New collaborative apps help businesses organize, backup and share information in the cloud.

Rackspace Hosting, a web hosting company, today announced a set of new product offerings that help businesses move their IT applications into the cloud. The company states that the new offerings from it include Rackspace Cloud Drive, Rackspace Server Backup, and the upcoming release of Hosted Microsoft SharePoint (expected to be released in December 2009). It claims that these new products help customers to spend less time maintaining basic IT systems, such as file servers and data backup software, and instead focus on their core competencies that drive revenue and add business value. By putting these apps in the cloud, Rackspace is able to provide businesses with its award winning Fanatical Support and a compelling value proposition, adds the company.

"Most every business needs to send emails, share files, and backup data.  But these systems are costly and complex to manage in-house," said Pat Matthews, General Manager, Rackspace Email & Apps. "The cloud presents a great opportunity for businesses to save money and work smarter.  We believe that we are helping our customers gain competitive advantage by putting these apps in the cloud."

"This announcement is an important one for our business, as it highlights both the success of our existing email solutions and our expansion into additional business applications that can bring substantial cost savings to our customers and reduce complexity in their IT environments," said Lew Moorman, President of cloud division, Rackspace Hosting. "More and more businesses are moving their critical applications to the cloud, and we can help them to achieve that goal.

Company's PersonalSign range allow users to digitally sign and encrypt email messages with multi-year cost savings benefits.

GlobalSign, a Certification Authority and specialist in SSL Partner Programs, today announced the launch of its new multi-year Secure Email Certificate, branded PersonalSign - a cryptographic Digital Certificate that will secure email content and identify to recipients the true email identity of the sender. The company says that by offering multi-year Secure Email Certificates versus one year Certificates allows users to renew less frequently, avoid the common pitfalls of an expiring Certificate, and take advantage of multi-year pricing discounts. It adds that the launch comes at the time when fellow Certification Authority Thawte (owned by VeriSign), announced the discontinuation and upcoming revocation of its Secure Email Certificates.

The company explains that Secure Email Certificates (sometimes also known in the industry as Digital IDs) can be installed in all popular email clients such as Microsoft Outlook, and allow email users to digitally sign and encrypt email; ensuring it is tamper proof and protected from prying eyes. Encrypting an email renders its content and attachments unreadable by anyone except the intended recipient. Additionally, digitally signing an email protects message integrity by ensuring the message has not been altered, either accidentally or maliciously. It claims that GlobalSign PersonalSign Certificates also allow users to digitally sign Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access documents directly from Microsoft Office to prevent tampering of content and prove authorship.

The company further states that prior to the pioneering introduction of multi-year Email Security Certificates by it, customers using similar S/MIME compliant Certificates from other providers would have to re-order/renew Certificates each year. It also explains that besides the annual risk of forgetting to re-apply before expiration, users can run into the problem of not being able to open messages encrypted with previous (or lost) Certificates. This occurs when users do not realize that even expired Certificates must be retained or exported, especially if there is a change of computers. The company avers that by using a three-year validity PersonalSign Certificate, users have fewer Certificates to maintain over prolonged periods, and will not need to complete the annual renewal process required by providers of other solutions. It adds that it is now offering the PersonalSign 1 product with a validity period of three years for only $49.

The company introduces LimeDomains, its new hosting and domain registration service.

Lime Labs, a web services company, yesterday announced the launch of its new hosting and domain registration service, LimeDomains. The company states that an ICANN accredited domain registrar, LimeDomains offers a wide range of hosting solutions, ranging from completely free full-featured websites, to competitively priced premium hosting plans that include more space, bandwidth and the ability to manage several domains and websites from a single account.

It explains that all LimeDomains accounts come with access to an extensive catalog of open source web applications ranging from popular blogs such as Wordpress, to full-featured content management systems such as Drupal and Joomla. Users can also upload their own files or transfer their existing websites - such as their Geocities pages - to LimeDomains via a built-in file manager, or any popular FTP client. Most popular web design applications, such as Adobe Dreamweaver, are also supported, says the company.

It avers that unlike other free hosting services, there are no strings attached to the free hosting offer on LimeDomains. The company further states that users do not have to sign-up for any third party services, or submit themselves to a barrage of solicitations (e-mail, or otherwise), or place mandatory ads on their website. Most importantly, the free accounts are not crippled in any way - and receive the same quality of service, performance and reliability that most other hosting services charge a premium for.

"LimeDomains makes it easy for people to get powerful websites running quickly and easily," said Mark Gorton, Founder of LimeLabs. "LimeDomains offers free hosting and free application installation, and we are finding that many people appreciate the great value we are offering."

"We're excited to be first to market with a credible, full-featured free website solution," said John Enright, VP Marketing & Business Development at LimeLabs. "Our feature set and customer experience is already well ahead of any other hosting service - free or otherwise � and this is just the beginning."

• Service Provider Partners - Members of this group deliver managed, hosted, cloud-based, and other related services that are monitored using the Nimsoft Monitoring Solution (NMS)

• Solution Partners - These ISVs and SaaS providers extend the Nimsoft solution by providing complementary IT service management solutions and capabilities such as net-flow traffic capture, service desk, and IT infrastructure library configuration management databases

• Technology Development Partners - These partners are building data collection probes to extend the myriad of types of objects NMS monitors, from non-standard databases to ERP applications to geo-location-based devices

"We are excited to announce the launch of the Nimsoft Unified Monitoring Alliance as a part of our vision to define a new class of IT monitoring solutions. Tomorrow's business applications will reside on infrastructure from the internal datacenter to the cloud. Managing this requires cooperation among partners to deliver enterprises complete solutions across their internal and external assets," said Nimsoft President and CEO Gary Read.

"The alliance not only expands opportunities for growth and collaborative innovation for our partners, but also effectively increases the breadth and depth of the systems monitoring and management solutions that Nimsoft offers to its customers. We expect the ability to co-market complementary third-party solutions and promote service providers that are powered by Nimsoft will accelerate the growth of our global ecosystem to multi-billions of dollars over the next two to three years."

"InTeliNet is pleased to join the Nimsoft Unified Monitoring Alliance," stated Lars Soraas, Chief Technology Officer, InTeliNet. "We look forward to working with Nimsoft to create tightly integrated and complementary solutions to address customers' communications and network management needs."

"Many enterprises need the ability to seamlessly monitor their cloud servers alongside their dedicated servers," said Emil Sayegh, General Manager, Rackspace Cloud. "The Nimsoft Monitoring Solution, now listed on Rackspace Cloud Tools, enables this and allows customers to understand the performance and availability of business applications that live in datacenters, the Rackspace Cloud and hybrids of the two."

Provides Provisioning Rollback, the synergy of bare metal provisioning and bare metal imaging technologies for Linux and Windows.

LinMin, a provider of bare metal provisioning, today unveiled Release 5.5, featuring Provisioning Rollback, the synergy of bare metal provisioning and bare metal imaging technologies for Linux and Windows. The company states that by definition, bare metal operations destroy all prior contents of systems: its new capability makes it easy to automatically capture a system's disk image and only then install a new operating system.

It further states that regardless of whether this operating system deployment was done in error or performed explicitly to shift computing resources in near-real time during peak demand, or to test new configurations, the company makes it trivial to "undo" the provisioning event and roll a system back to its fully-operational known-good state that immediately preceded the bare metal provisioning event. The company claims that with LinMin Release 5.5, users can now quickly deliver systems running Debian 4 and 5 in addition to all major versions of Linux and Windows. It explains that after LinMin has been integrated into hosting control panels using the Application Programming Interface (API), dedicated server end customers can remotely repurpose systems to over 100 different versions and architectures of Linux and Windows without involving hosting company staff.

"Only by using LinMin to provision our physical infrastructure can we grow as fast as we do. And now that LinMin provisions Debian, we've introduced customer-initiated self-service bare metal server provisioning for all major versions of Linux and Windows," said Matteo Berlonghi, CTO of SeFlow, a leading Italian hosting provider. "By empowering our dedicated server customers to repurpose their systems at will, quality of service gets even higher without involving SeFlow team members."

"Hosting companies, system builders and many other types of customers are finding ways of leveraging the combination of bare metal provisioning and bare metal imaging in ways we never even thought of," said Laurent Gharda, CEO and founder of LinMin Corp. "In introducing Provisioning Rollback, or what we call the 'oops' button, we've automated what customers were already doing manually using LinMin Bare Metal Provisioning. Our customers really deserve the credit."

• Pay As You Go or Monthly Packages: Monthly billing is based on hourly usage or monthly plans with no long-term commitment, letting customers optimize their return on technology investment by paying only for the resources they need and use
• Immediate Scalability: Services are added in real time to accommodate unexpected or temporary changes in demand, providing exactly the level of IT power and capacity as needed, when needed
• Ease of Use and Control: Full control via its Customer Portal and API provides streamlined, simplified management, as well as direct access to all SoftLayer services and tools

"We're extremely excited to introduce Private Cloud services to our customers. Private Cloud gives Softlayer customers yet another dynamic, scalable infrastructure option," said Nathan Day, CTO, SoftLayer. "This will provide a service with segregated physical computing hardware giving customers security and peace of mind with the benefits of unlimited, on-demand scalability."

• Email archiving service - Automatic and transparent archiving of up to 10 years-worth of email in a secure offsite location
• Email continuity service - Complete access to email even during outages and disasters
• Email spam protection and email antivirus protection - A spam filtering solution stops 99 percent of spam and has a perfect track record for stopping viruses
• Data Leak Prevention - Allows administrators to set policies to detect and prevent key confidential or restricted information within emails and attachments from leaking to unauthorised persons
• Retention Management/Litigation Hold - Emails can be retained based upon content policy or user preferences
• eDiscovery - Provides eDiscovery and review tools which provide search and analysis of the data

"As organisations today continue to face significant risks and costs when it comes to email, the ability to securely manage and protect digital information has become more critical than ever before," said Richard Ellis, Manager, UK & Ireland, Iron Mountain Digital. "Just as customers have been turning to Iron Mountain for the storage and protection of their physical records, Iron Mountain Digital's Storage-as-a-Service model offers secure, cost-effective storage and access to digital information, including email. The Total Email Management Suite is a critical component of our digital archiving strategy - providing the rich functionality needed to protect and manage emails, enterprise-class security and necessary functionality in case of litigation, not to mention the peace of mind of a secure Iron Mountain hosted solution."

"Iron Mountain Digital customers can now benefit from the combination of Iron Mountains expertise on legal discovery coupled with a robust email archiving and management solution, delivered securely via a Software-as-a-Service model" said Mark Reeves, SVP Europe, Middle East and Asia Pacific, Mimecast.

• Support for up to eight fully customizable input circuits per rack
• Tracking of power consumption at the device level for devices with dual power sources.
• Reporting at the device and circuit level, in addition to the power cable, rack, category and facility level previously available
• Customer-defined alerts
• Export of power consumption data via SNMP
• More reporting options

"Packet Power - Power Manger Version 2.0 adds functions that our customers were asking for without sacrificing the ease of use of what sets our solution apart," said Steve VanTassel, Packet Power Chief Executive Officer. "This release gives customers the ability to gather more detailed information and makes it easier for them to act on that information and share it with other data center management applications."

"One of the things that attracted us to Packet Power was their commitment to be responsive to our needs," said Packet Power customer Brian Driscoll, site manager at CoSentry's data center hosting and co-location facility in Sioux Falls, SD. "With the release of Version 2.0, Packet Power has delivered the main things we wanted to see added to the product, and provided them sooner than promised."

• 2 Core - 2GB RAM -250GB HDD
• 4 Core - 4GB RAM - 250GB HDD
• 8 Core - 8GB RAM - 250GB HDD
• 16 Core - 16GB RAM - 250GB HDD

The company further lists the benefits of using their services, which include:

• Pay As You Go or Monthly Packages: Monthly billing is based on hourly usage or monthly plans with no long-term commitment, letting customers optimize their return on technology investment by paying only for the resources they need and use. Hourly billing will be offered in the near future.
• Immediate Scalability: Services are added in real time to accommodate unexpected or temporary changes in demand, providing exactly the level of IT power and capacity as needed, when needed.
• Ease of Use and Control: Full control via SoftLayer's Customer Portal and API provides streamlined, simplified management, as well as direct access to all SoftLayer services and tools.

''Bare Metal Cloud gives customers with certain workloads the opportunity to enjoy the flexibility, provisioning, and on-demand billing advantages of cloud computing,'' said Nathan Day, Chief Technology Officer, SoftLayer. ''It's scalable and pay as you go—all the power and advantages of virtualized hardware without the overhead of a hypervisor.''

• VMware vSphere 4 Support: Customers can now take advantage of the capabilities of VMware vSphere 4, including Fault Tolerance, for better performance and protection of applications.
• Expanded Storage Support: Lets users leverage iSCSI, Fiber Channel, and NFS storage and replication solutions
• Many-to-One Failover: Protects multiple production sites with automated failover into a single, shared recovery site

''VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 4 dramatically simplifies the disaster recovery process for customers so they can meet demanding business needs for disaster recovery, including regulatory compliance issues,'' said Raghu Raghuram, Vice President and General Mmanager, Server Business Unit, for VMware. ''Now with many-to-one failover and expanded storage support, more customers can take advantage of low-cost disaster recovery and gain peace of mind that their data is safe in the event of a disaster.''

