Web hosting provider Site5 has combined with Mokugift to do its part to give back to the environment.  For each new web hosting, VPS, dedicated server or reseller hosting account created, the Site5 will plant one tree to assist in reforestation efforts.

About Site5

Since 1999, Site5 has been providing web hosting services on servers that are considered high-end and loaded with a low number of customers per server.  This hosting provider takes the time to calculate its customer to server ratio to ensure none of its equipment becomes overloaded.  This, in turn, means web hosting clients at Site5 can be assured of a consistent and high up-time.

Site5 keeps its support in-house thereby ensuring clients are speaking with actual Site5 team member should support issues arise.  Their entire staff are fully trained in the company and its services, speak fluent English and excel in interpersonal relations.

Web hosting accounts with Site5 start as low as $4.95 a month and cap out at $10.95.  All accounts come with unlimited amounts of disk space and bandwidth.  Additionally, each account owner has access to a SiteAdmin control panel and an easy web site builder program.  Site5 also offers up to $75 in Google AdWords credits.  All this is backed by a sixty day money back guarantee.

About Mokugift

Mokugift (pronounced mōe-koo gift) translates to “tree” gift in Japanese.  The mission of this company is to help a fun and meaningful way to give back to the environment.  This charity-based company allows environmentally concerned citizens to plant trees for a mere one dollar per gift purchase.

The idea was brought to fruition by co-founders Hans Chung and Krates Ng.  Both had seen the very popular online selling of virtual gifts (Facebook and various dating site).  The gentlemen took this idea one step further and incorporated it with a way to give back to the planet.  Thus, Mokugift was born.

The purchase of a mokugift tree works much like sending e-cards.  Those on the receiving end of the gift can display their trees online at several social media outlets such as MySpace, Facebook and many other popular web sites.

One large portion of Mokugift is its platform designed to inspire businesses to create reward systems.  Site5 web hosting teaming up with this eco-friendly gifting idea is one such inspired business solution.  Not only will the web hosting company garner new clients but these very same new clients will pass the word along – not only bringing in customers but also doing something fabulous for the environment.

Conclusion

Web hosting has received a reputation (rightly so) over the years of being one of the worst offenders when it comes to ecological damage.  In the past year or two, there has been an overall shift of thinking and operating that has enabled web hosting providers to be able to lessen their damaging impact.  One superb way to do this is by helping with reforestation.  Hats off to Site5 to seeing the light and giving back to the planet!

Ms. Posey stated that with so much emphasis on cloud computing and its implications for those in the IT world, the Parallels Summit 2010 will serve as the ideal forum for tracking global trends and collaboration among some of the most important players in the industry.

SoftLayer CEO Lance Crosby is also scheduled to join in what is becoming an impressive lineup of speakers.  He intends to specifically address questions posed by those in the industry in addition to providing insight into developing a high-growth hosting firm.  Attendees of the Parallels Summit can submit their questions to Crosby via email at summit_questions@parallels.com

Mr. Crosby said the Parallels Summit is one of the most significant events to attend, stating that it provides access to the most qualified delegates in the hosting industry and often acts as the starting point for many important relationships.  Crosby noted that he is looking forward to an interactive session and encourages attendees to submit their questions early.

Other speakers that have been confirmed for the Parallels Summit include Antonio Piraino, Senior Analyst of Managed Hosting and Cloud Infrastructure Services at Tier 1 Research, and Warren Adelman, CEO and President at GoDaddy.com.  The Summit will also prominently feature Serguei Beloussov, Parallels Chairman and CEO, as well as Jack Zubarev, President of Parallels Service Provider Worldwide.

Microsoft and Verisign are among the platinum sponsors for the exclusive event, while Intel and Unison are gold sponsors.  Silver sponsors for the fifth annual Parallels Summit include AMD, e-pages, InterNex and Tucows.

The Parallels Summit 2010 will be hosted in the Fontainebleau community of Miami Beach from February 22-24.  Registration is free for all Parallels clients, partners, invited guests and other industry delegates.  An international conference, the event will provide a comprehensive blueprint of how the IT industry can leverage Parallels technology to deploy new cloud solutions, devise strategies to enhance and extend the market value of their services, and create new up-selling and cross-selling strategies that drive in increased revenues.

