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BroadGroup Announces Panel for Annual Data Center Conference

BroadGroup, an international consulting agency, just announced that its fourth annual Power and Cooling for Data Centres conference will feature a panel of global experts who are scheduled to address how the issues of cost and energy consumption impact all data center facilities.  The event will take place October 23, 2009 at the Conference Centre in London, England.  According to the initial July announcement, Catalina McGregor of the Green ICT Deliver group will be opening the conference.  This year, the theme will be centered around innovative ways to increase data center efficiency by reducing costs and energy consumption.  The 2008 conference was a huge success and BroadGroup is aiming for similar results this time around.

Roy Zeighami of Hewlett Packard’s Business Critical Systems division, will give a presentation on designing IT hardware with power density.  Marion Howard-Healy, BroadGroup Senior Consultant, will chair an entirely new panel that will address the implementation of natural energy solutions.  Howard-Healy will be joined by Donal Mac Nioclais of Aquamarine’s commercial development department, Burton Hamer, President and co-founder of Hydrovolts, Rennie Dalrymple, a partner from the Bruce Shaw Partnership, Greg Mason, data center specialist for Atlantis Resources, and Maurice Julian, manager of Hewlet Packard’s Wynyard data center facility.

Other experts speaking at the conference include:

- Bernard Lecanu – European Commission Green IT Group member

- Rod Evans, SGI Managing Director

- Alex Rabbets, Migration Solutions Managing Director

- Joe Polastre – Sentilla CTO

- Dr. Ian F Bitterlin – Prism Power CTO

- Ashley R. Davis – JP Morgan Managing Director

- Mike Manos – Digital Realty Senior VP

- Lex Coors – Interxion HQ Director of Engineering

- Andrew Mercer – 20Degrees CEO

Steve Wallage, Managing Director at BroadGrou, said that energy is an integral part of data center design, location and cost.  He said the purpose of the annual conference is to devote significant focus to these vital issues while sharing the latest concepts and knowledge that serve as direct take-aways for IT teams and managers.  Aside from delivering some golden nuggets of wisdom, Wallage will also be giving a comprehensive review of the data center market at the forum.

The annual Power and Cooling conference will be attended by IT executives and professionals from all across the world.  About half of the attendees are senior and C level executives while approximately a third of them are engineers and operations managers from various data centers.

The event will cover an entire day and exhibit a broad range of new solutions that have recently emerged to reduce costs in the data center environment.  The event will focus on the theme of solutions that offer lense dense systems can result lower cost and better energy efficiency.  In addition, BroadGroup Consulting will also be handing out free copies of its new report entitled “Power and Cooling Innovations,” to those attending the conference.

For parties who are interested in attending, advanced ticket discounts will remain available until October 21, 2009.  You can learn more about the Fourth Annual Power and Cooling event by visiting the official site.

Ensim Aids in North America’s Largest Single OCS Deployment

Ensim Corporation, a provider of web hosting automation, user provisioning and access control software solutions, announced that it recently provided provisioning and management services for Microsoft OCS (Office Communications Server), speeding up deployment to accommodate customers of more than 150,000 seats.  The move is being described as North America’s largest single OCS deployment in less than 90 days.  Though once delayed, the deployment is on course and Ensim is happy to get things back on track.

Scott Young, Ensim Vice President of Marketing and Product Management, revealed that the deployment of OSC 2007 is often a burden for regulated organizations due the complexities involved with user entitlement policies.  He stated that by deploying the Ensim Unify product, a particular customer was able to solve its provisioning and management problems in under 90 days all while enforcing the security and compliance policies demanded by its user base.  According to Young, the scalability and efficiency of Ensim Unfiy speaks volume when considering the tremendous size of the deployment it supported.

Ensim Unify Enterprise Edition is a fully integrated, role-based access management tool with the ability to be deployed merely for the OCS platform, or across an organization’s entire unified communications infrastructure.  This includes email, instant messaging, collaboration and conferencing.  Its built-in OCS Manager enables companies to reap the benefits of a complete unified communications system without the burden of manual provisioning and tedious management.  The feature integrates with existing ID management solutions to help organizations leverage the new functionality of OCS without straining their IT resources.

Some of the key features Ensim Unify’s OCS Manager offers include:

- The ability to seamlessly integrate complex provisioning polices

- The ability to support multiple provisioning workflows

- Complete Help Desk support on multiple levels

- Comprehensive logging of system activity and transactions

- The ability to automatically manage manual updates on a daily basis.