''Disaster recovery is one of the most daunting and complicated challenges for IT organizations, and it isn't getting any easier as applications proliferate and expectations with regard to recovery times shorten,'' said Richard Villars, Vice President of Storage and Executive Strategies at IDC. "Virtualization of server and storage environments are playing a key role in helping companies reduce the costs and complexities associated with implementing, testing, and executing a full disaster recovery, yet their effectiveness increasingly depends upon solutions that automate the fast expanding disaster recovery process itself."

''In my 25 years of IT experience, VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager is one of the best solutions that I have ever implemented,'' said Ed Belliveau, Principal Systems Engineer, Bentley University. ''With the latest Site Recovery Manager improvements and features, coupled with integration with VMware vSphere™, disaster recovery preparation is much easier.''

• Every blog and post on WordPress.com will now have a WP.Me URL.
• They only work with WordPress.com-hosted URLs.
• The links are permanent and will work as long as WordPress.com is around.
• WP.Me is spam-free because WordPress constantly monitors and removes spam from WP.com.

"Dot-ME embraces and celebrates this kind of innovation," says Predrag Lesic, Executive Director of the .ME Registry. "In the short time dot-ME has existed, our domain extension has broken many barriers to become so much more than just another ccTLD. WordPress saw the potential of dot-ME and we applaud them for it."

4th September 2009

4th September 2009

Packages now include more Disk Space, Databases, Unlimited Email & Bandwidth.

UKHost4u, a web hosting company, today announced that they have revised their web hosting plans to give customers added value from Shared Hosting.

The company says that the packages will now include the following  features and a free domain name is paid annually.

• Basic Web Hosting - 5GB Disk Space, 10 Databases, Unlimited Email &  Bandwidth ONLY £3.99 per month

• Advanced Web Hosting - 10GB Disk Space, 20 Databases, Unlimited Email &  Bandwidth ONLY £5.99 per month

• Business Hosting Web - Unlimited Disk Space, Unlimited Databases,  Unlimited Email & Bandwidth for ONLY £7.99 per month.

According to .MX re-opening process, domain name registrations directly under .MX will be open to all public from September 1st.

NIC Mexico, the independent organization that manages the .MX cctTLD, today announced that domain name registrations directly under .MX will be open to all public from September 1st, according to .MX re-opening process. The company explains that as it was opportunely informed, the .MX reopening is being released in phases, through an ordered process which gave priority to the current holders of .MX domains under the current available classifications: .COM.MX, .NET.MX, .ORG.MX, .EDU.MX or .GOB.MX.

It avers that this process is divided in 3 stages:

• Pre-Registration Period - Ended July 31st, 2009

• Quiet Period – Ends August 31st, 2009

• Initial Registration Period – Starts September 1st, 2009

• Description: During this period, the domain name registration directly under .MX will be open to all public. Domain names will be assigned in the same order that the applications are received by Registry .MX

• Who can participate: General Public. Anyone interested in registering a domain name directly under .MX

• What can they do: They will be able to register domain names directly under .MX

• Considerations: If the domain name is available at the time when the application request is received, the domain will be immediately registered after completing the registration process. The registration period will be of 1 year only. Also an Special Pricing Model will be used, which will be published in detail prior to the Initial Registration Period

• Duration: 2 months (September 1st to October 31st 2009)

• LoadTest: allows clients to find out the volume of traffic their website can handle and eliminate bottlenecks.
• WebPerformance: gives a 'customer-eye view' of the web performance and response times of the website.
• ServiceMonitor: lets Apica's clients analyse the efficiency of their server use.
• Accelerator: a front end cache which boosts the speed of the client's website by up to 300 per cent.

Sarah Haran, Managing Director of iomart Hosting, said the deal demonstrated that location was no barrier to the growth of the company. She said: ''Apica has a terrific range of products which have to be on very secure servers and we were able to put together a managed hosting package which met their requirements.The fact that we own our entire infrastructure and can guarantee its integrity is a significant plus for us, particularly if we're speaking to businesses outwith the UK.''

Apica's CEO Sven Hammar said the partnership was a key part of the company's strategy to enter the UK marketplace.
He added: ''We have been evaluating partners for our launch into the UK. Since this market is very important for us, it was a difficult decision, but now we feel we have the right partner for our future expansion. As our business grows we need to improve the capacity of our own service, and we felt the ethos and attitudes to service delivery of iomart hosting very closely matched our own, so we're looking forward to the development of this partnership.''

• WebHost Manager Setup series (29 demos)
• WebHost Manager Services series (33 demos)
• WebHost Manager Accounts series (35 demos)
• WebHost Manager Management series (24 demos)
• PuTTY Enhanced series (12 demos)

The company says that these new flash tutorials (or flash demos) mark the beginning of DemoWolf's commitment to producing a wide array of "Server Level" demos; designed to help companies who need dedicated services. Until now, tutorials were only available to end-users - people who required hosting accounts and needed basic help with things like setting up their email accounts, changing DNS settings for their domains, how to setup a Joomla website, etc.

Tutorials have also been available to help resellers - people who have reseller hosting or Virtual Private servers. But no tutorials existed anywhere to help people setup their own dedicated servers until now, it further adds.

According to the company, in addition to the new Server Level demos, DemoWolf is also releasing 84 new Voice versions of their new Joomla tutorials released last month. These demos are split into 5 series as follows:

• Joomla New Setup VOICE series (20 demos)
• Joomla New Admin VOICE series (17 demos)
• Joomla New CMS VOICE series (17 demos)
• Joomla New Extensions VOICE series (18 demos)
• Joomla New end-user VOICE series (12 demos)

''We are excited to finally bring Server Level demos to market'', says Rob Moore, President and Founder of DemoWolf. ''More and more customers have been asking us for these and we felt it finally reached a point where it made sense from a demand point of view to develop them. This opens a whole new area for tutorial development... expect future releases to include setting up Parallels servers, and root-level help with specific operating systems.''

• New LANDesk Web Desk Application – A brand new browser application provides business users access to LANDesk Service Desk from remote or mobile locations.
• Integration with SolarWinds Orion NPM (Network Performance Monitor), a leading network management product, via the new Event Management functionality that allows events occurring on the network to be automatically reported to the service desk.
• Enhancements to Query Results – Several significant upgrades allow easier and faster results for users to design and interact with queries, making service management more efficient.
• Multiple Dashboards – Enhanced graphical dashboards enable users to have one or more dashboards that can be published and administered centrally.
• Calculations on Queries and Forms – Extending Service Desk's proactive service management capabilities, many new mathematical functions can be performed, enabling real-time calculations on data on forms, queries and related processes, as well as 'on-demand' calculations.

''The latest version of LANDesk Service Desk builds on our Touchpaper acquisition with many fresh, robust service desk technologies customers want today,'' said Steve Workman, Vice President, Product Management, LANDesk.

He further adds that ''Avocent's LANDesk product line commitment to IT Service Management enables organisations to optimise their IT investments by transitioning the service desk from a cost center to a business services center, improving service processes and increasing productivity across the enterprise – all while reducing costs.'

• Significantly Enhanced Power Management – Provides support for the entire power infrastructure, multi-phased power management and power strip details
• Multi-Dimensional Cabinet / Rack Management – Provides multi-dimensional front, rear and side views for cabinet mounted assets preventing collisions in cabinets that support front and rear mounting
• Improved Raised Floor Management – Provides usability improvements in the floor planner
• nlyte Installer – Provides organizations the ability to independently install, upgrade or patch the nlyte system making it easy to install the software and manage licenses for all nlyte components
• Improved Bulk Data Management (BDM) – Enables users to manage large volumes of data in one transaction, including complete power infrastructure and cabinet placement, reducing the time required to implement nlyte
• nlyte Integrator – Collects data from a wide variety of sources and enables real- time data to be presented and used in the daily operation of the data center

''I'm excited to unveil a significant new release of our nlyte solution,'' said Jon Temple, President and CEO of GDCM. ''Getting the most productivity and cost savings from data center assets is the goal of every CIO, and nlyte 5.1 is the most effective solution to optimize existing physical infrastructure before investing in new servers, software and cooling systems.''

• WHMCS 4 end-user series (10 demos)

• WHMCS 4 Setup series (22 demos)

• WHMCS 4 Management series (14 demos)

It explains that these 3 new series replace the existing WHMCS series of 10 tutorials already offered by it, and the new end-user series have been produced without the WHMCS header at the top, so they can easily be used by web hosts who use their own branding.

The company states that the total number of flash support tutorials available to web hosts through it is now over 3,300. In addition, it is the only hosting tutorial provider to offer Voice Tutorials, and has a library of over 1,200 Voice Tutorials for hosts to choose from. It adds that Voice Tutorials are the same as its regular Flash Support Tutorials, except that they are professionally narrated by Anne Swist, its voice artist.

• Digital Signatures for Email – preventing tampering of email content and proving origin of the email (essential in these days of phishers using email identities of people and departments)
  
• Encryption for Email – user communities can exchange email without risk of the contents being exposed to unintended recipients or email sniffers
  
• Trusted Adobe PDF Documents – users can use the Adobe Certified Document Services (CDS) technology to certify and add approval signatures to Adobe PDFs to prevent tampering of contents and to prove authorship. The recipient requires only the Adobe Reader free software to read the PDF, no plug-ins needed
  
• Trusted Microsoft Office Documents – users can digitally sign Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access documents directly from Microsoft Office to prevent tampering of contents and to prove authorship
  
• User Authentication – access control to online or network resources via SSL VPNs (available even in standard browsers without client or server software required)

''Digital Certificates have proven to be a versatile and highly secure means of online security, securing everything from servers, to email, code, and documents,'' comments Lila Kee, Director of Product Management, GlobalSign, ''GlobalSign's ePKI Lite offers the convenience of unifying the management of Certificates used by enterprises to bind corporate identities to people and departments, at a significantly lower cost and with a much faster deployment time than they have traditionally experienced through internally managed PKI or alternative hosted solutions.''

Compatible with Microsoft Windows 7 / Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2, Ensim Unify provides customers with enhanced security and reliability features.

Ensim Corporation, a provider of change management, user provisioning and access control software, today announced that Ensim Unify Enterprise Edition is compatible with Microsoft Windows7 / Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2. This upgrade provides customers with enhanced security, as well as innovative user interface features and reliability improvements, says the company.

It further states that Ensim Unify Enterprise Edition installs quickly, requires no Active Directory (AD) schema changes, and delivers instant savings by reducing the number of help desk calls as much as forty percent, allowing enterprises to streamline AD management challenges that include user provisioning, password management, and role management in a secure framework. In addition, Ensim Unify eliminates repetitive administrative tasks, helping improve workforce effectiveness and enabling IT departments in medium and large-sized organizations to focus on more strategic tasks.

''By making Ensim Unify compatible with Microsoft Windows 7/Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2, we're able to offer our customers many compelling advantages,'' said Scott Young, Vice President of marketing and product management at Ensim Corporation. ''With Unify, our customers will benefit from improved security and reliability features, intuitive user interfaces, sophisticated management features, and flexible access administration to improve mobile working.''

''Our ISV community is alive with innovation, and we're committed to helping our partners drive the next generation of software experiences,'' said Ross Brown, Vice President of ISV and Solutions Partners for the Worldwide Partner Group at Microsoft. ''Adding compatibility for the latest Microsoft operating systems helps ISVs to stay ahead of the competition and give their customers access to cutting-edge technologies.''

The company assumes responsibility for generating, maintaining, and rolling of the secure cryptographic keys used in DNSSEC.

Dynamic Network Services Inc. (Dyn Inc.), a DNS provider based in Manchester, today announced that it has become the first managed DNS provider to offer DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC) to its clients on the Dynect Platform. According to the company, DNSSEC is a new technology that secures the critical Domain Name System (DNS) and is designed to protect the Internet from certain types of malicious attacks.

The company says that it allows its customers to turn on DNSSEC with a single mouse click.  Once activated, Dyn Inc. assumes responsibility for the steps of generating, maintaining, and rolling of the secure cryptographic keys used in DNSSEC. The company states that a coming upgrade will also automatically send this key information to the Internet Systems Consortium DNSSEC Look-aside Validation (ISC DLV) Registry, which is becoming an authoritative registry for secure domains until TLD adoption occurs. As an example, dyn-dnssec.org has been set up as a DNSSEC domain with DLV.

The company plans to enable DNSSEC for its registrar customers on DynDNS.com in the near future, with the challenge of securely transmitting DNSSEC key information to TLDs as a next step. The Public Interest Registry (PIR) and its subcontractor Afilias (the registry operator and technical provider of .org), through the efforts of the DNSSEC Coalition, have put a DNSSEC registry testbed in production for providers like Dyn Inc. to test, added the company.

''While other providers are full of chatter announcing proprietary stop-gap and temporary solutions, we have chosen to be an early adopter of DNSSEC, the real solution to DNS cache poisoning attacks.  By enabling our customers to sign their domains and participate in DLV, we are speeding along the adoption of DNSSEC at an accelerated pace.  By the time other providers do the same, we'll have years of operational experience with DNSSEC, as we already do, and will have a distinct advantage over other DNS service providers,'' said Tom Daly, CTO of Dyn Inc. ''We're just waiting until the registry accepts DNSSEC keys and we can turn it on for our users," added Daly.    

''Since the Kaminsky attack was disclosed in the summer of 2008, the DNS system has become even more vulnerable. More sophisticated phishing attacks that are virtually impossible to trace are happening more frequently,'' said Jeremy Hitchcock, CEO of Dyn Inc. ''By hosting this testbed for IANA, we are able to be involved and help push the adoption along.''