About Parallels

Founded in 1999, Parallels is a global leader in automation and virtualization software technology.  Its solutions optimize computing for businesses, cloud service providers and consumers across all major hardware, operating systems, and virtualization platforms.  Parallels is one of the fastest growing companies in the IT field with more than 700 staff members throughout Asia, Europe and North America.

Based in the metro Washington, DC area, WebNet Hosting is an industry leading e-commerce hosting provider that specializes in Miva Merchant solutions.  Its state of the art data center facility is equipped with fully redundant features, which has enabled customers to enjoy a fast and reliable network boasting an incredible 100% uptime guarantee.  Since the company’s inception in 2002, WebNet Hostng has left a positive impression on the web hosting industry, putting a special focus on e-commerce with its world-class 24/7 technical support and unmatched, personalized customer service.

WebNet Hosting has assembled some very attractive bargains for new customers to coincide with the 2009 holiday season.  Up until December 31, new clients can take advantage of the following deals:

Purchase any Miva Merchant web hosting package and receive the first month free.  This includes WebNet Hosting’s E-Starter, E-Customized and E-Semi-Dedicated packages.

Free setup on all shared and dedicated server hosting plans. (setup fee normally $99)

Free Miva Merchant 5.5 software with a $995 value.

Free upgrade to Miva Merchant 5.5 with the purchase of any Miva Merchant hosting plan.

Free migration to Miva Merchant from previous web hosting company – no downtime guaranteed!

Miva Merchant 5.5 is the latest version of the popular e-commerce software designed for merchants who sell products and services on the internet.  WebNet Hosting has been a premiere Miva Merchant partner since 2004, offering fully managed, highly customizable Miva Hosting plans starting from the low price of $24.95 per month.   The company also offers dedicated server packages through Dedicated Miva Hosting for as low as $199 a month.   In addition, WebNet Hosting promises that migrating existing stores from previous hosts to its servers is a fast and seamless process that can be done without incurring any downtime.  Its team walks with online merchants through the migration process every step of the way, ensuring a fast deployment for both new and existing storefronts.

About WebNet Hosting LCC

In addition to traditional web hosting services, WebNet Hosting specializes in easy to use Miva Merchant web hosting solutions designed for businesses of all sizes.  Its highly skilled team of experts make it a priority to keep themselves available while ensuring that the customer always comes first.  A leading provider in the e-commerce hosting sector, WebNet Hosting has become a premier choice for web hosting and hosted shopping cart solutions.

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.

]]> http://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/2009/10/19/broadgroup-announces-panel-for-annual-data-center-conference/feed/ 0 http://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/2009/09/29/ensim-aids-in-north-america%e2%80%99s-largest-single-ocs-deployment/ http://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/2009/09/29/ensim-aids-in-north-america%e2%80%99s-largest-single-ocs-deployment/#comments Tue, 29 Sep 2009 16:36:09 +0000 CommunicateBetter http://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/?p=546 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.

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.

]]> http://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/2009/09/24/34sp-makes-improvements-to-customer-support-system/feed/ 1 http://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/2009/08/25/layer-technologies-breaks-through-on-inc-5000/ http://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/2009/08/25/layer-technologies-breaks-through-on-inc-5000/#comments Tue, 25 Aug 2009 21:06:16 +0000 CommunicateBetter http://webhostinggeeks.com/blog/?p=489 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.

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.

Ryan Block, live.gdgt.com co-founder, was able to present a real-world demonstration on the power and value of cloud computing through his blog using Rackspace’s Cloud Sites solution.  With the help of his photographer, he was able to simultaneously capture and upload images in real-time to the Cloud Files service, which is automatically integrated into the site.  This activity all took place while serving an estimated 656 page views per second to worldwide viewers with minimal cost and hassle.

Mr. Block said the Rackspace Cloud enabled his team to quickly iterate and scale their live coverage without needing to make major investments in hardware or operations.  He says that the Rackspace support staff went above and beyond to help prepare for the event, providing essential input and attentiveness to maintain availability despite the unbelievably heavy traffic load.

