June was yet another vibrant month of web hosting, punctuated by acts of kindness and major events, and a few problems. Cirtex Corp (see this month's interview) kicked in on the acts of kindness front by supporting earthquake rescue and recovery efforts in China. That's great - and hopefully an example for everyone in the web hosting community. The big event in June for us was partnering with Addme.com, but the really big news wasn't really web hosting related, but couldn't have really happened without web hosts! June 17 was "Download Day" for Firefox 3 and Mozilla's noble efforts to get into the record books. We also heard in June that Microsoft's Mark Rodgers is to provide HostingCon 2008's keynote address and that R1Soft would sponsor LT Pact '08 in Las Vegas. The Planet had a major issue to deal with in June - an outage. However, they were straightforward and transparent and restored 9,000 servers pretty quickly. Also, more honors bestowed on Bob Parsons? This time he has received an honorary doctorate degree. When can we expect to see DrBobParsons.tv?
Good to see that 'green' isn't just flavor of the month and people are taking tackling environmental issues seriously. IBM helped RackForce and gigaCENTER Networks build Canada's largest green data center, ServInt promoted climate-positive web hosting with a new green initiative, and EvoSwitch announced the opening of a newly expanded green data center.
A couple of people on the move in June, and a veritable plethora of partnerships made and contracts gained. Verio announced changes to its senior marketing team, bringing in a lot of experience to spearhead new activity. On the partnerships and contracts front, managed IT services provider Sun Microsystems India announced a strategic alliance with web host NetMagic, GeekStorage announced partnership with R1Soft, a major European supply chain management company selected DediPower for managed hosting and IDS Logic partnered with Rackspace and launched "money back guarantee" web hosting. In addition, SoftLayer selected rackAID as preferred managed service provider, BlackMesh joined the R1Soft hosting partner program and data center operator and managed services provider Peak 10 announced it would provide services to spatial networks. Also, data center and managed services provider Hosted Solutions announced it would provide Peopleclick with network services and Alentus expanded into Europe acquiring London-based Areti Internet Limited. Deluxe also announced it would acquire Hostopia.com, and Wachovia Capital Partners acquired HostMySite.
Plenty of awards received and milestones achieved in June. SaaS services provider groupSPARK was named Microsoft 'Partner of the Year for Advanced Infrastructure Solutions, Hosting Solutions', Ensim received the 2007 Product of the Year Award from Communications Solutions, and Surpass Hosting marked six years of service with a new web site. June was also a month when companies moved around a bit, or planned to. R1Soft moved corporate offices to Century-Old House in the Montrose District of Houston, Texas, HostMySite received a data center grant, Future Hosting expanded worldwide VPS services by adding Washington, DC, and WebaZilla opened a Dallas datacenter. Meanwhile, plenty of things happening in the world of domains, particularly the .ME registry landrush. Domain registrar and web host Dotster launched Dotster ConnectSM and UK provider Daily.co.uk announces the launch of domain credits - a good idea and something new!
June was a good month for bargain hunters with plenty of sales and promotions. The Planet announced June promotions, CrystalTech launched "Summer Spectacular", VEXXHOST also announced a Summer Sale, while DemoWolf announced a Summer Sale and trade-in discounts. As ever, in this constantly shifting landscape that is web hosting, new offerings abounded in June. Frontpages offers Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 hosting, MYOB Australia announced the launch of myBRC.com.au, LogicWeb announced special VPS and dedicated server offers, and DiscountASP.NET launched Microsoft DBManager and AdminPack IIS Manager UI extensions. In addition, Concentric and Microsoft launched a hosted e-mail service for SMEs, Comodo introduced Unified Communications (UC) Certificates for Channel Partners, Aplus.Net launched Windows Server 2008 for dedicated hosting, 3FN offered SEO plans powered by Webmaster Toolkit, Lunarpages offered a software and services bundle and DiscountASP.NET launched an SQL 2008 hosting beta program. Alongside this, Register.com launched a new web hosting service for small business, managed IT infrastructure services provider Terremark launched The Enterprise Cloud, Verio introduced new VPS starter plans, and Intridea introduced a hosting environment for Amazon EC2.