''We are really pushing the adoption of these technologies, perhaps faster than others are. As a savvy technical operator with the ability to understand the full benefits of DNSSEC, Dyn Inc. realizes that this is what our clients are looking for and we have a willingness to provide it,'' added Hitchcock. ''Twitter cares that when someone types in 'twitter.com', its micro-blogging site comes up. DNSSEC guarantees that will happen, where the current DNS system does not. We want to help sites like Twitter achieve this level of security and ensure that end users get secure and accurate DNS answers as well.''

After .fr, .im, .in ccTLDs, .cm is to compliment the company's portfolio expansion.

Domainmonster.com, a domain name registration brand, today announced their accreditation for .cm Domain Name, prior to the public release of second level registrations on 13th July 2009.

The company says that joining recent accreditations for .fr (France), .im (Isle of Man) & .in (India), this recent accreditation complements its ccTLD (Country Code Top Level Domains) expansion.

It states that it will be launching its services to the public on 15th July 2009. In addition to that, the pre-orders will be accepted from 13th July 2009.

''This could potentially be one of the biggest ccTLD launches ever,'' said Matt Mansell, CEO, Domainmonster.com. ''Direct Navigation ('Type-In' traffic) is said to account for 1 in 6 visitors to a web site, and .cm is as close as a domain is ever going to get to .com. Brand owners and consumers alike will be keen to protect traffic that directly navigates to their site, especially when this traffic converts to sales at twice that delivered via a search engine,'' continued Mansell.

Tap In Systems, a provider of systems management services for cloud-based applications, today announced support for Amazon's CloudWatch, monitoring APIs as part of its Cloud Management Service (CMS). The company avers that its CMS is an on-demand service that manages cloud or datacenter resources from the cloud and will provide immediate benefits for CloudWatch customers by enabling users to create alerts and other reports without additional development on the part of the customer.

It explains that some of the enhanced features provided include:

• Ability to generate alerts whenever a CloudWatch metric threshold is exceeded - email or Twitter notifications can optionally be sent when alerts occur
• Creation of graphical reports showing metric values from the CloudWatch API based on user-defined CloudWatch parameters
• Creation of long-term trend reports that span weeks, months or even years - CloudWatch metric data can be stored in CMS enabling you to see metric trends for longer than the 14 days of historical data kept by CloudWatch
• Active scanning of user-defined ports with accompanying alert generation
• Simple start-up and configuration - options and thresholds that control monitoring and alerting are entered on Web forms
• Enhanced monitoring beyond the metrics available with CloudWatch which can be viewed alongside the CloudWatch alerts
• Real-time CloudWatch updates and alerts can be shown using the company's QuickView client console application or web reports

"CloudWatch does a great job of giving users more monitoring data on their Amazon cloud resources, but does not include the ability to create alerts, performance graphs or reports. These higher level functions are required to maintain optimal availability and performance of their Amazon based systems and applications," said Peter Loh, Founder and CEO, Tap In Systems. "With the integration of our Cloud Management Service, users will be provided alerting, notification and reports so they will be able to immediately benefit from CloudWatch without spending the programming resources to build this capability on their ow

Introduces 84 brand new tutorials for Joomla, an open-source CMS system.

DemoWolf, a producer of flash support tutorials, today announced that it has released 84 brand new tutorials for Joomla, an open-source CMS system. The company states that the new tutorials are divided into 5 separate series as follows:

• Joomla New Setup series (20 demos)
• Joomla New Admin series (17 demos)
• Joomla New CMS series (17 demos)
• Joomla New Extensions series (18 demos)
• Joomla New End-User series (12 demos)

The company claims that it had previously released 3 series of tutorials for Joomla (an Installation, Administration and Content Management series), but they were not as complete as they could have been. These new Joomla tutorials released today are much more descriptive, and cover more aspects of Joomla - virtually anything a user would want to know about Joomla is covered, avers the company.

"When web hosts purchase tutorials from DemoWolf, we customize them for the host by placing their company logo in the first and last frame of every tutorial" says Rob Moore, president of DemoWolf. "By making support tutorials available to customers, hosting companies are saving up to 80% on their support tickets or more, because instead of calling your support department, customers will watch the tutorials, and get the help they need themselves!"

Big Room Inc. selects Afilias as Registry Service Provider for its application to ICANN for this new Top-Level Domain.

Afilias, a provider of registry services, today announced that is has been selected by Big Room Inc. as the registry services provider for its application to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) for a new .eco domain during the upcoming new top-level domain (new TLD) application process.

Big Room will apply for a .eco internet extension when ICANN begins accepting applications for new TLDs, expected in the first quarter of 2010. The company proposes a new ''.eco platform'' that will collect and store current and detailed environmental and sustainability information along with a user's .eco domain name. It claims that its bid has a group of global partners and is internationally supported.

''Afilias is pleased to be selected to provide proven, world-class registry technology that will ensure Internet stability, as well as a smooth and secure launch for the world's registrars if ICANN approves Big Room's new TLD application,'' said Michael Young, Vice President of Product Development for Afilias and member of Big Room's Advisory Board.

''Supporting 14 million domains across 15 TLDs, Afilias supports the widest range of TLD customers around the world, giving us unique perspective and expertise,'' added Roland LaPlante, Chief Marketing Officer at Afilias.

''We selected Afilias because it has a proven track record of providing superior services, world-class domain name registry technology, and reliable DNS resolution,'' said Trevor Bowden, co-founder of Big Room. ''Since Afilias has supported more successful ICANN bids, and launched more new TLDs than any other registry provider, we are confident that we have the right technical partner to ensure confidence in the launch and technical stability of our new domain.''

Selects green data center as internet hub for Europe.

The Wikimedia Foundation, the operator and owner of Wikipedia, today announced that it has signed a contract with EvoSwitch, the carrier-neutral data center in Amsterdam that operates fully CO2-neutral. As part of the contract, the company states that Evoswitch is providing over 300,000 euros of in-kind support in the form of bandwidth and hosting services. It adds that it will use the Amsterdam site as its HUB for Europe.

The company explains that the Wikimedia Foundation manages eight distinct, open, wiki based publishing projects, including the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia. All of its publishing projects are hosted on a central data infrastructure based in Florida, USA. The complementary part of the infrastructure will now be based in Amsterdam at the EvoSwitch data center, it avers.

"We're very pleased with EvoSwitch's professional and well secured data center environment, which includes a highly cost-efficient infrastructure in a location that is of great strategic importance to us," explains Brion Vibber, Chief Technology Officer for the Foundation. "We will be using the Amsterdam site for caching in particular, aiming to reduce the response time of our project websites in Europe. EvoSwitch will also be a good location for backing up content that is stored at our Florida data center. Finally, we will be relocating European publishing projects to EvoSwitch, such as Toolserver.org – a project of the German Wikimedia chapter."

Vibber considers the environmentally friendly nature of EvoSwitch another advantage. "As operators of one of the most heavily accessed web property on the web, we are aware of the impact that the Internet and its energy consumption have on the environment,” explains Vibber. "EvoSwitch's energy-saving measures, combined with their use of green energy and CO2 compensation are very attractive to us."

According to Vibber, "The Amsterdam servers will both retrieve the content from the servers in Florida, as well as store it. Web pages can then be displayed to Internet users directly from Amsterdam, which will improve the speed and accessibility of the web pages in Europe significantly. I expect that we will further increase our capacity at EvoSwitch in the near future due to the required storage capacity and new European publishing projects."

With new facilities in London and Hong Kong, the company plans to extend its SaaS Services to Europe and Asia.

MX Logic, a provider of email and web defense solutions, today announced the global expansion of its scalable, multi-tenant MX SecureNet Platform. The company avers that with established facilities in the United States and Japan, it has extended its Software as a Service (SaaS) platform into Europe and Asia with new facilities in London and Hong Kong. According to the company, the expansion positions its channel partners and the company, to offer a complete portfolio of email and web security, message archiving, and disaster recovery services to international and multi-national businesses and corporations.

The company claims that unlike many other global SaaS security platforms, the MX SecureNet platform is capable of managing multiple security services while connecting them together using a single policy engine. It further explains that this not only eliminates the burden of managing multiple services and vendors, but it also provides better overall protection. The company articulates the above, using an example - built-in MX Logic Cloud Threat Intelligence technology allows the services to work in tandem, giving MX Logic a unique view of both email- and web-based threats. As a result, MX Logic can identify and respond more quickly to real-time threats and the growing volume of blended email and web attacks.

"The Internet has and continues to fundamentally change how companies do business, forcing them to evolve how they think about the traditional concept of the network perimeter, as well as how they handle security," said Scott Chasin, Chief Technology Officer at MX Logic. "The key to widespread adoption of SaaS-based services is proving reliability over time, and MX Logic has done that year in and year out serving nearly 40,000 businesses and millions of end users."

''Given their platform and robust portfolio of services, MX Logic is a top-tier SaaS-based security vendor that is very well positioned to serve the growing global demand amongst businesses - both large and small - for in-the-cloud security services,'' said independent security expert and analyst, Michael Osterman of Osterman Research.

Re-designs all virtual server hosting plans running on Windows Hyper-V and includes offsite backups powered by Microsoft Data Protection Manager.

ResellerChoice, a white label Microsoft Windows solution provider, today announced that they have re-designed all virtual server hosting plans running on Windows Hyper-V. Changes include greater bandwidth allotments, larger disks and included nightly offsite backups powered by Microsoft Data Protection Manager.

The company states that Data Protection Manager is an application-aware enterprise backup solution that provides the ability to do full image snapshots of Hyper-V virtual servers without hibernation or downtime by utilizing its shadow copy-based block-level protection. Backups are stored offsite at their Washington Datacenter location, it adds.

Rob Conley, CEO of ResellerChoice stated "Nightly Full backups of our clients virtual servers is a service I think all customers should expect from their online service providers."

The German domain registrar has launched the South American ccTLD .PE via the Extensible Provisioning Protocol.

Key-Systems, an ICANN accredited domain name registrar, today announced that it now offers the country code top level domain (ccTLD) of .PE through its fully automated interface to all its customers (realtime registration). The company claims that it is the first accredited registrar worldwide for .PE using the Extensible Provisioning Protocol. .PE is the official domain extension of the Republic of Peru.

Thorsten Smeets, COO of Key-Systems GmbH, is glad to have launched another new domain extension: "With this new TLD, we prove again our technical capability and our first mover experience. Once more, our technical team did a great job to enlarge our services and to even better meet our customers needs."

• Pricing as low as $12.95 per user
• Unlimited mailbox storage
• Email security
• Inbound/outbound filtering
• Business continuity
• Daily spam quarantine reports
• Unlimited contacts and aliases
• Centralized calendars and contacts
• Mobile support for iPhone, Blackberry and Windows Mobile
• Blackberry service fees starting at $9.95 for setup and $4.95 per month for services

Also announced today is the Mailprotector Premium Security Suite which includes advanced spam and virus filtering to protect not only incoming messages but now outgoing messages as well. The company says that a new user adjustable spam filter provides the ability to fine tune settings based on a customer's own specifications which mitigates false positive issues surrounding the loss of legitimate email as a result of filtering. Additionally, configurable content management capabilities now allow users to easily create content filtering rules for individual users or entire domains to better enforce corporate email policies.

"SMBs choosing the integrated Mailprotector email hosting and security service can definitely counter the cost and complexity of building a comprehensive email solution that includes spam filtering, virus scanning, robust and scalable storage and infrastructure to reduce risk and improve availability," said David Setzer, CEO of Mailprotector. "Mailprotector customers are finding our simple yet powerful offering to be compelling in maintaining business continuity without draining financial or human resources."

• Reduce IT costs by accurately tracking existing inventory to ensure budgets and assets are correctly utilized
• Improve productivity and IT security by detecting unauthorized and illegal software
• Minimize the legal risk of software non-compliance
• Enhance service levels to users with integrated help desk capabilities

"SaaS represents a large and growing opportunity for hosting providers that are looking to extend their services, deliver broader solutions and create new business in the current economy," said SAManage board member, Kurt Daniel. "By offering the SAManage solution, hosting providers can differentiate themselves in the market, reach new customers, and capture higher margin revenues."

Hindi-speaking PC experts from Comodo establish Internet-based connections to subscribers' computers to help fix many common problems online.

Comodo, a provider of digital security services and software, this week announced LivePC Support in Hindi language. The company says that no longer do Hindi speakers need to be experts to be able to solve their PC problems.The company claims to offer on-demand support from certified security and PC experts. It further adds that Hindi-speaking PC experts from Comodo establish Internet-based connections to subscribers' computers and are able to help fix many common problems online.

The company's Comodo Internet Security suite includes an antivirus and firewall with Default Deny Protection (DDP).

''A mum in Mumbai can stay in touch with a son in San Francisco,'' said Melih Abdulhayoglu, CEO and Chief Security Officer of Comodo. ''With LivePCSupport, they can enjoy all the benefits of the Internet without having to understand how their computers work. If you have a problem, just click the LivePCSupport icon on your desktop and Comodo helps fix it.''

LivePCSupport's 24-hour service is cost efficient for businesses as well, he remarked. ''Comodo's PC experts are available year-round, all day and night, even on national holidays, such as Republic Day. If you have to work then, and you have a computer problem, Comodo is there to help you.''

New features include online system expansion, new graphical administration console and core performance enhancements.

