Web Host News – London – Equinix, Inc. (Nasdaq: EQIX), a provider of data center services, today announced the opening of the second phase of its latest London (LD5) International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data center. This expansion of Platform Equinix™ adds another 4,000 square meters of customer space and capacity for 1,400 cabinet equivalents in the London metropolitan area.

Russell Poole, managing director, Equinix UK, said, “London is one of the largest and fastest growing data center markets in the world and the opening of LD5’s second phase underlines our commitment to support our customers’ growth. We have been focusing our efforts on providing a global platform to meet the demand for colocation and network exchange services from the whole market. At the moment, this growth in demand is particularly strong from financial services firms and cloud service providers.”
Continue reading “Equinix Launches Second Phase of State-of-the-Art London Data Center” »

Web Host News – DALLAS — SoftLayer® Technologies, the innovation leader in Cloud, Dedicated, and Managed Hosting, today announced that the control procedures and compliance for its 11 data centers have been verified in a Service Organization Control Report (SOC 1) prepared under the terms of the Statement on Standards for Attestation Engagements No. 16 (SSAE 16) by independent auditing firm Weaver.

“We’re committed to operating our data centers and facilities at a level that meets or exceeds the highest industry and regulatory standards,” said Steve Kinman, Vice President of Customer Relations for SoftLayer. “We’re proud to be one of the first in the hosting industry to complete a SSAE 16 review, assuring our customers that they can count on us for best practices in all that we do.”

SSAE 16, developed by the Auditing Standards Board (ASB) of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), replaces the Statement on Auditing Standards No. 70 (SAS 70), which was the standard used for reviewing service organization control processes for nearly two decades. SoftLayer has received SAS 70 Type II assessments since 2008.

Weaver performed an independent audit and extensive testing of control activities and effectiveness at all SoftLayer data centers, with a full assessment of:

- Oversight by executive management
- Operations and customer service
- Development and information technology organization
- Human resources policies and procedures
- Risk assessment monitoring

The SOC 1 was prepared using the “inclusive method” that incorporated reviews of relevant SoftLayer service partners, mitigating the need for SoftLayer customers to collect additional compliance verifications.

“Not only do we want to provide customers with superior assurance and confidence in our operations, we wanted to make it easy for them,” said Mr. Kinman. “Using the inclusive method streamlined the process. And we’ve created an easy-to-use tool in our Customer Portal so customers can e-sign the SSAE 16 non-disclosure agreement and immediately access the verification they need.” Continue reading “SoftLayer Completes SSAE 16 Review” »

Web Host News – Denver, CO - GearHost Inc., a cloud web hosting provider specializing in managed Microsoft Windows solutions, is pleased to announce it has renewed its long standing partnership with information technology management company SmarterTools Inc.

GearHost will package the SmarterTools suite of products into its CloudServer offering. The software bundle includes the professional editions of the SmarterMail mail server, an Exchange-level Windows mail server; SmarterTrack, a complete customer service software solution; and SmarterStats, a comprehensive web log analytics and SEO software. The SmarterTools software bundle is provided to GearHost clients at no additional charge—compliments of GearHost.

“Our continued partnership with SmarterTools has empowered GearHost to provide a robust solution for our CloudServer customers. SmarterTools software is designed on the Microsoft stack and adds value to our existing Microsoft cloud hosting solutions allowing our customers to get a complete CloudServer solution with software to provide email, site analytics and an entire help desk suite at no charge to our customers,” says Ryan Kekos, GearHost’s CEO. “We look forward to a mutually beneficial relationship with SmarterTools for many years to come.”

GearHost is a leading provider of Windows cloud hosting solutions built on top of a support team dedicated to you. Visit www.gearhost.com to learn the latest on CloudServer and CloudSite hosting solutions that provide 100% uptime and scale automatically.

About GearHost Inc
GearHost, Inc. based in Denver, Colorado, has been providing superior cloud web hosting solutions since 2000. GearHost offers offers top of the line cloud hosting technology and unfailing customer support, hosting over 13,000 domains for businesses worldwide.

For more information, visit www.gearhost.com.
Continue reading “GearHost Cloud Hosting Renews Longstanding SmarterTools Partnership” »

Web Host News – Galloway, NJ - Linode, a leading provider of cloud infrastructure services, today announced the immediate availability of its managed cloud-based Load-Balancing-as-a-Service (LBaaS) offering – NodeBalancer. Now any Linode customer can balance incoming requests across their Linode cloud instances to achieve greater availability and fault tolerance.

