion detection.

ISP Re-Builds New Orleans Network

May 30, 2006 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Internet service provider EarthLink (earthlink.net) announced on Friday it has been granted an approval by the New Orleans City Council to build a Wi-Fi broadband network in the city.

 

The Wi-Fi mesh network will provide affordable, high-speed Internet access for residents, businesses and visitors in New Orleans. EarthLink will provide a paid service tier and a free service tier, which will be offered for a limited time during the city’s rebuilding efforts. EarthLink will deploy Tropos Networks’ MetroMesh Wi-Fi routers on light poles throughout the city that will enable reliable wireless data connectivity.

“EarthLink is doing its part to help rebuild the Crescent City and enable residents, visitors and the thousands of workers to stay connected with low cost broadband service,” says Donald Berryman, executive vice president of EarthLink and president of the ISP’s municipal networks unit. “Our Wi-Fi solution reflects our vision of delivering broadband opportunities to diverse communities across the country and helping meet the needs of underserved neighborhoods at the request of cities like New Orleans.”

As part of its commitment to open access, EarthLink will also enable multiple, competing providers to offer their services to consumers and businesses over its network.

RackForce Drops Bandwidth Prices

May 30, 2006 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Web hosting provider RackForce (rackforce.com) announced on Tuesday it has lowered its prices on unmetered dedicated server bandwidth by up to as much as 50 percent.

 

With the new pricing, a dedicated 10Mbps connection on a 3GHz Xeon server is priced at $324 per month. The same server at 5Mbps costs $249 per month. To deliver the unmetered model, RackForce uses multi-homed connections to multiple providers. All its Internet connections are dedicated and each customer receives its bandwidth as allotted, regardless of what bandwidth other customers use.

“RackForce is one of a few hosting companies offering dedicated unmetered bandwidth,” says Tim Dufour, president of RackForce. “We have avoided the ambiguous ‘two terabytes of transfer on a 100Mbps shared bandwidth’ model even though actual network performance only allows for a fraction of that. Our flat rate, unmetered model is clear, simple and predictable.”

Due to its location in British Columbia, Canada, says the company, RackForce has access to redundant hydro power feeds and world-class carrier networks. RackForce provides dedicated servers, virtual private servers and colocation services 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Sedo Launches New Parking Service

May 30, 2006 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Domain marketplace Sedo (sedo.com) announced on Tuesday that it has launched a new domain parking program, SedoPro designed for customers that operate large portfolios of domain names.

 

The company says the package provides parking professionals with a solution that includes analysis tools, greater control over site optimization and page layout as well as a dedicated account service representative. The product, says the company, is designed to help customers maximize the return they see on domain portfolios.

Sedo says it enables domain holders to manage their portfolios the way they might manage an investment portfolio, letting them view which domains are performing well or poorly, the geographic origins of their traffic and which sites are referring that traffic.

“Offerings such as SedoPro show the necessary maturation occurring in the parking market. To optimize revenues, professionals must often go beyond bland text-ad pages,” says Matt Bentley, chief strategy officer of Sedo. “With portfolios in the hundreds and thousands of names, advanced tools are necessary for sophisticated parking management.”

Cirrus Tech Offers Linux VPS Packages

May 26, 2006 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Web hosting provider Cirrus Tech (cirrushosting.com) announced on Thursday it has launched its new Linux VPS Packages. The new product uses server automation provider SWsoft’s (swsoft.com) Virtuozzo software.

 

“We have always been happy to surprise CirrusHosting.com visitors with our new promotions and packages,” says Patrick Hojjat, product manager of Cirrus Tech.

Each Virtuozzo VPS performs like a separate dedicated server, but can be provided at a significantly lower price. A VPS can be rebooted independently and has its own root access, users, IP addresses, memory, processes, files, applications, system libraries and configuration files.

Additionally, each VPS has its own independent operating system, Web server, mail server, FTP server and Web site hosting control panel. Cirrus’s New Linux VPS Packages also support a variety of operating systems, open source applications and game servers.

Newtek De-listed From Nasdaq

May 26, 2006 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Business services and Web hosting provider Newtek Business Services (newtekbusinessservices.com) was de-listed last week from the Nasdaq Stock Market.

 

The company was notified last Wednesday by the Nasdaq Listing Qualifications Department that, due to not filing its Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the period ended March 31, that it was not in compliance with its requirements under the marketplace’s rules.