The Cloud Sites solutions sells for $100 per month while Cloud Files is available on a pay-as-you-go basis with service starting at $0.15 per GB of data.  With Cloud Files, customers have the option of serving content files leveraging the Limelight Networks CDN (content delivery network) in real-time without any extra efforts and only paying for what they need.  Rackspace customers also get the benefit of 24/7 Fanatical Support for any questions of concerns they may have about their hosting account at no additional cost.

The approximate cost difference between the DIY hosting approach opposed to deploying Cloud Sites or Cloud Files for this type of event portrays the cost benefits of cloud computing.  Physical space, hardware, software and management costs for a state of the art data center capable of handling such a traffic load would cost tens of thousands of dollars.  When utilizing Rackspace’s cloud solutions, it is likely to only cost a couple hundred dollars.

The Rackspace Cloud delivers on-demand website, application and storage hosting backed by some of the best support in the industry.  Through a suite of cloud solutions in Cloud Sites, Cloud Files and Cloud Servers, the Rackspace Cloud gives knowledgeable IT managers and developers the ability to reduce the high-cost investments and hassles associated with dedicated hardware, all while allowing them to easily scale their hosting resources.

About Rackspace

A leader in the industry of hosting services, Rackspace Hosting is changing the way businesses around the world approach their IT operations.  The company provides a number of solutions including computing-as-a-service, incorporating the latest innovations into a highly flexible offering that makes computing more reliable and affordable.  Rackspace specializes in solutions that enable businesses and IT teams to be more efficient.  Distinguished by its award-winning Fanatical Support, the company continues on its mission be one of the best service providers in the world.  The Rackspace portfolio includes a number of hosted IT services such as Managed Hosting, Cloud hosting, email and application hosting.

Justin Erenkrantz, Apache Software Foundation President, noted his excitement to see how the Apache Hadoop project has progressed over the last few years.  He says the foundation is looking forward to witnessing the community’s growth accelerate with Yahoo’s continuous support and commitment to quality, factors that will ultimately attract more contributors to the Apache Hadoop project.

Mike Olson, CEO of Cloudera, states that the general availability of Yahoo’s Hadoop source code will make its own distribution of Hadoop more robust and scalable.  He says Cloudera will continue to work with Yahoo to implement the tried and tested source code into its commercial distribution.  According to Olson, the Cloudera distribution of Hadoop is an enterprise-ready version complete with key tools, utilities, customer service and technical support, features designed to help enterprises deploy and maintain the Hadoop platform for larger scale data processing and management needs.

Considered one of the pioneers, Yahoo has led the way in development and is now the leading contributor to the Apache Hadoop project.  Doug Cutting, Hadoop founder, joined Yahoo in 2006 and the company immediately began making significant investments in developing the project.  Hadoop currently underpins several of Yahoo’s properties, including Yahoo Search, Yahoo mail and a variety of its content and advertising services.  In Yahoo data centers, Hadoop runs on well over 25,000 servers and analyzes billions of web pages, petabytes of storage and billions of new records on a daily basis.

To demonstrate the community collaboration of the Hadoop project, Yahoo hosted the second annual Hadoop Summit on June 10 in Santa Clara, California.  Co-sponsoring the event was Cloudera, Amazon Web Services, IBM, Sun Startup Essentials and Lightspeed Venture Partners.  The event brought hundreds of members from the Hadoop user and developer communities together to learn and share ideas with each other.  The Hadoop Summit focused on all the advancements made in the development and deployment of the project and its related technologies.  It also touched on case studies of the applications being created and deployed on Hadoop as well as discussions on the platforms’ future directions.

Yahoo’s distribution of Hadoop is available via the Yahoo Developer Network.  Cloudera’s distribution, which includes the Yahoo source code, is available at cloudera.com.

About Yahoo

Headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, Yahoo is a globally renown internet brand and leading web hosting provider.  The company is dedicated to empowering its community of customers, users, publishers, advertisers, and developers by establishing indispensable services based on trust and reliability.  The Yahoo brand is currently one of the most trafficked internet destinations in the world.

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