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July Hosting News in Review |
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July saw a number of initiatives and plenty of web hosting activity in a number of different areas. Of course, HostingCon 2007 came and went with masses of initiatives and plenty for the industry to think about, but July also saw a great meeting of minds. The "international web hosting media rock star” Mitch Keeler, and HostSearch.com’s dazzling urbanite web editor, Mr. John Hughes, chatted about a wide range of hosting issues. The interview took place on Mitch’s Web Hosting Show where it is available as a podcast.
Thumbs up for Go Daddy who testified before Congress about how to protect children from online predators. Other news in July included the launch of the last Harry Potter book ever. The Planet was there to help a leading Harry Potter fan site deal with record web traffic as a result of the massive interest the book generated. Customer satisfaction is clearly not a problem for Harry Potter! It does though have a big impact on us mere mortals. A survey by web hosting provider Fasthosts suggests that slow email responses damage UK business by undermining customer confidence… Time to get a PDA or iPhone or something! And if you get an iPhone, Media Temple will let you use their new web hosting control panel.
Amidst plenty of talk about it being a commodity, July showed that web hosting is now the main course with the UK’s Pipex selling its voice and broadband division to focus on hosting. Also during July, Peak 10 presented the world a virtualization webcast and WebHost Automation also ran a Helm 4 Virtual Boot Camp focusing on its famous control panel.
The environment seems to be playing more of a part in web hosting strategy these days… July saw Live Earth - a 7-continent concert series aimed at combating climate change and one of the planet’s biggest carbon-generating events. Organizers chose AISO.Net for environmentally friendly web hosting. Alongside that, Netfirms went green in July by reducing energy consumption and ServerPlex Networks did their bit for the environment.
As ever, plenty of promotions in July - The Planet offered 72-hours of free server setup, Supanet Hosting offered UK customers a free domain for 12 months, and FastNext offered 2 months free reseller hosting. Patriotic as ever, AIT offered a 4th of July promotion and extended its sales due to overwhelming demand
Lots of partnerships took off in July - Kaspersky Lab and SWsoft partnered, as did HostingController and myLittleTools, Covad Communications and IKANO Communications, and SecureMyCompany selected Rackspace to provide Software-as-a-Service hosting infrastructure. In addition, LiquidNet partnered with Netcom Consulting, Inc., Centricom appointed Macquarie Hosting to host its POLi mission-critical system and MaximumASP selected Global Crossing as its bandwidth provider. The flip side of the coin, there were plenty of acquisitions,too, the main ones being itX buying a web hosting provider to grow its services capabilities, and Weberz Hosting acquiring Relio Hosting.
Just like every month, web hosts offer new and enhanced packages and services to stay ahead of the curve. Register.com announced a new custom web design service, Fat Jack Hosting offeried customers new clustering technology, ServerPoint introduced a WordPress blog hosting service, and SpaceAsia introduced Virtuozzo-based Virtual Private Server hosting for the Asian market. In addition, Cartika Hosting introduced continuous data protection. Dedicated, managed and colocation services provider InetServices launched new storage solution products, and R1Soft released a near-continuous backup product for MySQL. For the same reason, many companies enhanced their products and packages. Slamdot launched a Web 2.0 control panel, Easy CGI increased shared web hosting resources, 1&1 Internet bundled Open Source applications, and InetServices added Ubuntu and Debian operating systems.
A few people on the move in July, notably Rackspace Managed Hosting appointed a new EMEA Managing Director. Likewise, there were a few companies moving or expanding. Colocation Provider AIS opened a second data center and Hosting.com announced a San Francisco data center. Blue Virtual also announced plans to build a data center in Clay County. Some web hosts also won awards or rewards in July - one of San Diego's oldest web hosting companies won a Times Square advert, NeoSpire was certified as part of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Safe Harbor program, and Rackspace was named 2007 worldwide hosting service provider of the year by Microsoft.
Not a bad month at all – fingers crossed for August! |
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