Nasdaq Marketplace Rule 4310(c) (14) requires that issuers are current in their public filings. Newtek says it had voluntarily filed with the Nasdaq Stock Market a notice indicating that it would not file this report in a timely manner, partly because of its recent staffing shortages and having replaced its auditors with the firm of J.H. Cohn on May 16. It anticipates filing this report on or before July 14 after the new auditors have done the necessary work to clear the financial reports in the filing.

Newtek has previously filed for an appeal of the Staff determination before a Nasdaq Listing Qualifications Panel, and the hearing has been set for June 1, 2006 in Washington, DC. While there is no assurance the Panel will grant Newtek’s request for continued listing, there are no other deficiencies that would prevent Newtek’s securities from continued listing on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

VeriCenter Re-launches Dedicated Arm

May 26, 2006 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Managed IT service provider VeriCenter (vericenter.com) announced on Thursday it had launched a new Web site for its dedicated hosting subsidiary for small to medium-sized businesses, AppSite Hosting (appsitehosting.com).

 

AppSite Hosting, formerly known as DellHost, makes use of the financial backing and technological expertise of VeriCenter to provide comprehensive and cost-effective dedicated hosting solutions. AppSite offers six packaged dedicated Web hosting solutions, designed for flexible service delivery.

“AppSite Hosting services and pricing levels are very competitive as a result of its ability to leverage economies of scale and skill with VeriCenter,” says Gray Hall, president and CEO of VeriCenter. “Relationships with Sprint, Dell and other technology leaders also give AppSite Hosting the ability to provide enterprise-level solutions and a strong, reliable IT platform at affordable price points for small to medium-sized businesses.”

AppSite Hosting provides clients with 24-hour service and support, as well as a variety of managed services from a SAS 70 Type II certified data center.

Cogent Site Experiences Outages

May 25, 2006 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Internet service provider Cogent (cogentco.com) experienced network outages this morning, which lead to broader availability problems for Web sites and networks dependent on Cogent for connectivity, according to Web analytic firm Netcraft (netcraft.com). Traffic on major backbones has since then returned to normal.

 

Cogent is a multinational tier 1 Internet service provider that offers Internet access, data transport, colocation and managed modem services over a fiber optic, IP data-only network.

Netcraft offers a Web site performance monitoring service that provides similar charts, along with email alerts when an outage occurs.

FastServers Plans HostingCon Game

May 24, 2006 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Web hosting provider FastServers (fastservers.net) announced on Tuesday it will be hosting a full production game show called Trivia Challenge Plus at HostingCon 2006 (hostingcon.com). FastServers will feature 23 shows live from the conference, held from July 17 to 19 at the Mirage hotel in Las Vegas.

 

The full staged game show will have six contestants compete in answering both technical and trivia style questions, with near real-time video broadcast, a professional game show host, and more than 600 questions. FastServers will feature sponsored shows from cPanel, WebHostingTalk.Com, SW-SOFT, Ping! Zine, Tech Pad Agency, TopHosts.com and InterWorx — all whom have contributed to the development of a single show.

Prizes for Trivia Challenge Plus will include NANO IPODS for show winners, and all contestants will receive DVDs of the show and commemorative t-shirts. The contestants with the six highest scores will be given a chance to compete in a grand finale show with a Dell 50 inch HD Plasma TV awarded to the winner. As a Platinum Sponsor of HostingCon 2006, FastServers decided to change from the previous year’s casino theme to a full production game show this year.

“Bringing the casino theme to Las Vegas would be like bringing sand to a beach,” says Ian Andrusyk, president and CEO of FastServers. “Our goal was to be as creative and interactive as last year, while making sure our event ranks a few notches above last year.”

Template Monster, Hostgator Team Up

May 24, 2006 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Web site template provider Template Monster (templatemonster.com) announced on Tuesday it has partnered with Web hosting provider Hostgator (hostgator.com) to provide Hostgator resellers with Web site templates.

 

“We are glad to introduce our affiliate program to Hostgator resellers,” says Gary Nichols head of marketing department at Template Monster. “We have many successful affiliates among hosting companies and hope that Hostgator resellers will also like our products and our affiliate program.”

The templates are available to any of the Hostgator resellers. They can be downloaded by registering with the Template Monster affiliate program. The registration process is free and takes only a few minutes to complete.