Hosting Reviews – NUREMBERG, Germany – Open-Xchange, a supplier of open source business-class email and groupware, today announced additional usability enhancements and flexibility, plus enhanced mobile support for smartphones.

Open-Xchange users can now choose whether new windows open in a new tab or in a new browser pop-up screen. A new space-saving compact panel is especially useful for tablet users and for those using Open-Xchange on smaller screens. Continue reading “Latest Business-class Email for Cloud Providers Delivers Greater Flexibility, Mobile App and Tablet Update” »

Hosting Reviews – Milpitas, CA – Gluster, the leading provider of scale-out, open source storage solutions, today announced City Network Hosting, a leading provider of hosting services, is using its storage solution for the company’s cloud services platform, City Cloud. Recently launched after more than 15 months in beta, City Cloud is a service used by more than 500 Swedish companies and is the first infrastructure as a service (IaaS) platform in Sweden. City Network chose Gluster cloud storage for its City Cloud offering due to its ability to provide the scalability and reliability needed to meet the company’s growing business demands without affecting performance.

“We believe our business as a whole will, to a large extent, be judged on performance, as our leading cloud solutions continue to grow. Our customers expect extreme performance from their applications,” said Johan Christenson, chairman of City Network. “We need a storage solution like Gluster that delivers reliability and can scale on-demand without hindering the quality of performance. Additionally, with Gluster we didn’t need to make the sacrifice of performance in order to make it fit our budget. There are real savings in the fact that you can combine off-the-shelf hardware, while at the same time creating a powerhouse of reliability, scalability and performance.” Continue reading “City Network Selects Gluster Cloud Storage for Dynamic Cloud Services Platform” »

Hosting Reviews – Cupertino, CA – Cloud.com, a provider of open source cloud computing software, today announced that KT, Korea’s largest landline operator and mobile service provider, has selected its flagship technology, CloudStack™, as the foundation for its new public cloud offering, KT ucloud. Currently in beta, KT ucloud will offer its users a stable, secure and cost-effective cloud environment that ensures enterprises are making the most efficient IT investment. As enterprise IT managers are looking for cost-effective cloud computing platforms, KT ucloud guarantees the most competitive pricing and benefits among its competitors. Additionally, KT ucloud reduces electricity consumption by two or three times, ultimately aiming to reduce more than 60 percent of electricity used within their datacenter operations and passing those efficiencies through to their customers.

“We at KT understand the importance of providing reliable, cost-effective cloud computing services. While the rest of the market is trying to catch up to cloud computing, KT is already creating innovative cloud services that are delivering enhanced features to users at an affordable price,” said JS Suh, Senior Vice President at KT. “When building cloud systems, choosing pertinent partners is critical for business success. We used Cloud.com as the foundation for our private cloud and found it to be an extremely robust solution that minimized the overhead costs of integration and complex deployment schedules. CloudStack technology seamlessly integrated with our existing technology and is allowing us to create a strong and agile public cloud.” Continue reading “Korea’s Largest Landline and Mobile Service Provider Using Open Source Cloud Computing Platform for Public Cloud” »

Hosting Reviews – Norcross, GA - eApps Hosting announces the launch of the Virtual Machine in the Cloud service. Customers can immediately deploy and control fixed priced 64 bit Xen Virtual Machines in a true cloud architecture running software by OnApp, the leading provider of software for the management of cloud hosting services. The fixed price, customizable Virtual Machine in the Cloud service is in production and available now.

Using the eApps Create-A-Cloud™ tool, customers can select the quantities of CPU, RAM, disk and other computing resources and immediately create a Virtual Machine with a known, recurring billing amount. When demand for computing resources changes, customers can immediately adjust the resources of their Virtual Machines, which simply adjusts the price of their plan. Customers have the flexibility to deploy and adjust computing resources to meet demand, yet have a predictable recurring fee for their custom cloud plan. Continue reading “eApps Hosting Launches Virtual Machine in the Cloud Service” »

Hosting Reviews – ORANGE, CA - AFCOM, the world’s leading data center association, today announced the release of “The State of the Data Center,” a status report on data centers highlighting results from a survey of 358 data center managers from around the world.

AFCOM conducted the survey to reveal how data centers are adapting to the most critical challenges, technologies and economic factors. This latest report proves top issues include the demands of space, energy efficiency, and physical and logical security. Continue reading “Cloud Use Rises, Mainframe Usage Declines as Data Centers Grow and Green, According to AFCOM Survey” »

Hosting Reviews – FORT COLLINS, CO - HP (NYSE:HPQ) today announced the opening of a state-of-the-art research facility in Fort Collins, Colo., in which the company will advance sustainable data center technologies.

The new facility will expand on HP’s Converged Infrastructure architecture by developing technologies to eliminate IT sprawl, increase energy efficiency and reduce power consumption to help clients minimize their carbon footprint and reinvest cost savings into business innovation. Continue reading “HP Opens New Research Facility to Advance Sustainable Data Center Technologies” »

Web Hosting Reviews – This is a cautionary tale for all web hosting, SEO and web development companies. A recent precedent-setting case has put these types of companies in serious jeopardy of being sued.  The case, Roger Cleveland® Golf Company, Inc. v. Prince (et al.), centered on the sale of a website selling counterfeit Roger Cleveland golf clubs operated by www.copycatclubs.com (Copycat) that was hosted by Bright Builders, Inc.  After the jury issued a verdict of trademark infringement, the judge in the case assessed damages against Prince Distribution and Bright Builders.