Greenplum, a provider of database software for data warehousing and analytics, today announced general availability of Greenplum Database 3.3, the latest version of the company's database software. According to the company, this release adds a wide range of capabilities that streamline management and enhance the performance of the product. It also claims to introduce a number of management and operations enhancements targeted at DBAs and IT professionals.

Online system expansion: Customers need the flexibility to resize their Database systems as their business needs dictate, says the company. It introduces the ability to add servers to a database system and expand across the new servers while the system is online and responding to queries. Each additional server adds additional storage capacity, query performance and loading performance to the system. Online system expansion is a key enabling feature within Greenplum's Enterprise Data Cloud initiative.

pgAdmin III administration console: According to the company, pgAdmin III is a feature rich Open Source administration and development platform for PostgreSQL. Greenplum Database 3.3 ships with an enhanced version of pgAdmin III that has been extended to work with Greenplum Database and provides full support for Greenplum-specific capabilities. The company has also contributed these enhancements back to the pgAdmin III Open Source project.

Scalability-optimized management commands: The company explains that it has incorporated a range of enhancements to manage commands (including starting and stopping the database, analysing tables, reintegration of failed nodes into the system) to improve performance and scalability on large systems. It also incorporates a number of core performance enhancements, including faster sorting and enhanced performance of parallel aggregations.

Expanded Platform Support: The company avers that its Database is supported on server hardware from a range of vendors including HP, Dell, Sun and IBM. Greenplum Database is also supported for non-production (development and evaluation) support on Mac OSX 10.5, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2 or higher (32-bit) and CentOS Linux 5.2 or higher (32-bit).

The company has separated its reseller business with the launch of this division.

QuantumPages, a provider of web services, today announced the launch of its new division ''ConnectReseller'', dedicated to Domain and Web Hosting Resellers. The new division comes with a platform developed by TechBravo, the development unit of QuantumPages. The company claims to be a one stop shop for Domain Resellers, Web Hosts, ISPs, Web Designers and Software Development Companies as it provides comprehensive web solutions for companies of all sizes.

According to the company, integrating this platform on its web site will leverage its ability to bring domain and hosting resellers together. Adding further it says that it will allow their clients to quickly and easily run their business thereby saving  time and money.

The company says that the platform is equipped with features vital to automized reselling. It further adds that one of the essential features of this architecture is that it allows creation of multiple independent customer and reseller Webshops (Online Store) with its own independent identity with the help of Multiple Webshops feature. Others features includes private labeled architecture, white labeled ICANN Accredited Registrar, multiple discounting options, automized reselling, easy product management and many more.

The Company also adds that with this move, it has separated end customer business and reseller business. End customer business will be handled by QualiSpace.in and the reseller business will be handled by ConnectReseller.com.

''There's nothing like the thrill of going live with your very own, one of a kind reseller platform which is an outcome of a 2 year's development. Architecture of Reseller Platform is in Distributed Model. Majority of the components are in distributed architecture and are connected through Internal Web Services,'' says Ashish Shah, Founder, President & CEO, QuantumPages.

According to Ashish, ''The sole goal of ConnectReseller is to provide world class services at industries lowest price thereby reducing customer acquisition costs and expand sales territory of the resellers. The plans and pricing have been chalked out in a manner so as to facilitate resellers in offering their customers a wide range of services, coupled with the best value for their dollar''.

Verisign Industry Brief of first quarter 2009 sheds light on DNS and domain statistics.

VeriSign Inc., a provider of internet infrastructure services, publishes in the first quarter 2009 Domain Name Industry Brief, that the internet now encompasses more than 180 million domain names.

The company says that the first quarter of 2009 ended with a total base of nearly 183 million domain name registrations across all of the Top Level Domain Names (TLDs). This represents a 3 percent increase over the fourth quarter of 2008 and a 12 percent increase over the same quarter from last year.

The company avers that the first quarter is historically strong for registrations in the domain name industry, and Q1 2009 was no exception, with an average of 2.4 million new .com and .net registrations added each month. During the quarter, the overall base of .com and .net domain names grew to 92.4 million domain names. That total represents a two percent increase from Q4 2008, a jump of nine percent over the same quarter of the previous year, and an increase of 34 percent over the first quarter of 2007.

It further adds that Country Code TLDs (ccTLDs) rose to 74.1 million domain names during the first quarter, a four percent jump from the previous quarter and an 18 percent increase year over year. Gauged by total registrations, .com remains the most popular TLD category, followed by .cn (China), .de (Germany) and .net. This composition remains unchanged from Q4 2008.

During the quarter, VeriSign continued to provide 100 percent uptime for DNS queries. VeriSign's daily DNS query load averaged 38 billion during the first quarter of 2009, resulting in hundreds of millions of internet users accessing Web sites or sending email. This is an increase from the 35 billion queries in fourth quarter 2008.

Analysis of DNS Queries and Resolution

The latest VeriSign Domain Name Industry Brief also analyzes DNS queries and DNS resolution. In addition to provisioning domain names, a domain name registry operator enables users to actually reach those domain names by resolving the domain names to an internet address that serves the content users seek.

The company explains that their analysis reveals how the most queried .com domain names - sites like Google.com and Yahoo.com - are not necessarily the only domain names internet users rely upon. Rather, there are infrastructure oriented domain names that support DNS servers, hosting farms or even advertising platforms and the number of DNS queries the infrastructure domain names receive can be in the same range as the many popular end user-oriented domain names with more familiar and recognized domain names.

"As the authoritative registry for .com and .net domain names, VeriSign has a unique view into the pulse of the Internet," said Jill Corso McNabb, vice president, Naming Services at VeriSign. "DNS resolution truly comprises the backbone of what makes the internet operate across the globe. DNS becomes even more critical to the overall infrastructure of the Internet not only as Internet usage grows but also as innovative products and services related to the DNS proliferate."

Company's service provider customers can now deliver a cost-effective alternative to commercial e-mail and collaboration products.

Parallels, a provider of virtualization and automation software, announced yesterday the integration of Open-Xchange's open source e-mail and collaboration software with the Parallels Operations Automation SaaS Module. The company claims all its service provider customers can now deliver a cost-effective alternative to commercial e-mail and collaboration products at a competitive price.

It states that the product integration was made simple by packaging the Open-Xchange software in the Application Packaging Standard (APS) format. The company further states that the resulting solution is currently available to end-users via hosting and service providers that utilize the Parallels Operations Automation SaaS Module. Exchange My Mail, a provider of hosted e-mail and collaboration services, is one of the  providers to utilize this solution, adds the company.

"Leveraging the Parallels Operations Automation SaaS Module enables APS compatible application vendors such as Open-Xchange to help service providers gain competitive advantage and significantly grow profitability. Service providers can also differentiate themselves with valuable new services, increasing their average revenue per user with both new and existing end-user customers," said Serguei Beloussov, CEO of Parallels. "We are happy to see application vendors like Open-Xchange embrace the Application Packaging Standard (APS) format as they are a highlight to the growing list of over 200 applications that can seamlessly integrate their applications into Parallels Automation products.''

"Open-Xchange is the only email and groupware solution which is specifically architected to meet the needs of hosting and SaaS providers," says Rafael Laguna, CEO of Open-Xchange. "Due to the open source nature, Open-Xchange can be easily integrated into existing hosting infrastructures and email storage. Now, supporting Parallels Automation, hosters and service providers can implement Open-Xchange without changing their existing authentication, user setup, system administration, provisioning and billing tools. This reduces time and effort for new deployments and enables a real fast go-to-market."

''The Parallels Automation SaaS Module solution and Open-Xchange packaged in the APS format, allows us to offer the most advanced and up-to-date messaging services to our customers,'' said Sal DiPiazza, CEO, Exchange My Mail. ''This creates an opportunity for us to reach a larger customer base and grow demand for these service offerings.''

New feature has been updated with the release of MachPanel 3.1.15 which is available and being used by hosting service providers.

MachSol Inc., a developer of MachPanel, announced yesterday the Support of Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) with Microsoft Messaging and Collaboration (HMC) Solution of MachPanel Provisioning System. The company claims that the new feature has been updated with the release of MachPanel 3.1.15 which is already available and being used in real world production by many hosting service providers.

It articulates that MachPanel Provsioning System is a SaaS enabled convergent hosted services control panel for the management and delivery of traditional and next generation hosted services. The company avers that it provides flexibility to hosting service providers (HSPs) to control and provision hosting services include Shared Hosting, Microsoft Exchange 2007, SharePoint Services, BlackBerry Enterprise Services, Dedicated Servers, VPS Servers, Domain Names, and SSL certificates. The support of Microsoft CRM, OCS, Hyper-V extensions have also been under developed, it adds.

''The latest enhancement of robust support of WSS with HMC in MachPanel 3.1.15 designed with a vision to provide you further control and facilitate you to provide an integrated and unified automation solution which converges business and operations support into a single powerful and centralized control panel.'' says Aziz Paracha, the CTO/Vice president of the MachSol. ''We are committed to provide quality hosting automation solution and this latest move is the continuation of our vision to provide complete Hosting Operation and Business Support System (OSS/BSS) with easy deployment and installation.''

''As most demanding enterprise services like SharePoint and Hosted Messaging is integrated in one control panel, MachPanel now caters all business models and allows small hosting companies and large HSPs to kick start next generation hosting services. With this latest development, MachSol Inc. established further footprints in hosting industry to provide reliable and affordable control panel for wide variety of business needs.'' says Max Roosenbrand CEO MachSol Inc. ''The latest release will further muscle our strengths to grow in our specific hosting niche and serve more and better to our valued customers. MachPanel is only unified control panel that grows with you as your business grows.''

Company integrates Splunk to deliver IT data analysis to cloud computing customers.

RightScale, Inc., a provider of cloud computing management services, today announced that it has integrated Splunk IT Search technology with the RightScale Cloud Management Platform. The company also announced that it is a founding member of the new Splunk Powered Associate partner program. It claims that with Splunk's high-speed IT Search technology integrated directly into its platform, users can aggregate and analyze IT data to improve operations, thwart security issues, comply with regulatory requirements and mine for business analytics.

"RightScale's cross-platform cloud management platform and Splunk create a powerful combination for customers leveraging cloud computing infrastructure. And the Splunk Powered Associate program enables RightScale to bring Splunk to their cloud customers at no cost," said Michael Baum, Co-Founder and Chief Corporate and Business Development Officer at Splunk. ''As more organizations move critical IT systems onto cloud infrastructures, we believe there will be a growing demand for Splunk's IT Search capabilities, and partners like RightScale are helping deliver it."

"At RightScale, we are committed to delivering the scalable, on-demand power of cloud computing, while letting customers maintain the control and visibility required for serious business applications," said Michael Crandell, RightScale CEO. "Many of our customers have successfully used Splunk in the past to gain better visibility into their disparate IT data, and as one of the first members of the Splunk Powered Associate partner program, we are pleased to be able to offer this important technology on the RightScale platform for cloud IT deployments."

• Parallels Plesk Panel 9 end-user series (30 tutorials)
• Parallels Plesk Panel 9 reseller series (18 tutorials)
• Parallels Plesk SiteBuilder series (16 tutorials)
• Parallels Plesk Billing series (20 tutorials)
• HyperVM series (23 tutorials)
• LxAdmin end-user series (25 tutorials)
• LxAdmin reseller series (15 tutorials)
• WordPress 2.7 series (12 tutorials)
• CMS Made Simple series (26 tutorials)

The company further adds that it will be exhibiting at the upcoming Parallels Summit in Las Vegas from February 2-4, 2009. It says that all its tutorials will be on display, including these new tutorials and several others that are soon to be released.

Provide partners with the marketing and support tools, sales and resources to accelerate the execution of its private label hosted services.

Pointivity, an application hosting and managed service provider offering enterprise level IT solutions to businesses and partners, today announced the Pointivity Partner Portal, a new site designed to provide its partners with the sales, marketing and support tools and resources to accelerate the execution of its private label hosted services.

The company articulates that with the objective of providing tools and resources to its partners, the Pointivity Partner Program allows solution providers, VARs and MSPs to expand and deploy hosted services on as pay-as-you go model. It claims that partners receives a private label solutions that includes, pre-designed storefront, eCommerce engine for checkout, and control panels in addition to the self-provisioning engine with integrated billing to streamline their business.

''We've taken another step in the investment and commitment to our partner program,'' said Derek Cahill, Vice President of Channel Development at Pointivity. ''The Pointivity Partner Portal frees up our own resources allowing more time for dedicated account management and putting together more go-to-market strategies for partners.''

Renews Microsoft Gold Certified Partner status; further distinguishes itself by earning four Microsoft Competencies.

DiscountASP.NET, a hosting company, today announced that it has renewed their Microsoft Gold Certified Partner status with four Microsoft competencies. The company states that as a Gold Certified Partner, it has demonstrated expertise with Microsoft technologies and proven ability to meet customers' needs. It further states that Microsoft Gold Certified Partners receive a rich set of benefits, including access, training and support, giving them a competitive advantage in the channel.

The company explains that as one of the requirements for attaining Gold Certified Partner status, it had to declare a Microsoft Competency. Microsoft Competencies are designed to help differentiate a partner's capabilities with specific Microsoft technologies to customers looking for a particular type of solution. It further explains that each competency has a unique set of requirements and benefits, formulated to represent the specific skills and services that partners bring to the technology industry. The company avers that it attained the Advanced Infrastructure Solutions and Networking Infrastructure competency to qualify for the Microsoft Gold Certified Partner level in 2006 and the Security Solutions competency in 2008. It has now added the new Hosting Solutions Competency as their fourth competency.

