Hosting News – NEW YORK, NY — The New York Internet Company (NYI), an award-winning mission-critical service provider, has completed Type I examination in conformity with the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) Statement on Auditing Standards No. 70 (SAS 70) for Service Organizations.

A SAS 70 Type I report is the result of an independent audit opinion on requisite customer controls in place as of a specific date. NYI’s audit was conducted by the auditing firm Kirkpatrick Price, LLC, which issued a favorable opinion about NYI’s new data center, located at 999 Frontier Road in Bridgewater, New Jersey.
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Hosting News – Gloucester, UK - The majority of online shoppers continue to experience ‘virtual’ shop queues in the run up to Christmas, according to research released today by Fasthosts Internet Ltd, (www.fasthosts.co.uk), a leading web hosting provider.  The study of 1500 consumers1 found that a remarkable 80 per cent of shoppers encounter slow working websites at Christmas time, and 30 per cent believe that websites perform more slowly in the run up to the holiday season.  An alarmingly 42 per cent of consumers have abandoned purchases on slow running sites whilst buying their gifts, and 34 per cent are more likely to switch to a competitor’s website during this period.  Whilst many firms will be hoping for brisk sales this Christmas, the data warns that many online consumers are alienated by technical glitches.  Retailers are advised to check that their website is hosted with a quality provider, offering unlimited traffic with no throttling of its performance.

Data from Fasthosts’ ‘Seasonal Web Sales’ study finds that the majority of online shoppers experience website usability issues at this time of the year.  80 per cent of shoppers have used a slow website when Christmas shopping around one third believes that retailer websites work more slowly than at other times of the year.  A total of 44 per cent of shoppers have faced delays in the eCommerce process, including slower product searches, delayed payment processes and delays in receiving emailed confirmations.  1 in 4 shoppers (24 per cent) believe that retailers add too many seasonal products and offers to their websites, and so make the sites more difficult to navigate.
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Hosting News – London – ThinkGrid, a leading platform vendor enabling IT services from the cloud today announced that care provider the Independent Living Group (ILG), will deploy 100 ThinkGrid Hosted Virtual Desktops across its head office and registered care homes across South England. ILG will also use ThinkGrid’s platform to host Cold Harbour, an industry standard management application for care providers, as well as ThinkGrid’s low cost Hosted Exchange solution. ThinkGrid’s services will replace ILG’s existing Citrix-based hosted solution, moving the entire IT operation to a fully supported and highly scalable enterprise-class cloud infrastructure. ILG will continue to enjoy the benefits of reduced CapEx by purchasing IT on a pay-as-you-use basis, and make additional savings by deploying ThinkG rid services on its existing desktop hardware.

“Whilst there’s no doubting the role IT plays in improving the quality of the care we provide, it can still be a huge cost and management burden. In order to maintain ILG’s (Independent Living Group) high standards of care, it is critical to remain focused on delivering the best service possible to the people we support, which is why we have pursued an outsourced IT strategy that allows us to drive greater efficiency in our day-to-day operations,” said Alex Korniak, IT Consultant for ILG. “The challenge now is that ILG has reached a size where for many similar businesses the obvious next step is to invest in an internal IT to retain quality, whilst reducing outsourcing costs. So when the time came to review our existing IT services contract, we needed a partner who would be able to sustain our outsourcing strategy without compromise. I recommended ThinkGrid’s cloud platform as it gives ILG the best of both worlds: high quality and affordable IT services.”
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Hosting News – United Kingdom - 34SP.com has announced the company has upgraded to the latest version of the SmarterTrack help desk application software created by SmarterTools. 34SP.com was founded by Manchester University colleagues Daniel Foster and Stuart Melling, and recently celebrated 9 years in the web hosting business. According to information released by 34SP.com, the company is continuing its efforts to provide the highest possible levels of technical support to web hosting clients. The SmarterTrack upgrade is integral to the company’s support efforts.

The transition from SmarterTrack 3.x to 4.6 provides many advantages for 34SP.com clients needing technical support. SmarterTools (the developers of the software), describe the product as follows: ”SmarterTrack is a powerful help desk application that transforms customer service efforts into a comprehensive, multi-channel communications portal with features like a Ticket system, Live Chat, WhosOn, branding and language support reporting, and a Knowledge Base.”
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Hosting News – LOUISVILLE, Ky. - MaximumASP, a Microsoft Gold Certified Provider of web hosting and managed IT services announced the availability of additional Disaster Recovery services for dedicated server and enterprise customers to protect their critical data.