Linode’s new load balancing service monitors the real-time health and connection load of each server instance to intelligently distribute incoming requests. In the event of a node failure, health checks actively remove nodes from rotation to ensure uninterrupted availability. Additionally, since NodeBalancer constantly monitors the connection load of each server and distributes new requests to the least-loaded nodes in the pool, the risks associated with unexpected traffic spikes are more manageable for system administrators. Continue reading “Cloud Provider Linode Launches NodeBalancer” »

Web Host News – PEER 1 Hosting, the global online IT hosting provider, today announced the expansion of its partner program across Europe, the Middle-East and Africa (EMEA). PEER 1’s new Platinum Plus program opens up new opportunities for elite partners focused in niche markets, such as: Software-as-a-Service (SaaS); Digital Media; E-Commerce; Web Server; Web Analytics; Customer Intelligence, and; Data Mining.

With a range of benefits and incentives, the Platinum Plus partner program offers elite partners access to executive sponsors, tailored training programs and marketing collateral in addition to its industry-leading ‘Evergreen’ initiative which rewards partners for the lifetime of the customer, offering higher returns than competitive programs in the marketplace. Continue reading “PEER 1 Hosting unveils ‘Platinum Plus’ partner program” »

Web Host News -  Chesterbrook, PA - 1&1 Internet, a global leader amongst Web hosts, launches a new initiative in celebration of Canada Day with the My Business Heroes Contest.

It is special efforts by business owners and their employees who care, that make organizations stand above the rest. 1&1 wants to show its appreciation of those who share their time and services for the greater good of those around them. Continue reading “Local Business Heroes Recognized by Global Web Host” »

Web Host News – Ann Arbor, Michigan – Online Tech will host a three-part series of free educational webinars on modern security standards starting July 19, 2011 at 2pm ET. The educational webinar series will focus on HIPAA compliance, network and application security, and new solutions for cloud computing security.

“Protecting sensitive information is becoming increasingly important for companies, especially with the high costs of credibility, trust, and remediation for data security breaches. This series of webinars aims to share new tools and information to help companies understand new security requirements and meet data security goals,” says April Sage, Marketing Director of Online Tech. Continue reading “Online Tech Announces Modern Data Security Webinar Series” »

Web Host News – Waltham, MA – mindSHIFT Technologies, Inc., a leading IT outsourcing and cloud services provider for small and mid-size businesses (SMBs), today announced the expansion of its suite of cloud-based managed Desktop services with cloudSHIFT Desktop: Premium.  SMBs can now benefit from mindSHIFT’s depth of technical expertise, highly secure data centers and exceptional customer support to realize the benefits of desktop virtualization.   With cloudSHIFT Desktop, users receive all the benefits of a robust, reliable, secure computer network without having to worry about handling software upgrades, security upgrades, disaster recovery and other headaches associated with managing desktop technology.

The burden and expense of new technology sometimes prevents SMBs from taking advantage of technology options which have traditionally been used by bigger organizations with larger budgets.  cloudSHIFT Desktop: Premium is an Internet-based solution where all software traditionally located on the desktop is housed and managed on servers located in mindSHIFT’s data centers. Customers have full use of applications such as Microsoft Office, OpenOffice, PDF creator and Adobe Reader, either on the customer’s existing desktops and laptops or on low-cost devices, even though the applications are located somewhere else. cloudSHIFT Desktop allows users to access applications through a web browser. It is a secure, affordable, trouble-free alternative to purchasing, managing and maintaining desktop equipment.

Continue reading “mindSHIFT Partners with Desktone to Expand Cloud Platform” »

Web Host News – CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - Sedo, the leading online domain marketplace and monetization provider, today announced the launch of IDNX, the industry’s first standardized domain price index. Developed by economist and internet entrepreneur Thies Lindenthal, IDNX uses real estate economic methodology to provide investors with critical insight into the current market value of domains, domain industry trends, and the risk to return ratio of domains as a financial asset.

By indexing more than 200,000 domain transactions over a six year period, IDNX exhibits the strong correlation with standard economic indicators, suggesting that domains are as much an economic asset as real estate, stocks or shares. By allowing comparison to other financial indicators such as the NASDAQ or the stock price of internet giant Google, IDNX clearly shows that the trend lines for these indices follow the same path as the trend line for the domain market.
Continue reading “Domain Names Tied to Standard Economic Indicators, According to First Ever Domain Price Index” »

Web Host News – SAN FRANCISCO, CA — At a live event, VMware CEO Paul Maritz unveiled VMware vSphere® 5 and a comprehensive suite of cloud infrastructure technologies built to help customers transform IT to drive greater efficiency of existing investments and improve operational agility.

With nearly 200 new and enhanced capabilities, VMware vSphere 5 will continue to set the standard in virtualization, delivering better application performance and availability for all business-critical applications while automating the management of an increasingly broad pool of datacenter resources. VMware today also announced VMware vShield™ 5, VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager 5, and VMware vCloud® Director 1.5, products that together with VMware vSphere 5 will amplify the value customers can realize from virtualized resources by enabling cloud-scale operations.
Continue reading “VMware Unveils VMware vSphere 5 and Comprehensive Cloud Infrastructure Suite” »