''As a hosting provider that focuses 100% on Windows-based shared web hosting, we felt that it was very important for us to obtain the Hosting Solutions competency and we are extremely proud to join the expert group of hosts that have attained this competency,'' said Takeshi Eto VP Marketing and Business Development for DiscountASP.NET. ''Having achieved four competencies firmly demonstrates our expertise and commitment to Microsoft technology and innovation.''

Company's objective during the promotional campaigns is to turn more website owners to Drupal and not to sell web hosting.

Host Color, a provider of VPS Hosting services, today announced the launch of campaign that promotes Drupal CMS. The company states it offers its customers instant web hosting rebate on Drupal Hosting Services. It avers that it has released hosting coupon - DRUPAL2009DC - that gives 10% web hosting rebate on its Drupal Hosting Plan as well as on VPS hosting and dedicated hosting services.

"We highly recommend Drupal CMS to website owners. Now we have launched  campaign to stimulate our customers to build their websites on Drupal CMS. We also encourage them to donate to Drupal and to support the development of this great content management framework. We will also donate part of the money, our customers paid for Drupal hosting services to Drupal project", said Alexander Avramov, Managing Director of Host Color.

He also added that his company's objective during the promotional  campaigns is to turn more website owners to Drupal, not to sell web hosting! "We use to say Drupal-ize your website" when it comes to CMS", explains Mr, Avramov. He also adds that Host Color is happy to be a part of Drupal community and as a organization member of Drupal association to support the development of "this great CMS".

• New IP Knowledge Module - including the ability to detect and resolve configuration issues across a broader range of network issues. RDA can now identify routing and subnet misconfiguration and can determine if a guest VM network stack is operating correctly, as well as check for duplicate IP address usage in a common subnet

• Expanded drill down diagnostics - providing data to explain issues and guide IT towards a quick resolution - going beyond the basic identification of errors to save IT time and money

• Advanced item level notification - offering email notifications which now include full details on the exact changes that RDA has detected. The detailed notifications provide IT administrators with the latest information, delivered directly to their inbox

• Broader platform support - including support for VMware ESXi

• Increased scalability - offering significant performance improvements, including enhanced support for large scale datacenters of 100+ hosts

"RDA is the first solution to discover, model, diagnose and provide remedial guidance in a virtualized data center infrastructure.  With its new capabilities, RDA has become even better at detecting and preventing faults before they can cause downtime," said Oren Teich, Vice President of product management at Replicate Technologies. "As virtualization becomes more broadly deployed and data centers increase their mix of physical and virtual infrastructure, Replicate will continue to integrate new features into its predictive fault management model to address complex environments and provide IT with a solution to help address management concerns."

Adds new Xeon server to its Planet Alpha line of dedicated servers.

The Planet, a privately held dedicated hosting company, today announced the addition of a new high-performance server to its Planet Alpha line of dedicated servers. Available immediately, the company claims that the Xeon 5405 features the largest memory and storage capacity among single-processor servers, offering customers a solution for their hosting requirements at an economical price.

It articulates that with a 5000-sequence Xeon processor, the server easily supports database, e-mail and web server applications. Available in both SATA and SAS configurations, the Xeon 5405 is a single-processor Planet Alpha server that holds up to six storage drives. It claims that this server is equipped with RAM capacity up to 32GB, with larger configurations available that provide customers the flexibility to design the solution that best meets their requirements.

"Customers depend on us to offer the technology that best meets their business needs," said Urvish Vashi, general manager for dedicated servers. "They have expressed a requirement for a powerful and reasonably priced single-processor server, and the Xeon 5405 fits the bill perfectly. It provides increased server storage capacity – always a precious commodity – which eliminates the extra processor they often don't need. With this new offering, we're expanding on our promise to give customers the power to choose the solution that's right for them."

• Magento Commerce series (19 tutorials)
• Joomla Installation series (9 tutorials)
• Joomla Administration series (14 tutorials)
• Joomla Content Management series (10 tutorials)

It claims that the Magento Commerce series help users in everything from installation and setup, as well as management of their store. It further adds that it has created three separate tutorial series for Joomla, addressing installation, administration and content management issues.

"The production of these new tutorials marks the first time DemoWolf has used its new home-page polling script to find out what tutorials their consumers wanted DemoWolf to produce the most" says Rob Moore, president of DemoWolf. "Joomla was the most voted-for application, while Magento Commerce was voted for second most often. Since these tutorials have now been produced, they've been removed from the poll. DemoWolf will shortly be releasing tutorials for WordPress 2.7, the next most voted for application."

Provides an alternative for clients who might normally seek a low-end dedicated server or high-end VPS.

SSA Host, a web hosting provider, today announced that it has introduced semi-dedicated servers to its product line, offering a bridge hosting solution between traditional virtual hosting and dedicated servers.

The company explains that by minimizing the number of clients hosted on each node and maximizing system resource allotments per user, semi-dedicated servers use virtualization technology to offer a virtual private server hosting solution that can be likened to a dedicated server, without the increased costs. The hardware base of each semi-dedicated server node is comprised of enterprise-class technology, with dual core, dual processors, RAID 10 data storage configurations, and the Virtuozzo virtualization technology, claims the company.

"Semi-Dedicated hosting introduces an attractive alternative for clients who might normally seek a low-end dedicated server or high-end VPS. With our Semi-Dedicated plans, we're targeting clients who don't need to modify their Linux kernel but do want the relative security of a private hosting environment," said Kristopher Jordy, owner of SSA Host parent company Sirkels & Squares Alternative. "Beyond the cost-savings of a Semi-Dedicated server, the technology also reduces our carbon footprint by further maximizing the resource utilization of each piece of hardware. It's 'green' technology, and it's good business."

Company's Celerity 8-Gb fibre channel host adapters demonstrate compatibility in heterogeneous Brocade-based storage area network environments.

ATTO Technology Inc., a provider of storage connectivity and infrastructure solutions for data-intensive computing environments, today announced that its Celerity FC-84EN, FC-82EN, and FC-81EN Fibre Channel Host Adapters have been verified by Brocade Communications Systems Inc., a provider of data center networking solutions, as compatible with Brocade-based Storage Area Networking (SAN) infrastructure, according to the testing requirements of the Brocade Data Center Ready Program.

The company says that the program is an initiative designed to foster interoperability in multi-vendor Brocade-based data center environments. It articulates that testing was conducted at the Brocade Data Center Ready labs, which are facilities supporting end-to-end interoperability and performance testing of SAN products in multi-vendor and large fabric environments.

"Today's announcement reinforces ATTO's commitment to deliver SAN solutions that function in heterogeneous storage environments," states Tim Klein, President and CEO of ATTO Technology. "Brocade's Data Center Ready certification is a key component of ATTO's commitment to provide a complete product line of interoperable 8-Gb Fibre Channel solutions for a variety of vendors. The powerful combination of 8-Gigabit Fibre Channel, PCI Express 2.0 architecture, and the only host adapter with four independent channels, makes the Celerity FC-84EN the industry's highest performing adapter, and ensures that our customers will experience accelerated SAN implementations and superior interoperability."

"We are pleased that ATTO Technology has successfully completed the Data Center Ready testing with Brocade fabric switches in multi-vendor SAN environments," said Tom Buiocchi, Brocade Vice President of Worldwide Marketing. "Storage area networks are being deployed worldwide at a rapid rate as a scalable, high performance networking foundation for storage environments. The Data Center Ready program is an example of our continued commitment to our customers."

Platform to provide a secure, reliable solution for its customers' production and pre-production application environments.

VMware, Inc., a provider of virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter, today announced that Siemens IT Solutions and Services, a provider of IT solutions and services, has deployed its management and virtualization suite, VMware Infrastructure 3, to provide a secure, reliable and flexible platform for its customers' production and pre-production application environments.

The company states that among the services offered by Siemens, customers are interested in hosted solutions that can support variable traffic loads. It also states that to address this market demand, Siemens has joined with the VMware vCloud Initiative by developing a virtualized private cloud environment with its infrastructure to provide capacity on demand for applications. The company claims that Siemens used its platform to build out its cloud environment, improve server utilization, and reduce hardware expenditures compared to the cost of building a cloud environment without virtualization.

''The VMware platform allows us to look at computing resources as a large pool of interchangeable assets rather than a string of unique and separate components,'' said Hill. ''Only VMware technology offers us and our users the range of tools and technologies combined with broad industry support required to host and serve business critical applications. And by building our business on the VMware platform, we will be able to leverage the vCloud technology offerings to deliver new services in the cloud, without losing reliability.''

''For our customers, reliability and speed are essential for ensuring competitiveness,'' said John Hill, chief technology officer, at Siemens IT Solutions and Services. ''With the VMware platform, we help our customers increase availability and reduce deployment time for applications and servers. We can now deploy in one day what used to take many weeks. Of course, VMware is much more than just a shortcut for us. Our customers turn to us for answers to the difficult questions facing their businesses, from financial to strategic to technical. VMware's flexibility, security and manageability allow our people to spend more time addressing upstream issues and less time on the rudimentary aspects of technology implementation.''

New Message Classification V3 classifies, protects and reduces accidental breaches of sensitive email.

Titus Labs, a provider of email and document classification software, today announced the release of Titus Labs Message Classification 3.0. The company says that TMC 3.0 is an email labeling solution that ensures Microsoft Outlook email is classified before it is sent. It also syas that large enterprise customers, government, and military agencies can easily classify, protect, search and retrieve emails with data classification labels and metadata.

The company explains that with numerous high profile incidents of emails accidentally being sent to the wrong recipient or sensitive email being leaked inadvertently, organizations require practical solutions that educate end users while enforcing security policy. It avers that a recent survey conducted by Storage Expo indicates that managing and discovery data could be costing organizations up to $2,000,000 per terabyte. The survey also concluded that of those companies classifying information, 67 percent were classifying in order to better control access to sensitive information, it adds.

"TMC is a great way to force people into thinking about classification and message security," said Peter Giuliano, Systems Administrator of the UK based regulated insurance provider Paternoster. "Our organization has used the safe-recipient domain feature to ensure internal email is not mistakenly sent outside our company. Furthermore, Paternoster has implemented TMC as a classification tool which has helped us to be recommended for ISO 27001 certification."

"The pervasive nature of email makes inadvertent information leakage a reality for most organizations, said Tim Bloechl, Managing Director, Worldwide Public Safety and National Security at Microsoft. "TMC offers seamless integration with Outlook so all email communications can be quickly and easily labeled, and if required, another level of security can be added using Microsoft Rights Management Services. The end result is a complete solution to address the security and information protection needs of organizations handling sensitive information."

• Java EE 6 Preview Features.
• Production Support for Lightweight Web Tier.
• Dynamic Language Support with Reliable Performance.
• Easy-to-use Administration Console.
• Rapid Deployment Technology.

Karen Tegan Padir, Vice President of engineering, Software Infrastructure, Sun Microsystems remarked, ''GlassFish Enterprise Server v3 Prelude is a great example of the innovations that a dynamic, open source community can create as well as an interesting view into the future of web application development and production environments. This release, which is fully supported by Sun and targeted at web-tier production environments, will be the basis for the GlassFish Enterprise Server v3 -- a complete application server based on the OSGi standard and the upcoming Java EE 6 platform.''

The Datacentre World Conference and Expo provides a forum for sharing practice on current challenges like the credit crunch and emissions management.

Interxion, a provider of carrier-neutral data centres, today announced its platinum sponsorship of the annual Datacentre World Conference and Expo event, taking place 24th-25th February, 2009 at the Barbican Exhibition Halls in London.

The company says that as an element of its support for the event, it will also be providing two leading industry figures to deliver keynote addresses on the challenges facing the sector. It further states that Anthony Foy, its Group Managing Director, will be discussing the impact of the credit crunch on European infrastructure hosting strategies. And Lex Coors, Interxion VP Datacentre Technology & Engineering, will outline how organisations can optimise their datacentre efficiency by improving power usage efficiency (PUE) ratios.

"The Datacentre World Conference and Expo provides a vital forum for sharing best practice on current challenges like the credit crunch and emissions management," said Anthony Foy, Group Managing Director. "By sharing the experience we have gained serving our customers across Europe, we aim to help attendees meet these challenges while improving their application availability and connectivity."

Company's objective during the promotional campaigns is to turn more website owners to Drupal and not to sell web hosting.

Host Color, a provider of VPS Hosting services, today announced the launch of campaign that promotes Drupal CMS. The company states it offers its customers instant web hosting rebate on Drupal Hosting Services. It avers that it has released hosting coupon - DRUPAL2009DC - that gives 10% web hosting rebate on its Drupal Hosting Plan as well as on VPS hosting and dedicated hosting services.

"We highly recommend Drupal CMS to website owners. Now we have launched  campaign to stimulate our customers to build their websites on Drupal CMS. We also encourage them to donate to Drupal and to support the development of this great content management framework. We will also donate part of the money, our customers paid for Drupal hosting services to Drupal project", said Alexander Avramov, Managing Director of Host Color.

He also added that his company's objective during the promotional  campaigns is to turn more website owners to Drupal, not to sell web hosting! "We use to say Drupal-ize your website" when it comes to CMS", explains Mr, Avramov. He also adds that Host Color is happy to be a part of Drupal community and as a organization member of Drupal association to support the development of "this great CMS".

