FindMyHost.com interviews Josh Ewin Vice President of Marketing at DedicatedNOW.

DedicatedNOW is a dedicated server and managed hosting specialist delivering cutting-edge hosting solutions to meet the requirements of small and medium sized businesses, large scale corporations and individuals.

Please tell us the year established and brief history of DedicatedNOW?
DedicatedNOW was established in 1997 and was one of the first of the FortressITX family of companies. Early on, DedicatedNOW catered to the reseller market, offering unmanaged dedicated servers. Over the past four years, DedicatedNOW has made significant investments in its staffing, network infrastructure and datacenter improvements. Our core strength is our on-site admins – our server administration team is consistently awarded for performance and is well versed not only with server management, but advanced, high-availability server configurations as well.

I see DedicatedNOW focusing on Dedicated Servers and Managed Hosting.  What are some of the unique services and features that you offer in this market?
Our fully managed line of servers was launched our several years ago and remains our core product line. That being said, every month we turn up new high-availability clusters and assist many clients with managed dedicated and managed colocation services. We have several new services in the hopper, including Managed Exchange, CDN and our new Cloud product.

What would you say is the most challenging aspect to delivering these services?
Consistency. There are many aspects to running a quality hosting company, but when it comes down to it, if we don’t consistently provide extremely high value to our clients, then we’ve failed. We’ve been very fortunate to have the staff and infrastructure to consistently provide that kind of value.

We’ve seen a real buzz over the past year with cloud hosting, does DedicatedNOW plan to launch a cloud service?
Actually yes. Our cloud product is in beta testing right now. We’ve invested many months of develop into this product and we’re confident that all the planning, preparation and testing put into the DedicatedNOW Cloud will turn out to be a real game-changing product.

What makes DedicatedNOW unique in comparison to other dedicated server companies?
People. DedicatedNOW’s server administration staff has won many awards (six awards this year already) for its service and expertise. DedicatedNOW’s size allows us to provide an intimate touch with our customers that can’t be found with some of the larger players in the industry, while still being able to provide the infrastructure and expertise not commonly found in other companies our size.

What new features have DedicatedNOW added for its customers in the past year?
Over the past year, DedicatedNOW has rolled out several new services including CDN, Managed Colocation service and our new Intel line of servers. In that time, we’ve doubled our DDoS protection and made significant upgrades to our facility, including the installation of a new power substation, which enhances the stability of our power feeds.

Where do you see DedicatedNOW and the web hosting industry in three years?
DedicatedNOW has evolved so much over the past decade that it’s hard to predict where the Company will be in the future. I’m very confident in our Cloud product as well as our managed hosting service, which has consistently grown over the past few years. I think we’ll still be a very customer-centric company and regardless of our product mix, I think our management and expertise will still be the big attraction of this Company. Continue reading “Web Host Interview with Josh Ewin, VP of Marketing at DedicatedNOW” »

Web Hosting News – HOUSTON - In a challenging business environment, the mainframe continues to be the trusted platform for critical business transaction processing according to BMC Software’s (NASDAQ:BMC) Fifth Annual Worldwide Survey of Mainframe Users.

According to the survey, 84 percent of respondents expected to see growing or steady MIPS usage on the platform – a figure that has remained consistent over the past several years. In addition, almost 60 percent of respondents indicated that the mainframe will attract new workloads over the next year. Continue reading “Survey Shows Mainframe Remains a Critical Component of Hybrid Data Centers” »

Web Hosting News – AMSTERDAM — Equinix, Inc. (Nasdaq: EQIX), a provider of global data center services, today announced that GlobalCollect, the world’s premier payment service provider of local e-payment solutions, will relocate its online payment platform to Equinix’s Amsterdam (AM1) International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data center. Adding another data center is to ensure GlobalCollect’s future platform scalability and robust performance to facilitate the expected increase in transaction volumes due to a booming e-commerce sector.

GlobalCollect is a leading provider of payment solutions for international Customer Not Present (CNP) channels such as Internet, mail, and telephone orders. It operates a scalable platform with a vast portfolio of local, international, and alternative payment methods, including all major credit and debit cards, direct debits, bank transfers, real-time bank transfers, and prepaid methods in more than 200 countries and for 170 currencies. GlobalCollect has more than 15 years of industry experience across various verticals, including travel, telecommunications, retail, software, and online gaming. Continue reading “GlobalCollect Selects Equinix to Support Continued Growth” »

Web Hosting News – New York, NY - Intermedia, the world’s largest Microsoft Exchange hosting provider, today enhanced its HostPilot™ Control Panel with tools that further simplify customer control over their hosted Exchange and other hosted business communications. Part of HostPilot Control panel release 1.51, the new tools save customers time by securely extending additional administrative controls – such as password changes and call forwarding – to end users. The release also offers new options for customers to monitor their service status, including via SMS text message updates. The features are immediately available to all Intermedia customers.

“We don’t want to worry about managing the infrastructure ourselves,” says Mark Pierce, VP of business development and sales, GoldMail. “With Intermedia we have the uptime, stability and service we need for our business communications for an affordable monthly fee. We can focus on building our business, not on maintaining our email platform. Transparency into our account’s service status also makes a difference. We can get updates in HostPilot and, with the latest updates, automatically by text message to our cell phones.” Continue reading “Intermedia Updates HostPilot – Customer Control Panel” »

Web Hosting News – ATLANTA – Internap Network Services Corporation (NASDAQ: INAP), a leading provider of end-to-end Internet business products and services,today announced that Jolokia Networks, an innovative hosting and virtualization provider, has selected Internap’s XIP™ with route-optimized Performance IP™, to improve Web performance for Jolokia’s worldwide customers. These customers include Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) companies, software developers, cloud-based providers and other organizations with high levels of bandwidth consumption.