MaximumASP offers automated, secure backup and web-based data recovery, ensuring that online businesses and corporations can quickly recover key information in the event of hardware failure, data corruption or natural disaster.
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Hosting News – MEDIA, Pa. - Aria Systems, Inc., the leading provider of on demand billing and subscription management solutions, today announced a new program designed to provide outsourced credit card management services for merchants looking for a faster and less expensive way to achieve Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliance for their online transactions. Utilizing the proven Aria Billing and Subscription Management Platform, the new Aria PCI Acceleration Program offers a pure SaaS solution that deploys quickly and integrates easily with merchants’ customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP) and Ecommerce platforms.

Deployed in 30 days or less for $30,000 plus monthly fees based on credit card volumes as low as 1 cent per card, the new program helps merchants reduce the time and expense associated with achieving PCI compliance for online credit card processing. Research firm Gartner has reported that combined Level 1 and Level 2 merchant spending to protect cardholder data and become PCI-compliant increased nearly fivefold from 2006 to 2008, up to an average of $2.7 million among Level 1 merchants and $267,000 among Level 2 merchants.1 Those figures may rise with 2010 Visa and MasterCard deadlines imposing new PCI requirements including more frequent security reviews for many merchants.
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Hosting News – FALLS CHURCH, Va. - CSC (NYSE: CSC) announced today that the company began work with Google Inc. to replace the City of Los Angeles’ current email and other applications with Google Apps, Google’s suite of web-based productivity tools. The contract has a three-year base period and two one-year options.

“By incorporating CSC’s cloud computing integration and security expertise with Google’s innovative cloud applications, the City of Los Angeles will dramatically lower operational costs while significantly improving the end-user experience and productivity,” said Randi Levin, chief technology officer and general manager of the Los Angeles Information and Technology Agency. “We are pleased to make this cost-effective and innovative solution available to all California public sector agencies by leveraging our contract with CSC.”
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Hosting News – RALEIGH, N.C. - Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that, in an effort to openly collaborate with partners to drive the future of virtualization, it has open sourced its SPICE (Simple Protocol for Independent Computing Environment) hosted virtual desktop protocol. SPICE is a core component of the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops product that is currently in beta. Through the Spice project, Red Hat will collaborate with its partners and the open source community to expand the development of the protocol in an effort to help break down barriers to virtualization adoption.

A component of Red Hat’s September 2008 acquisition of Qumranet, SPICE is an adaptive remote rendering protocol designed specifically for virtual environments. With its modern, high-performance communications technology, SPICE aims to provide a seamless user experience for today’s bandwidth-intensive applications such as multi-media and VoIP, offering a user experience comparable to that of a physical desktop.
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Hosting News – Staten Island, NY – TELEHOUSE America, the United States’ leading provider of dedicated data centers, international Internet exchanges and managed IT services, announces the launch of WEV Sentinel, an agentless scanning tool that runs daily security analysis reports on vulnerabilities to a customer’s mission critical networks and web applications.  WEV Sentinel is a product within TELEHOUSE America’s Manage-E services, which provides customers with an all-in-one managed and professional services solution unlike any offering available from other Multi-Service Providers (MSPs) today.

With increased network threats such as DNS attacks, viruses and security issues associated with network compliance, WEV Sentinel’s propriety technology ensures that a company’s critical IT infrastructure, Private Records, Client and Customer Data are safeguarded against unauthorized access, open ports or exploitable coding gaps and  theft .  WEV Sentinel works by scanning selected IP network addresses or web pages daily to identify possible network threats.  Based on the findings, a report is generated citing vulnerabilities and security risks discovered by the scan.  The report offers remedies to ensure network security of servers, websites, DNS, email, databases, file servers and more. These findings are based on the regular, agentless scan can across a variety of different network devices including Routers, IDS, Firewalls, File Servers and Gateways.
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Hosting News – AUSTIN, TX – ManageEngine, makers of a globally renowned suite of cost effective network, systems, applications and security management software solutions, announced the general availability of ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus – MSP Edition, web-based help desk and IT asset management software, allowing Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to offer scalable and affordable help desk services to their customers. ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus – MSP Edition is designed to meet the demands of both the growing and the established MSP by increasing per-technician productivity and decreasing time-to-resolution for every customer.

Managed Services are a growing business, especially in today’s economy. Companies are finding it more cost-effective and easier to outsource many non-core operational functions to an external, specialized provider, which allows the internal IT staff to focus on more business-critical projects. The new ServiceDesk Plus – MSP Edition helps managed providers to deliver that specialized service to a number of customers using just a single installation of the software. The multi-tenancy capability of ServiceDesk Plus – MSP Edition also provides separate dashboards and reports to individual customers and reduces software maintenance costs. The service provider is able to perform all help desk and IT asset management functions, for all customers, from a single console.
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