• New IP Knowledge Module - including the ability to detect and resolve configuration issues across a broader range of network issues. RDA can now identify routing and subnet misconfiguration and can determine if a guest VM network stack is operating correctly, as well as check for duplicate IP address usage in a common subnet

• Expanded drill down diagnostics - providing data to explain issues and guide IT towards a quick resolution - going beyond the basic identification of errors to save IT time and money

• Advanced item level notification - offering email notifications which now include full details on the exact changes that RDA has detected. The detailed notifications provide IT administrators with the latest information, delivered directly to their inbox

• Broader platform support - including support for VMware ESXi

• Increased scalability - offering significant performance improvements, including enhanced support for large scale datacenters of 100+ hosts

"RDA is the first solution to discover, model, diagnose and provide remedial guidance in a virtualized data center infrastructure.  With its new capabilities, RDA has become even better at detecting and preventing faults before they can cause downtime," said Oren Teich, Vice President of product management at Replicate Technologies. "As virtualization becomes more broadly deployed and data centers increase their mix of physical and virtual infrastructure, Replicate will continue to integrate new features into its predictive fault management model to address complex environments and provide IT with a solution to help address management concerns."

• A complete set of commerce APIs that allow developers to tap into the power of Z-Billing, Z-Payments, and Z-Force

• A powerful SubscribeNow call that makes it easy to add one-click order processing to any web site

• Sample code and toolkits for the most popular languages such as Java, .NET, and PHP

• A developer sandbox environment to use for developing and testing commerce solutions

• Z-Store reference implementation, a fully functional web store, complete with source code, that takes subscription orders from a web site and allows end customers to manage their subscription and billing information

• New Zuora Developer Community Site, a community of cloud computing developers sharing best practices and collaborating around the Business Cloud. The site includes forums, developer events, and full developer support

''2009 is the Year of the Cloud – and developers are clearly shifting to building services on cloud platforms. With the Z-Commerce Platform, we've now given developers a powerful way to monetize services built on these platforms,'' said Tien Tzuo, CEO, Zuora. ''This is the most important product announcement we've made thus far – with the introduction of the Z-Commerce Platform, we've taken a big step towards our vision of being the de-facto commerce engine for the cloud.''

Company awarded the CarbonNeutral office accreditation in recognition of its net zero Co2 emissions rating.

Attenda Limited, a managed services company, today announced that it has been awarded the CarbonNeutral office accreditation in recognition of its net zero Co2 emissions rating.

The company says that this means that all the Co2 emissions relating to its offices including energy consumption and waste has been quantified and reduced to net zero. It articulates that this CarbonNeutral accreditation is an integral part of its Social Responsibility Programme, which includes its focus on supporting charities, and demonstrates a commitment to the pro-active management and effective control of the environmental impact of all its business activities.

Mark Fowle, Attenda CEO explains, ''To demonstrate our environmental commitment we took a decision to offset the carbon footprint that we could not reduce through business change, and following an extensive selection process we chose to work with The CarbonNeutral Company. Fowle continues, ''They understood and helped form our environmental strategy and objectives and demonstrated the commitment, experience and expertise to help us achieve them.''

Fowle adds, ''We are seeing environmental impact becoming an important factor with our Clients and in bidding for new Client contracts in commercial, financial services, professional & business services markets.” Fowle continues, ''Additionally, through the Catalist framework, public services organisations are now including social responsibility as an important factor in their supplier selection process.''

Sue Welland, Founder & Creative Director, The CarbonNeutral Company said, ''The ICT industry is currently responsible for around two percent of global CO2 emissions – the same as flying. Managed Service companies such as Attenda are in a great position to help to reduce this, not only through taking accountability of their own CO2 emissions but by encouraging others to do so too.''

The company said last week it would buy e-mail software assets from Hong Kong-based Outblaze Ltd. It avers that this will let LotusLive users access their e-mail from any computer via the Web, similar to the way Google's Gmail works. It says that LotusLive ties into software from Salesforce.com, the maker of customer-management program, and LinkedIn Corp., a social-networking site for professionals. It also works with Research In Motion Ltd.'s BlackBerry phones and software from SAP AG, a maker of business-management programs.

"IBM aims to make gains on Microsoft Corp.'s Exchange, which has more than half the market for e-mail server software. Businesses use such programs to handle employee e-mails and other messages on their networks. By shifting Lotus to the Internet, customers can save on storage and spend less time maintaining the software," said Bob Picciano, Lotus's general manager.

''Everyone's focused right now on doing more with less,'' Picciano added.

Offer applies to self-managed dedicated servers, including a la carte advanced services and private and virtual racks.

The Planet, a privately held dedicated hosting company, today announced one month of free hosting for customers who sign one-year server contracts. The company says that the offer applies to its self-managed dedicated servers, including a la carte advanced services and private and virtual racks and the promotion runs through Jan. 31, 2009.

It further states that businesses can maximize their savings by combining this promotion with one of its existing server discounts. The company avers that this includes a 25 percent reduction on any server priced at more than $200, or the option to double ram, hard disk or bandwidth capacity on select servers.

 ''The Planet provides its customers with the best value in the industry by coupling attractive pricing with our world-class data centers and network,'' said Urvish Vashi, general manager for dedicated servers with The Planet. ''Customers who choose The Planet will find a broad range of hosting choices to fit their business model, from colocation or self-managed dedicated servers to add-on Advanced Services and managed hosting. Companies that are concerned about their current provider or new to hosting should investigate The Planet and find out why more than 25,000 customers put their trust in us.''

Data center leverages partnership with Progress Energy and PowerSecure for advanced solutions.

Peak 10, Inc., a data center operator and managed services provider, today announced  the continued expansion of its Raleigh data center in an ongoing effort to provide infrastructure for its growing customer base.

The company explains that as part of its recent build out, it pooled resources and expertise with partners Progress Energy and PowerSecure International, Inc. to create a power generation solution for its data center environment. It avers that its power solution was built to be scalable on both the generator and utility levels – eliminating future power constraints due to load growth.

"Continued collaboration with our trusted partners provides the highest level of services and support for our valued customers," said Greg Rollet, Peak 10's regional vice president, market operations. "The most recent enhancements to the Raleigh facility are further proof of Peak 10's commitment to remain the most progressive and technologically advanced data center facility in the region."

"As a Progress Energy Premier Power partner, Peak 10 is demonstrating a commitment to reliability and excellence in service for its customers," said William Green, manager of Progress Energy's Premier Power program. "Together, we have developed a customized power generation and protection solution that will enable Peak 10 facilities to further provide the critical support essential to customers in this market."

"Peak 10 is a valued partner and we were glad to provide our on-site power programs and expertise for the Raleigh facility's expansion and upgrades," said Sidney Hinton, chief executive officer of PowerSecure. "We were impressed by the proficiency and enthusiasm of the Peak 10 Raleigh team for this expansion – they show an unwavering dedication for providing premier services within a progressive data center facility."

ExpressSAS H608 and H680 offer native x8 PCIe 2.0 to 6-Gb SAS/SAS2.0/SATA/SATA II connectivity ensuring compatibility with SAS and SATA technology.

ATTO Technology, Inc., a provider of storage connectivity and infrastructure solutions for data-intensive computing environments, today announced the shipment of the ExpressSAS H608 and ExpressSAS H680, the industry's 6-Gigabit SAS/SATA host adapters, to select OEMs and partners. The company says that leveraging PCI Express 2.0 and 6-Gb SAS speeds, the H608 and H680 deliver the fastest available connection to SAS/SATA storage, powering data-intensive IT and digital media applications such as email compliance, tape backup, data warehousing, high-definition video post-production and digital film production.

The company explains that its ExpressSAS H608 and H680 offer native x8 PCIe 2.0 to 6-Gb SAS/SAS2.0/SATA/SATA II connectivity ensuring compatibility with SAS and SATA technology. It further explains that the ExpressSAS H608 offers 8 internal lanes of connectivity and the H680 offers 8 external lanes of connectivity, each providing up to 1200 MB/sec. maximum full-duplex throughput per lane. The company claims that ExpressSAS 6-Gb host adapters feature full driver support for Windows, Linux and Mac environments, and are backwards compatible with 3-Gb SAS and SATA devices. Combining proprietary technologies, management software and superior technical support, it provides performance and reliability, it adds.

''ATTO has reached a major milestone in delivering next-generation products to the market by shipping 6-Gb ExpressSAS products to select OEMs and partners,'' commented Tim Klein, president of ATTO Technology. ''By utilizing the latest 6-Gb SAS/SATA technology on our next-generation ExpressSAS products, ATTO remains in a position to provide our customers with the highest-performing host adapters. Additionally, by working closely with our OEMs and partners, ATTO is able to ensure a solid foundation of interoperability and optimum application performance upon general availability of the 6-Gb ExpressSAS host adapters.''

Built for Microsoft Exchange 2007 and Office Communications Server 2007, Unified Communications Certificates reduce certificate cost.

Comodo, a Certification Authority and internet security company, today announced the availability of three year term Unified Communications Certificates. The company states that these digital certificates support Microsoft Exchange and Office Communications Server 2007 networks, and provide visibility, recognition and security for unified communications and business email services.

It explains that UC Certificates make Microsoft Exchange and Office Communication Server 2007 implementations and administration easier and flexible. The comapny further explains that built for Microsoft Exchange 2007 and Office Communications Server 2007, its UC Certificates are designed to allow customers to access the features of these new applications, making extensive use of SSL certificates supporting the Subject Alternative Name field. It claims that UCCs enable administrative flexibility to secure client-server and server-server communications while supporting multiple Exchange and Office Communications 2007 services, all with a single UC Certificate.

"Microsoft Exchange is the most popular business messaging platform in the world. Comodo is one of a select group of Certificate Authorities that can offer these certificates, compatible with Microsoft Exchange," said Melih Abdulhayoglu, CEO and Chief Security Architect of Comodo.

Small and mid-size businesses can decrease expenses, increase productivity and remain profitable with hosted messaging and collaboration solutions.

123Together.com, a provider of hosted messaging and collaboration solutions such as Hosted Exchange Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, today announced that it has eliminated setup fees for all new customers who sign up for its hosted Exchange Server service.

The company states that as a result of the current economic downturn, many small and mid-size businesses are required to decrease overhead, cut operational costs and reallocate existing funds to get the most value from every dollar they spend.  At the same time, business owners expect increased productivity and efficiency among their existing employees, with additional human and financial resources unlikely or impossible.

''Our goal is to help businesses of all sizes remain profitable despite the current economic downturn,'' said Ravi Agarwal, founder and Senior Executive Officer of 123Together.com, a mindSHIFT company. ''By eliminating all setup fees for our hosted Exchange Server services, we make it possible for businesses, regardless of their size, to make use of the functionality that this industry-leading, enterprise-class messaging and collaboration application provides without having to incur significant financial expenses or hire additional personnel.''

New SaaS security solution to protect organizations from increasing web-borne malware threats.

Webroot, a security provider for the consumer, enterprise and SMB markets, today announced the release of Webroot Web Security SaaS to protect organizations around the world from the rapidly increasing amount of Web-borne threats. The company states that web-borne malware increased more than 500 percent last year alone as cybercriminals developed new attack vectors like personal Webmail accounts, social networking sites, trusted websites and other Web 2.0 applications.

The company further states that according to its research, up to 85 percent of all malware is now distributed via the Web, making these threats more pervasive than those delivered by e-mail, the traditional attack vector. It avers that since only a small percentage of all businesses currently filter Web content for malware, this shift in malware attack vectors underscores the importance of Web security solutions that can provide an additional layer of protection for corporate and mobile users.

"Organizations around the world are quickly realizing that Web security delivered as a service is not only more effective at keeping the latest threats out of their networks, but also delivers reduced total cost of ownership in an easy to deploy and manage package -- and without the need for additional hardware or software," said Peter Watkins, CEO, Webroot. "In today's business environment, where increasing threats and tight security budgets are the reality, Web security delivered via a SaaS model is an easy way to manage risk while reducing costs."

Company to transform disused Hanau nuclear plant into green European data centre with space for 100,000 servers.

1&1 Internet Ltd., a web hosting company, today announced plans to build a data centre in Hanau, Germany. The company says that it will build a European data centre providing space for up to 100,000 servers across an area of 10,000 square metres within a never-used former nuclear fuel facility called 'New MOX'.

The company states that like all 1&1 data centres, the new facility in Hanau will use electricity only from renewable energy sources. It avers that this data centre is scheduled to become operational towards the end of 2009.

It further explains that this data center will primarily host dedicated server services and it will also provide capacity for new services such as Software-as-a-Service or Cloud Computing. With these technologies, the company claims that applications and hardware are moved from a user's desktop into internet data centres such as its own.

"The new data centre in Hanau will further optimise the operational efficiency of our Internet services," said Oliver Mauss, CEO of 1&1 Internet Ltd. "The geographical distance from our existing European data centres is an important aspect of our business continuity strategy, and the new facility will further bolster our pan European backbone" adds Mauss.

"Of course, it is a very pleasing side-effect that a formerly  contentious nuclear plant is now being transformed into a green data centre," said Mauss. "Whilst Internet servers require electrical power, 1&1 only uses renewal energy. We also pay much attention to saving energy - after all, the power bill is one of the largest parts of our operational expenses for such data centres. The buildings and the surrounding area provide sufficient space to install energy-saving coolers that use the outside temperature for cooling and thus significantly reduce power consumption. 1&1 also uses low-energy components within all its servers", he added.