“Our international customers have seen a significant performance improvement since we integrated Internap’s XIP into our cloud platform. For example, a customer in Scotland has seen its website performance nearly double in speed over previous levels,” said Mark Pace, chief technology officer at Jolokia Networks. “As a provider of both content delivery and hosting services, we serve a specialized customer base that requires an optimal Internet experience. The combination of Internap’s advanced IP routing capabilities and XIP gives us a competitive edge.” Continue reading “Jolokia Networks Speeds Cloud-Based Services with Internap’s XIP Internet Accelerator” »

Web Hosting News – CHICAGO, Illinois — At the SpringOne 2GX developer conference,  VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure, announced with Google the general availability of the first in a series of technology collaborations to make enterprise software developers more efficient at building, deploying and managing applications within any cloud environment on any device. The collaborative projects that will be available in the next two weeks include Spring Roo and Google Web Toolkit, Spring Insight and Google Speed Tracer, SpringSource Tool Suite and Google Plugin for Eclipse.

“Together, Google and VMware enable enterprises to develop and deploy rich Spring Java applications across multiple clouds and devices.” said Rod Johnson, SVP, application platform division at VMware. “Today we have reached an important milestone where these modern applications can run smoothly within the firewalls of a company’s production datacenter or in a trusted provider’s cloud environment.” Continue reading “VMware and Google Advance Cloud Computing” »

Web Host News – DALLAS — The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) has awarded Computer Technologies Consultants, Inc. (CTC), a five-year blanket purchase agreement (BPA) to provide Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and related services including cloud computing, cloud web hosting, and cloud storage offerings. CTC selected SoftLayer Technologies® as the technology provider for the services it offers under the BPA. CTC and SoftLayer have partnered on previous federal projects.

The BPA is part of the GSA’s Federal Cloud Computing Initiative (FCCI), developed to streamline federal IT operations by increasing government agencies’ implementation of cloud services. The FCCI endeavors to make it easier and more cost-effective to deploy, share, and reuse infrastructure, information, and solutions across agencies. Cloud services from CTC and other vendors receiving BPA awards will be available for purchase by all federal, state, and local agencies, and authorized contractors through a newly created GSA storefront named Apps.gov. CTC’s award covers services for the IaaS horizontal functional area of the FCCI.

“There is no better partner for this than SoftLayer,” said Don Barber, Director of Managed Hosting for CTC. “We have a lot of experience managing government hosting, and with the policies, procedures, and documentation it requires. SoftLayer’s fully-automated infrastructure and proprietary network architecture are essential for us to have the control, security, and transparency for meeting the government’s needs.”

CTC will leverage SoftLayer’s wide portfolio of virtualization products and CloudLayer™ family of advanced cloud computing, storage, and content delivery network services. Besides operating as stand-alone solutions, CloudLayer services can seamlessly interface with SoftLayer’s dedicated servers and automated services to create fully integrated, “hybrid” computing environments with unprecedented interoperability and efficiency.

“We are proud to be CTC’s trusted resource and to have a part in this landmark initiative,” said Lance Crosby, Chief Executive Officer for SoftLayer. “Our products and services provide an enterprise-class platform, ideal for the level of performance, stability, and confidence that government agencies require. I’m very excited that SoftLayer’s advantages will be applied to important work that impacts so many.” Continue reading “Computer Technologies Consultants Partners with SoftLayer for Federal Cloud Computing Contract” »

Web Host News – San Antonio, TX – OpenStack™, an open source cloud computing platform with broad developer and commercial support, today announced the “Austin” code release of OpenStack Compute and Object Storage. Since the project’s inception three months ago, OpenStack has built an active community of contributors, delivered on its code release and feature commitments, attracted new member organizations and received significant interest from enterprises and service providers.

“The support and active participation from the community has been amazing to see.  We are much further along than we expected to be three months into this project, and the future is very promising,” said Jim Curry, Chief Stacker and General Manager of OpenStack. “The community is rallying around the vision of an open source cloud alternative, which would eliminate the need for service providers to reinvent the wheel with proprietary cloud stacks, and allow cloud consumers thefreedom to move their applications among the open source clouds, whether it be an enterprise private cloud or simply to change service providers.” Continue reading “OpenStack Release Produces Open Source Cloud Alternative” »

Web Host News – Rockville, MD – GlobalNet Services, Inc., a premier information technology provider for businesses and the federal government, today announced that through its existing relationship with Rackspace (NYSE: RAX), the world’s leading specialist in the hosting and cloud computing industry, government agencies can now obtain hosted services off of the GlobalNet Services GSA Schedule. Through this relationship, GlobalNet Services now offers enterprise-level hosting to federal agencies, removing the management burden of maintaining their own network infrastructure.

“By adding our hosting solutions to GlobalNet Services’ GSA schedule, their customers will have access to some of the same features, functionality and service as Rackspace’s enterprise customers, including improved redundancy, quality of service and additional layers of support,” said Christopher Rajiah, Director of North American Channel Sales at Rackspace. “Rackspace is excited by this opportunity, and we look forward to expanding our relationship by providing cost-effective, managed hosting solutions for their government customers.” Continue reading “GlobalNet Services Broadens Relationship with Rackspace” »

Web Host News – PHOENIX, AZ - i/o Data Centers (“i/o”) today announced that it has been awarded The Uptime Institute’s Tier III Certification for Design Documents for the first phase of the Company’s Phoenix data center. This data center is the largest commercially available data center in the United States to achieve Tier III design certification from the Uptime Institute.

In making the announcement, George D. Slessman, CEO of i/o, said that “Although many data center service providers aspire to or even claim Tier Certification, i/o has achieved this rigorous technical standard.” Continue reading “The Uptime Institute Awards Tier III Certification to i/o Data Centers” »