David J. Wippich, Ensim Corporation CEO and chairman, noted how the Ensim Unify product can be both a productive and cost effective solution.  He stressed that while the ROI which can result from deploying unified communications is substantial, many companies are lost at the deployment stage or find themselves dealing with complicated tasks following deployment.  He explained that the Ensim Unify solves the problem by enabling a fast deployment, automating daily management processes and unrivaled interoperability that makes the most of existing policies and investments that can be extended to unified communications applications such as Microsoft Office Communications Server.

About Ensim Corporation

Founded in 1998, Ensim Corporation is Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and the global leading provider of user provisioning and access management software solutions.  Its products are leveraged by enterprise companies and service providers around the world to enable and accelerate the deployment of various integrated solutions, simplifying the management of complex environments through automated functionality while ensuring security and increasing productivity amongst IT teams and users.  Ensim currently has more than two million users under management and that number seems to be growing considerably every quarter.

34SP Makes Improvements to Customer Support System

Last week, 34SP.com, a UK-based web hosting provider, announced the deployment of the SmarterTrack customer support software.  The firm will be using the application to deliver service via ticketing and live chat to its fast growing base of customers.   SmarterTrack offers many great qualities but one of the main reasons 34SP.com elected to use the product was because of its superior flexibility.  Unlike many other solutions, this product can deployed in traditional fashion or hosted in an SaaS cloud model.

Stuart Melling, 34SP.com co-founder, said that since adopting the SmarterTrack software, its customer service levels have boosted significantly.  Thanks to the live chat feature, the company can ensure super-fast response times and literally solve issues in a matter of seconds compared to what could have taken hours with its former systems.  Now able to get a clear view of exactly what the customer is experiencing, Melling is amazed at the level of satisfaction the SmarterTrack support software has prompted.

The SmarterTrack software is loaded with features.  Some of the most notable highlights include the following:

• Ticketing solution – SmarterTrack’s state of the art ticketing facility takes sales, service and support messages and converts them into a powerful, streamlined information distribution system.
• Live chat – A feature that is increasing in demand, live chat empowers companies to dramatically reduce the number of phone calls, collect important information from prospects and provide quality assistance to more customers.
• WhosOn – This feature is very useful as it gives online businesses the ability to track customers in real time as they navigate the site.  When used effectively, Whoson can accelerate customer service, gather information on visitors and lead to an increase in sales.
• Portal Interface – The SmartTrack portal interface is designed to be search engine-friendly and acts as the centralized station for all of your communications channels.
• Web-based Interface – An intuitive web interface provides organizations with accessibility from any computer with an internet connection.
• Self-help Resources – With self-help tools such as a knowledge base and other forms of documentation, businesses can give customers the ability to find and resolve their own issues.
• Multi-brand Functionality – The SmarterTools customer support software is designed to support multiple brands within a single company.

Jeff Hardy, VP of Business Operations for SmarterTrack explained that the company is thrilled to see international firms such as 34SP leveraging SmarterTrack as their customer support solution.  He commended 34SP for its high level of commitment to customer satisfaction and mentioned how the decision to improve its service department shows what a great solution SmarterTrack makes for the web hosting market.

About SmarterTrack Inc.

Based in Phoenix, Arizona, SmarterTools is a company that specializes in management software for the IT Field.  Its mail servers, web analytics reporting tools and customer service software products simplify daily IT operations in more than 100 countries.

About 34SP.com

34SP offers affordable web hosting solutions geared towards web designers and developers, specializing in both shared and reseller hosting, and domain names.  The firm provides industry leading support on top of a money back guarantee to ensure the utmost in satisfaction.

Layer Technologies Breaks Through on Inc. 5000

Many companies are struggling during the recession, but you couldn’t tell by viewing a certain list featuring a comprehensive look at 5,000 of the nation’s top-performing privately owned firms.

Based in Plano, Texas, web hosting provider Layer Technologies, Inc., just added another accolade to its long list of honors by ranking number 622 in Inc Magazine’s the third annual Inc. 5000.  Thanks to Northern Capital Insurance, the number one company on the list this year, insurance is leading the way as the nation’s leading industry with an average growth rate of a whopping 667%.   Other notable brands representing their respective industries featured on the list include beverage brewing company Honest Tea, rental car service Zipcar and internet powerhouse GoDaddy.