Allows new and existing hosting clients to benefit from the latest version of Virtuozzo.

Cirrus Tech, a Canada based web hosting company, announced yesterday that it has upgraded all their VPS plans to Virtuozzo 4. The company states that with consumers looking at VPS hosting as an alternative to both shared web hosting and dedicated servers, it has taken steps to ensure that its VPS hosting plans stay at the forefront of the VPS hosting market.

The company explains that a VPS operates like a standalone server as it can be rebooted independently and has its own root access, users, IP addresses, memory, processes, files, applications, system libraries and configuration files. It says that by upgrading to Virtuozzo 4, it is offering VPS clients the performance in their most reliable VPS service yet. It also claims that Virtuozzo 4 ensures optimal uptime of servers, containers and applications.

Addition of Red Hat Enterprise Linux hosting provides customers with the advantage of IT managed hosting services.

The Planet, a privately held dedicated hosting company, today announced the addition of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system to its Northstar Managed Hosting line of business. The company states that customers with Linux, Microsoft can now take advantage of managed hosting services. It also states that as one of the two Red Hat Premier Hosting Partners, the Planet Northstar engineering team will have direct access to the company's product roadmaps and new platform features, creating a technically hosted environment for its customers.

It explains that its Northstar Managed Hosting provides small- and medium-sized customers with the advantage of enterprise-class IT managed hosting services, backed by a dedicated team of seasoned IT professionals who are personally accountable for their success. The company further adds that Web 2.0 and SaaS companies building innovative and cutting-edge applications use Red Hat Enterprise Linux as a foundational component of the LAMP stack - Linux, Apache, MySQL and PhP or J2EE.

''With our rigorous Anticipation Advantage best-practices methodology, Planet Northstar Managed Hosting becomes a proactive extension of your IT team,'' said The Planet's Vice President of Marketing and Product Management Steve Kahan. ''CIOs require proactive planning, preparation and prevention, which is precisely what Planet Northstar provides.  Backed by a team of certified professionals, our enterprise-class network and SAS 70 Type II world-class data centers, customers gain access to infrastructure that would otherwise be unaffordable for most companies.''

Latest version includes continuous data protection; redesigned, streamlined interface and support for low cost NAS devices.

Supported247.com, a provider of IT Solutions, today announced the launch of Version 5.5 of their Online Backup Service Backedup247.

The company claims that the Backup247 Service offers a secure, online backup service for data. It says that data is automatically backed up every night and the user is emailed with the results. It adds that the service is based on the amount of storage space you require and not the number of computers so users can backup as many computers as required on a single account.

The company states that the new version includes:

• Continuous Data Protection
• Redesigned, streamlined interface
• Support for low cost NAS Devices
• Backup Schedule can be set to run every minute
• Fully managed option

Company to provide SaaS-based log management and threat management services to HostMySite.com's Customers.

Alert Logic, a provider of on-demand IT compliance and security solutions, today announced that it has signed a partnership agreement with HostMySite.com, a managed hosting provider. The company says that this partnership will provide HostMySite.com's customers with its log manager and threat manager solutions to help facilitate compliance with the PCI Data Security Standard.

It explains that log manager gives organizations the ability to secure their networks and comply with regulations that mandate log data be collected, regularly reviewed, and securely archived. The company also explains that threat manager combines intrusion detection and vulnerability management technology to offer protection from viruses, worms, and other threats that easily bypass perimeter and endpoint defenses.

"We are excited to partner with Alert Logic because of their extensive experience delivering innovative intrusion detection, vulnerability management and log management solutions to the hosting industry," said Art Zeile, CEO at HostMySite.com. "Our partnership with Alert Logic, allows us to expand the portfolio of services that we offer our customers -- helping them to address the security and compliance challenges that they face."

"HostMySite.com is often called upon to help their customers comply with regulations such as the PCI DSS and we are excited that our products will help them to meet that need," said Michael Turner, Alert Logic's president and CEO. "By utilizing Alert Logic's security and compliance solutions, HostMySite.com's customers will have a much easier time complying with PCI DSS and enhancing their overall security posture."

Linux Hot Copy creates a point-in-time snapshot of the disk while the system is running, without interrupting applications on Linux servers.

R1Soft, a developer of Continuous Data Protection products for Linux and Windows, today announced the upcoming release of a free beta version of Hot Copy for Linux, a new command line utility that takes instant, readable and writable snapshots of disks or volumes on any Linux server, providing flexibility for IT administrators.

The company states that Hot Copy creates a point-in-time snapshot of the disk while the system is running, without interrupting applications even on the busiest Linux servers. It further states that as block level changes are made to the device, Hot Copy makes a backup copy of only the changed blocks instead of replicating the entire drive. The company avers that these changed blocks are then efficiently stored in the unused space on the hard disk.

"Hot Copy is big news for anyone that has to maintain a Linux server. With Windows you have Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). There is nothing really like VSS for Linux servers. It's a big missing piece for Linux Enterprise IT. You have LVM snapshots of course, and the challenge with LVM is that most servers don't run LVM, and even if they do the LVM volumes have to be configured ahead of time with spare disk space. Linux server admins need a simple command that allows snapshots on any Linux server at any time. This is what Hot Copy does. After installing the Hot Copy RPM or .deb package it's one simple hcp command and they have an instant point-in-time snapshot on any Linux disk," said David Wartell, Vice President of R1Soft, a division of BBS Technologies, Inc.

With the new backups, data is automatically backed up daily and stored on disk in a physically separate server within the data center facility.

ReliableSite.Net LLC, a web host serving individuals and businesses, today announced that it has added daily incremental data backups, available for free on all shared, reseller, and cluster-based web hosting plans.

It articulates that with the new backups, data is automatically backed up daily and stored on disk in a physically separate server within the data center facility. The company also explains that the incremental backups allow ReliableSite to keep up to 30 revisions of every file within the backup that allows users to tap into a month's worth of file revisions in the event of a disaster, accidental data loss, or security incident.

''Although we have always stressed the importance for our customers to maintain their own backups, we previously provided weekly backups at no additional charge. With today's addition of daily incremental backups, we are able to implement a robust extra layer of protection against data loss or accidental deletion,'' said Radic Davydov, owner of ReliableSite. ''The new backup process puts almost no load on our servers and creates a real value-add for our services.''

Company's new value added service helps its customers to protect the personal data of website visitors and end customers.

Host Color, a web hosting provider, today announced that it now offers a website product called E-Commerce Pack. The company states that the product features 128/256 Bit SSL certificate produced by Geotrust and Dedicated IP address and it costs $69/year.

The company explains that it sells the SSL certificates on the same price that the producers release them on the market and doesn't charge customers for the usage of dedicated IP address. It further says that E-Commerce Pack is only a SSL product and can be used with any web hosting plan. Host Color also offers SSL Hosting Service for $10.99 per month. The company avers that it is a fully featured service for online stores that combines web hosting, SSL certificate, shopping cart and other e-commerce services and products.

"We offer very affordable e-commerce products to the owners of online stores. The "E-Commerce Pack" is one of these products. It is a value added service that helps anyone to better protect the personal data of website visitors and customers". said Alexander Avramov, the Managing Director of Host Color LLC.

The addition of Time Warner will provide additional redundancy and also ensures greater reliability of its network.

ServerPoint, a provider of shared, reseller, colocated, dedicated and VPS hosting solutions, today announced the addition of Time Warner as a network backbone provider, adding multiple gigabytes of additional bandwidth capacity.

The company says that the addition of Time Warner ultimately provides additional redundancy and ensures reliability of its network. It further says that redundancy is important for enterprise datacenters to help guarantee performance in the event of an outage of a single or multiple backbone providers. It claims that it now has four major backbone providers in its private datacenter facility, and the company will continue to add more providers in the coming weeks and months.

''Redundancy and reliability remain a top priority as our company grows, and we see it as strategically important to ensure our datacenter is widely connected and capable of hosting the next generation of Web applications. Time Warner is an important addition that we have been planning for a number of months, and is among a series of new backbones we are adding," said ServerPoint CTO Erik Johnson.

Makes the installation of Magento Commerce shopping cart simple and easy.

Aspiration Hosting, a web hosting provider, today announced the introduction of a Magento One-Click-Installer for their Aspire Shared and Desire Reseller hosting plans. The company states that it provides web hosting services which are optimized for Magento Commerce shopping cart. It also claims to provide one of the fastest speed for Magento Commerce hosting.

"We have been offering Magento optimized hosting plans for quite some time now and the introduction of a One-Click-Installer for Magento Commerce is timely as most of clients faces some issues while installing it.", said James Lee, the CEO of Aspiration Hosting. "Before the introduction of this One-Click-Installer for Magento, we have been providing free Magento installation service for all of our clients.", he further elaborates.

"Magento normally runs slowly under normal shared hosting because it is quite resource intensive. However, this does not happen at Aspiration Hosting as our servers are optimized and we put lesser amount of accounts per server. This makes the loading speed of Magento much faster when compared to the other hosting providers.", explains James.

YummyNames allows people to search for and obtain domain names for their organization to enhance marketing and branding initiatives.

Tucows Inc., a provider of domain names, email and other Internet services, today announced the launch of YummyNames, a new service providing access to a large selection of premium domain names from the its Domain Name Portfolio. The company states that created especially with marketers in mind, YummyNames allows people to search for and obtain the perfect domain name for their organization from thousands of domain names.

It explains that marketers seeking domain names for their company, clients or campaigns can go to www.yummynames.com and search through the portfolio of domain names. It also explains that they have the option of purchasing a name outright or leasing the domain name for a finite period of time, the latter being a payment option particularly advantageous for short-term or seasonal marketing campaigns. It avers that few of the YummyNames domain names available include countryrock.com, divorced.com, lemons.com, listener.com, mygarden.com, thepub.com, tool.com and veggies.com.

"It's important for marketers and organizations to realize they don't need to settle on a lousy domain name," said Bill Sweetman, General Manager, YummyNames. "Domain names are a vital component to successfully marketing a brand - whether it's the launch of a new company, website or marketing campaign. A high-quality domain name is short, relevant and most important, easy to remember. We're excited to open the Tucows portfolio of premium domains to the public through YummyNames. We're confident users will find their perfect name."

"YummyNames, the public face of our domain portfolio service group, provides an additional means by which to realize the value of our domain portfolio assets to drive continued growth for the Company," said Elliot Noss, President and CEO, Tucows.

Company to expand its deployment options via agreement with Rackspace.

StrongMail Systems, Inc., a provider of on-premise solutions for marketing and transactional email, today announced that it has entered into an agreement with Rackspace Hosting, Inc., a hosting services provider, to become a Strategic Partner in the Rackspace Solution Partner Network. The company says that this relationship features reseller and referral programs between the two companies, as well as a new hosted deployment offering for its marketing and transactional email solutions, StrongMail On-Demand.

It articulates that the new relationship combines its technology with hosting services from Rackspace, giving companies multiple deployment options for commercial-grade marketing and transactional email solutions. The company claims that the combined offering provides companies with the benefits of an on-premise solution with no hidden fees like those associated with an ESP offering, and without having to apply IT resources for ongoing system maintenance and management.

''Teaming with Rackspace enables us to extend our business to a whole new category of customers – those who want the benefits of an on-premise solution without having to host and manage it,'' said Sam Cece, CEO of StrongMail Systems. ''We chose Rackspace as our hosting partner because of their reputation as the industry's premier IT hosting company and because they share our philosophy toward customer support. The result is an unrivaled email marketing platform for customers who prefer a hosted solution in a high-security environment.''

''We look for industry leaders like StrongMail to help us add greater value to our customer offerings,'' said Scott White, director, channel sales, Rackspace Hosting. ''We were impressed with StrongMail's unrelenting focus on meeting customer needs, like their development of stringent vetting processes to adhere to spamming guidelines, which mirrors our commitment. Because of this synergy, we felt that StrongMail was the perfect company to work with to expand both company offerings."

Company introduces new version of its control panel based on user feedback.

Netfirms, Inc., a domain registration and web hosting technology company, today launched Netfirms XLR8, a new version of its control panel. The company says that the control panel is now available to all the websites, hosted by it.

It claims that it has improved the usability of XLR8 by adding a domain transfer status bar to show how quickly transfers are occurring, plus a knowledgebase to make troubleshooting easier. The company says that the menu bar simplifies navigation, streamlines the transfer of domains to itself, and makes it easy to manage a large portfolio of domains. It explains that other changes enable users to take advantage of faster server speeds, further enhancing their XLR8 experience and users can install into their domains an e-commerce, blogging and content management applications offered by it.

"We encourage user feedback, with the promise that we will try to find ways to incorporate their suggestions in any upgrades," says Netfirms president Thomas Savundra. "Most of the changes we've made are based on feedback we've received in recent months. It is undoubtedly the most user-friendly control panel we've yet released. You could say that Netfirms XLR8 wouldn't exist if it weren't for our customers. Incorporating fast AJAX programming makes Netfirms XLR8 a powerful interface to their grid hosting platform for small businesses as well as web masters."

"With the Netfirms grid hosting platform, our customers can free themselves from in-house servers, expensive software installations and other localized devices, the Netfirms platform is built on clustered hosting and distributed processing, making it effortless - in fact, automatic - to handle sudden spikes in traffic. You don't want to be featured on CNN, for example, but be unable to handle the flood of traffic to your site. With XLR8 and our platform, the load is spread over many distributed processors, evening out the load and allowing even small businesses to enjoy the full power and convenience of Web 2.0." says Savundra.