The complaint stated Prince Distribution/Copycat sold or otherwise contributed to the sale of counterfeit Cleveland Golf brand golf clubs and were therefore liable for direct and /or contributory infringement of the golf club trademarks.

In a most astonishing move though, Bright Builders was issued a judgment in the amount of $770,750 for contributory infringement, despite the fact that Bright Builders had no knowledge of or control over what was posted on the Copycat site. Prince Distribution, the counterfeiter, was only ordered to pay Cleveland Golf Company $28,250.

Cleveland Golf Clubs originally sought from Prince damages for acts of willful trademark counterfeiting in the amount of $2 million per counterfeit mark, including triple damages where appropriate as well as attorney fees and costs.  So, the jury awarded Cleveland Golf Clubs considerably less and reserved the harshest penalty for Bright Builders.  The order against Bright Builders essentially put the company out of business.

In a press release issued about the case, Stephen Gingrich, Vice President of Global Legal Enforcement and HR for Cleveland® Golf/Srixon® stated “companies like Bright Builders who can amplify the impact and scope of this problem are even more dangerous. Counterfeiting has existed for thousands of years but has been a localized issue.  The Internet, ease of global shipping and payments, combined with SEO’s and web hosts injecting steroids into the situation has brought the issue into every consumer’s living room.” Continue reading “Trademark Verdict a Wake-Up Call for Web Hosting Industry” »

Hosting Reviews – LONDON, UK – Stonesoft, an innovative provider of integrated network security and business continuity solutions, discovered Advanced Evasion Techniques (AETs) last year. Since then, it has been verified that the threat posed by AETs to organisation’s critical data capital and systems is constantly evolving and dynamic. Here Stonesoft shares six tips for organisations to protect their critical data assets and systems against Advanced Evasion Techniques.

Evasions are a way to bypass network intrusion prevention systems (IPS) or any security device that is supposed to do network traffic inspection. As such, evasion techniques have been known for a long time. However, when Stonesoft discovered the AETs – a new threat category that existing network security systems are not able to detect – the information and the first 23 samples were quickly delivered to the Computer Emergency Response Team CERT-FI and later announced to the public. Stonesoft has recently shared 124 newly discovered samples with CERT-FI. However, this was just the tip of the iceberg. Continue reading “Six tips for protecting critical data against Advanced Evasion Techniques” »

Hosting Reviews – COLUMBIA, MD - Fortress International Group (Other OTC: FIGI), a provider of consulting and engineering, construction management and 24/7/365 site services for mission-critical facilities, today announced that its subsidiary, Total Site Solutions (TSS) has been selected as part of a team for the planning, design and construction Administration for the State of Montana’s new Enterprise System Services Center sites in Helena and Miles City, Montana. This engineering effort addressed all disciplines including civil, architectural, structural, mechanical, electrical, communications, fire protection and security systems.

In developing this project, Montana state officials emphasized service providers capable of employing high levels of energy efficiency to meet the state’s emission reduction objectives.  TSS presented several energy saving free cooling options for the data center design, including the Kyoto wheel manufactured by KyotoCooling International in the Netherlands.  TSS was able to calculate a life cycle cost with favorable payback for several systems, ultimately recommending the Kyoto Cooling System as the best value solution. The Montana site in Helena will be the first data center in the United States to use the ultra efficient Kyoto Energy Transfer Wheel. Continue reading “Total Site Solutions Selected for Montana Data Center Project” »

Hosting Reviews – REDWOOD CITY, CA - Dell Inc. (Nasdaq:DELL), Equinix, Inc. (NASDAQ:EQIX) and Rackspace Hosting, Inc. (NYSE:RAX) today announced that they have collaborated to develop an OpenStack™ cloud demonstration and test environment. The demo environment will be available in three data centers: the Equinix International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) in Silicon Valley, Calif., and Ashburn, Va., and the Rackspace data center in Chicago, Ill. The companies also plan to collaborate on additional demo environments in Equinix data centers in Europe and Asia in the second quarter of 2011. The demonstration environment allows organizations to easily and rapidly assess applications on the open-source cloud platform, simplifying the evaluation process and speeding the deployment of OpenStack proof of concepts (POCs). It is the first demonstration of an open standard platform where geographically dispersed OpenStack clouds can offer customers the ability to move applications and workloads between them.

OpenStack is a collection of open-source technologies delivering a massively scalable cloud platform for public and private clouds. Originally founded by Rackspace and NASA, OpenStack has grown to be a global software community of developers, technologists, researchers and more than 50 organizations collaborating to help enable any organization to create and offer cloud computing services running on standard hardware. Continue reading “Dell, Equinix and Rackspace Collaborate to Launch OpenStack Cloud Demonstration Environment” »