Jim Melloan, Inc. 5,000 project manager, says that the Inc. 5,000 is the best source for learning about new private companies that achieve success through innovative business models and older privately owned corporations that are still profiting and growing at an impressive rate.  Melloan noted that this is the reason investors and other spectators look forward to the list every year.

Layered Technologies made the prestigious Inc. 5,000 list due to its tremendous growth rate of 441% over the past three years.  The firm invests faithfully in research and development to implement the new technologies and features that has helped it remain one of the top 10 global web hosting providers.  Layered Tech evolved from a regionally known dedicated hosting provider to a world-renown web host with a scalable infrastructure that powers a broad range of internet applications and millions of websites.

Many are viewing Inc.’s 2009 list as a report card on the U.S. economy.  In light of the harsh economic climate, aggregate revenue of companies that made the list increased by an estimated $29 billion since 2008, with an average three year growth rate of 126%.  Since its inception, Inc. has played an active hand in creating more than one million jobs, serving as the perfect example of the positive impact fast growing businesses can have on the economy.  You can view the complete results of the Inc. 5000 list by criteria such as industry and region on the Inc.com website.

About Layered Technologies

Founded in 2004, Layered Technologies Inc. is a web hosting provider that specializes in managed hosting, dedicated servers, virtualization, cloud computing and a broad range of additional web services.  Leveraging the best of technology and a world-class infrastructure, the firm delivers the level of support that enables businesses of various sizes to eliminate costly upfront investments and save significantly on operating expense while focusing on the core aspects of their business.  Its highly scalable infrastructure lends its power to millions of websites and a host of web solutions and applications such as SasS (software as a service), SQL Server and content distribution among others.  Boasting one of the largest customer bases in the industry, Layer Technologies clients range from cutting-edge startup companies and thriving medium enterprises to some of the most successful integration and consulting firms in the world.

Gomez Makes Major Enhancements to its Testing Platform

This past Monday, managed web application service provider Gomez, announced that it would be making significant platform-wide upgrades and enhancements to a number of its products.  These improvements will directly impact the company’s performance management, web load and cross-browser testing solutions for the benefit of clients using both web and mobile applications.

According the announcement, Gomez’s platform-wide upgrade includes the unveiling of the Gomez Recorder, an advanced management tool.  The Gomez Recorder greatly simplifies the creation and management of test scripts and complex web transactions by analyzing the many individual elements within a single web page.  Gomez’s new tool has the ability to automatically detect and capture the performance metrics of each step in asynchronous RIA transactions, thus allowing businesses to effectively analyze and optimize the performance of their applications.

The firm has also incorporated various solutions for the testing and monitoring of applications, mobile sites and services into the Gomez platform.  These additions give companies a unified view of traditional and mobile applications, permitting them to identify, diagnose, prioritize and resolve performance issues.  Businesses have the option to analyze the performance of traditional and mobile sites individually or collectively.

Other enhancements include Gomez’s automated cross-browser and web load testing solutions.  The former has been expanded to support 5,000 mobile devices and well over 500 combinations of browsers, devices and screen sizes, helping developers save more time and money by automating the process of mobile and web application testing.  The company’s on-demand web load testing solution has also been enhanced, the most notable being the addition of a high volume, cloud generated load combined with the real-world load from its recently expanded Last Mile network.  Gomez’s Last Mile network consists of more than 100,000 consumer-grade desktop machines running real-world performance tests.  Generating extra capacity and reach, the cloud enables Gomez to deliver solutions that more accurately determine the impact of peak loads on response times for end-users in various locations with varying connection speeds.  This ultimately helps businesses make the necessary adjustments and launch new web applications with confidence.

Also added to the list of enhancements is a new integrated diagnostics dashboard.  This tool provides an interface that aggregates test data across Gomez’s global testing network and customer base, aiding clients with diagnosis that alerts them of performance issues.  Customers can effectively troubleshoot issues whether they are related to them, associates, vendors or the internet in general.

Jaime Ellertson, Chief Executive Officer at Gomez, stated that today’s end-users expect both web and mobile applications to be richer and faster than every before, not knowing that this creates twice the complexity for the developers who build them, the IT teams that maintain them, and the online business executives that rely on them for brand creation and revenues.  He states that the enhancements to the Gomez platform will provide businesses with a powerful and cost effective package of integrated solutions, helping them optimize their most essential web pages and applications, all while meeting the end-user’s expectations in terms of speed and quality.