Company cites reputation, personalized attention and reliability as reasons for selecting the data center and managed services provider.

Hosted Solutions, a data center and managed services provider, today announced that it has added Synapses, an innovator in personalized 401 education, products and services, to its client roster. The company states that Synapses creates online products and services for 401(k) providers, sponsors and financial advisors.

It avers that because Synapses works directly with financial institutions with stringent data and network security requirements, it needed to find a hosting provider to help them meet those standards. Moreover, it needed a partner to help exceed clients expectations that their confidential data would be kept safe and secure. It will provide Synapses with a fully managed backend infrastructure which includes dedicated servers, operating system management, redundant network, firewall, and intrusion detection, states the company.

''We are proud that Synpases, an award-winning, industry leader in retirement services  has entrusted us to keep their data safe and mission-critical applications up and running," said Josh Wolff, Regional Sales Manager for Hosted Solutions in Charlotte, N.C. ''Charlotte is a hotbed for groundbreaking financial services companies and we are pleased that another of this area's finest has chosen Hosted Solutions.''

''It was important to find a hosting provider that could guarantee network safety and security while also giving us personalized service,'' said Jim Saunders, President of Synapses, Inc. ''Hosted Solutions is the ideal partner for Synapses. They offer a proven track record of reliability, SAS70 Type II facilities, and excellent customer service.''

With just under 1,000 percent growth in the last five years, Key-Systems is amongst the top-10 fastest growing technology companies in Germany.

Key-Systems, an ICANN accredited domain name registrar, today announced that it has  grown 945.69 percent in the last five years, that ranks them ninth of the 50 fastest growing technology companies in Germany in the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 award. Thus, Key-Systems has three reasons to celebrate: in mid-October, the company celebrated its 10th anniversary, and for years it has been one of the 20 largest domain registrars worldwide. Key-Systems declared that their aim for the next two years is to improve upon their current eleventh position to become one of the top ten world wide registrars for gtlds. In the business year 2008/2009, the company with only 25 employees, will turn over 17 million euros (forecast).

"I believe we have clearly demonstrated that the domain market is a huge growth industry", says Alexander Siffrin, founder and CEO of Key-Systems. "The domain name was and is an essential part of the Internet business. The value, relevance and the importance of domain names has increased enormously since the founding of Key-Systems and will continue to grow in the future, so says Siffrin. In Germany alone, the number of registered domains has gone up from 220,000 in 1998 to 12.3 million in 2008 (as of August 2008). The large number of registered domains makes it not only increasingly difficult for customers to choose the right domain name but it is also becoming harder to maintain the overview of new TLDs, registration procedures, procedural requirements, risks and dangers. The care for this very important asset belongs in the hands of specialists," said Siffrin.

SonaSafe email archiving solution enables customers meet regulatory compliance and eDiscovery requirements.

Sonasoft Corp., a provider of compliance, disaster recovery and data protection solutions for the Microsoft platform today announced the availability of its email archiving solution for Microsoft Exchange Server. The company states that the new offering is an easy to use solution specifically designed for addressing the pain points of SMB customers.

It explains that email has been growing at the rate of 40% every year and managing emails has become very complex and Microsoft Exchange Server is not only being used as an email server, it is also being used as document repository and management system. It further explains that businesses are being increasingly asked to retrieve emails during litigation,  also companies need to comply with regulatory compliance requirements like Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA. It avers that according to Sarbanes-Oxley, public companies must keep all documents and communications for seven years following an audit. The penalties for destroying or altering a document can include fines up to $5 million and imprisonment for up to 20 years and hence, email is becoming Achilles Heel of document and records management, it adds.

The company avers that the key benefits to customers are:

• Capture all email messages including incoming, outgoing and internal emails
• Find and retrieve email related information within seconds through sophisticated search technology
• Produce reliable information for legal discovery and investigations very quickly
• Meet compliance requirements like Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA and many others
• Manage email life cycle from composition to deletion through proper policies
• Reduce email storage and management costs
• Formulate and enforce corporate email and security policies
• Excellent data protection through tamper-proof mechanism and encryption.

GlobalSign, Inc., the global Digital Certificate security specialist has announced the launch of its new Enterprise PKI Lite solution – a highly cost effective Software as a Service PKI solution that allows small to medium sized enterprises to issue Digital Certificates to as few as 5 users. Issued Certificates can be used for online authentication, email security and the creation of trusted electronic documents. Enterprise PKI Lite (ePKI Lite) replaces the need for enterprises to build their own CA, which are costly and technically complex combinations of software, hardware and cryptographic key management, or rely on more expensive hosted PKI solutions from other providers.

ePKI Lite is available as an instant activation module for GlobalSign’s Certificate Center (GCC), a web based Software as a Service (SaaS) platform for one-stop-shop management of all types of Digital Certificate – SSL, Code Signing, Client Certificates, and Adobe Certified Document Services Digital IDs. By plugging into the GlobalSign infrastructure enterprises do not need to create their own Certificate Authority (CA), embed Root Certificates in browsers and devices or maintain their own required accreditations and compliancy programs (such as WebTrust for CAs). As internal PKI deployments can run into millions, ePKI offers dramatically lower costs per user and due to the licensing model of pay-per-user, avoids the risk of project overspend.

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Enterprises go through a one-time vetting to establish their Certificate “profiles” (the one or more company-wide or departmental digital identity to be used in their issued Certificates). Once vetted, the ePKI Administrators can begin issuing Certificates to users – typically staff or extranet users. Applications for Certificates can be made by users themselves through GlobalSign hosted portals, or by Administrator initiated requests directly to the user – all managed via the GCC web based interface. This approach allows quick deployments rather than the usual weeks or months of pre-configuration required of alternative solutions. And once deployed, Administrators have the ability to issue Certificates immediately around the clock, every day of the year.

Digital Certificates issued through ePKI Lite bind real-world identities to cryptographic keys and can be used for:

Digital Signatures for Email – preventing tampering of email content and proving origin of the email (essential in these days of phishers using email identities of people and departments)
Encryption for Email – user communities can exchange email without risk of the contents being exposed to unintended recipients or email sniffers
Trusted Adobe PDF Documents – users can use the Adobe Certified Document Services (CDS) technology to certify and add approval signatures to Adobe PDFs to prevent tampering of contents and to prove authorship. The recipient requires only the Adobe Reader free software to read the PDF, no plug-ins needed
Trusted Microsoft Office Documents – users can digitally sign Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access documents directly from Microsoft Office to prevent tampering of contents and to prove authorship
User Authentication – access control to online or network resources via SSL VPNs (available even in standard browsers without client or server software required)

“Digital Certificates have proven to be a versatile and highly secure means of online security, securing everything from servers, to email, code, and documents,” comments Lila Kee, Director of Product Management, GlobalSign, “GlobalSign’s ePKI Lite offers the convenience of unifying the management of Certificates used by enterprises to bind corporate identities to people and departments, at a significantly lower cost and with a much faster deployment time than they have traditionally experienced through internally managed PKI or alternative hosted solutions.”

ePKI Lite has no set up fees, no annual hosting fees and operates on a pay per user model. Costs start at only $855 for 10 users, or $830 for 5 users needing Certificates for the Adobe secure PDF solution, and costs can be under $60 per user for deployments of 1000 or more users. Customers switching to ePKI Lite from other hosted PKI solutions can expect significant cost savings.

ePKI Lite is available now from GlobalSign – please see www.globalsign.com/authentication-secure-email/epki.htm for more details or contact a Solution Specialist at www.globalsign.com/company/contact.htm.

Advanced services offering is designed to provide customers with managed backup for dedicated server data.

The Planet, a privately held dedicated hosting company, today launched its Alpha Managed Backup, as an advanced services offering, to provide a fully customizable solution.

The company states that the new advanced services offering is designed to provide customers with managed backup for dedicated server data. The product is the fourth solution to be added to the Alpha Advanced Services portfolio, which includes Alpha Server Monitoring, Alpha Server Security and Alpha Server Administration, it adds.

The company articulates that with the new solution, customers can leave the management of data backup and restores to its team of dedicated hosting professionals and daily backups are continuously monitored, with issues or failures automatically corrected. It also says that customers are also alerted when they near the limits of their existing storage space. The company claims that alpha managed backup stores customer data on, fault-tolerant storage platform, backed by its infrastructure and SAS 70 Type II data centers.

Todd Mitchell, General Manager for advanced services of The Planet noted, ''There's an almost-daily report of data loss at companies around the world, which can easily lead to a loss of revenue, as well as significant reputation damage. With Alpha Managed Backup, customers gain peace of mind by leaving the management of their data protection to a team of seasoned professionals. Our dedicated Advanced Services team ensures that customer servers are consistently backed up, safeguarding against critical data loss.''

• Microsoft Active Directory Manager
• Microsoft Exchange Manager
• Mobility Manager
• Self-Service & User Manager
• Password Manager
• Migration Manager

''We're excited to enter into a reseller partnership with Solutions-Exchange,'' said Francois Depayras, vice president of sales and alliances at Ensim Corporation. ''Solutions-Exchange has a proven record of turning virtual unknowns into industry leaders, and we feel that Ensim Unify is the ideal choice for continuing their success and best serving their clientele.''  

''Messaging has become such an integral form of communication for almost any business, and our customers have come to lean on us a knowledgeable resource and specialist in this area,'' said, Patrice Russ, CEO of Solutions-Exchange. ''For this reason, we hold our vendors to the highest technology and business standards and are pleased to say that Ensim has met these standards with its Unify product by delivering the functionality and value that our customers have come to expect.''

Synergies will further enhance customer service levels, increase product lines, maximize resources and provide new service offerings.

Landis Holdings Inc., a provider of end-to-end web hosting solutions, today announced the acquisition of Hosting Zoom Inc., a web hosting provider. The company states that the deal also includes Reseller Zoom and modVPS, divisions of Hosting Zoom and customers of Hosting Zoom will see benefits with no impact on their hosting plans.

It explains that existing customers of Hosting Zoom can now look forward to accessing technologies from its companies such as JaguarPC. It claims that Hosting Zoom believes the outcome gives its customers additional benefits.

''We are proud to welcome the users of Hosting Zoom, Reseller Zoom and modVPS to the family,'' says Greg Landis, president of Landing Holdings. ''There will be zero impact to how existing customers conduct their business. We want to simply turn our focus inwards and look to invest in increasing support and development personnel immediately. JaguarPC and Hosting Zoom are already profitable so the goals are simple moving forward, leave what works alone and bring extra equipment online now in anticipation of the greater demand.''

''Since day one our commitment has been to quality and this acquisition safeguards that commitment." Says Kiet Duong, form CEO of Hosting Zoom and the new CIO for Landis Holdings. ''Hosting Zoom customers can now look forward to enjoying a host of benefits including onsite personnel at the datacenter that will be able to respond more quickly to server issues. Increased support and development staff will further enhance customer service levels and accelerate production of new technologies. And since our companies use the same datacenters and infrastructure there is no need for any type of migration or transfer resulting in no risks for our customers.''

The company enters Colombian hosting market with acquisition; launches HostDime Colombia.

HostDime, a web hosting provider, today announced that it has entered the Colombian hosting market with its acquisition of GrupoDW, an Internet services firm in South America. The company claims that it has rolled the operational assets of GrupoDW into a new, wholly owned subsidiary, HostDime Colombia.

It explains that included in the acquisition of GrupoDW is the entirety of its operational assets, including all clients, employees, creative materials, leases, and a variety of network and server hardware. It adds that with GrupoDW, it now boasts an international workforce of more than 100, with 25% being multi-lingual.

''Our international expansions continue to make HostDime a stronger, more agile and ultimately more profitable company, and we will work to build the scope and scale of these operations. Entering the Colombian market allows us to fulfill a variety of strategic goals, including the addition of skilled bilingual employees and a practical springboard for future growth in Latin America,'' said Emmanuel Vivar, HostDime CEO. ''Doing business in foreign countries is never 'plug and play,' but we have studied the market and moved carefully to ensure we grow intelligently.''

"We are excited to have the opportunity to leverage HostDime's infrastructure and capital to allow us to accelerate our growth in Colombia. With this acquisition, we are able to retain our status as a market leader in Colombia, in terms of price and quality of services,” said Edwin T., founder of GrupoDW. Edwin will continue to direct operations in Colombia.

Company's Server Blowout Sale offers discounts of up to 25 percent on some of its popular name-brand servers.

The Planet, a privately held dedicated hosting company, today announced a limited-time promotion that provides discounts on 50 servers from its portfolio. The company claims that the Server Blowout Sale, offers discounts of up to 25 percent on some of its popular name-brand servers.

It explains that with the offer, servers regularly priced at $200 or more are discounted 25 percent; servers typically priced below $200 are discounted 10 percent. The company states that customers receive substantial savings on some of its powerful configurations, including Monster, RAID and virtual rack servers. Virtual racks are also included in the Server Blowout Sale, offering customers the benefits of pooled bandwidth, unlimited server-to-server data transfer and advanced security solutions in a multiserver environment, it adds.

''In today's economy, companies of all sizes - especially SMBs - are looking to cut costs and maximize their IT budgets,'' said Urvish Vashi, The Planet's general manager for dedicated servers. ''The Planet's size and scale allows us to offer considerable discounts on some of the best servers in the industry. By taking advantage of our server blowout, business owners can save literally hundreds of dollars per year on hosted IT, money they can use toward other business operations.''

12th August 2009