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July 31, 2008 -- ( <http://www.thewhir.com> WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Telecommunications provider AT&T announced on Wednesday that its affiliate AT&T Services has joined The Green Grid, the global organization dedicated to advancing energy efficiency in data centers and business computing ecosystems.

London, United Kingdom - (The Hosting News) - July 31, 2008 - Managed hosting company, EveryCity, has been chosen by research based marketing agency, CrowdDNA, to support its online projects and campaigns, as well as to provide advice and consultancy services.

Duncan Malcolm, Sales Director at EveryCity commented, ''CrowdDNA are a perfect client for us, they want a very tailored and reactive service for their busy online projects, to be able deliver the sort of results their clients demand.''

EveryCity will be managing all of CrowdDNA's server hosting, including domain names, websites, databases and development environments. They will be ensuring that daily fully managed off-site backups are performed, as well as ensuring that the servers hosting CrowdDNA's websites and applications are optimised to deliver the best possible performance.

EveryCity provide bespoke managed web hosting solutions to Web 2.0s, Digital Agencies, eCommerce companies and corporates. Their approach to managed hosting is one which is personalised and focussed on working closely with their clients during planning, implementation and on an ongoing basis through projects.

CrowdDNA is an audience behaviour agency that is both brand new and blessed with good history. Previously, it was Ramp Industry. Now CrowdDNA focuses on helping brands to harness innovation and authenticity; to square up to 21st Century challenges; to be relevant, useful, entertaining, part of the conversation.

Crowd DNA offers clients robust and dynamic research, strategy and planning. It brings audience understanding to life through content and comms that trigger conversations and acknowledge the soaring value of social currency.

For more information about Crowd DNA, please visit: www.crowddna.com.

To learn more about EveryCity Managed Hosting, please visit: www.everycity.co.uk.

London, United Kingdom - (The Hosting News) - July 31, 2008 - British web hosting company, and high bandwidth dedicated hosting provider, UK-2 Group, has completed its acquisition of managed datacenter solutions firm, ServerCentral's WingSix web hosting brand.

The transfer will be immediate and transparent to WingSix customers. The WingSix brand will continue to be marketed and positioned as a high-end hosting service focused on customer service.

Marc Bollinger, General Manager for WingSix, commented, ''WingSix customers have intense loyalty to the brand, due to the excellent service they consistently received. We're excited for the opportunity to continue the outstanding service and support and further develop the WingSix brand.''

Jordan Lowe, President of ServerCentral, noted, ''After reviewing all of our options, UK-2 was the best fit for our customers, offering a high standard of care in customer service, and a local Chicago-based team.''

Having provided hosting under the ServerCentral name since 2000, ServerCentral consolidated its hosting assets under the WingSix brand in 2005. WingSix supports thousands of web hosting, reseller, and virtual private server customers in 50 countries worldwide.

ServerCentral is a managed datacenter solutions provider specializing in bandwidth-intensive colocation applications. With datacenters strategically located worldwide, the company serves a diverse roster of clients, including content delivery companies, web hosting and application service providers, hardware vendors and enterprise-level clients.

UK-2 Group, a British hosting firm, provides domain name registration and web hosting services to many customers through its family of hosting brands - UK2.net, US2.net and Resell.biz. The group operates its services out of several state of the art, multi million pound data centers and are committed to providing reliable, secure and great value products and services underpinned with excellent support. UK2-Group is also a major shareholder in the merged Redbus Interhouse and Telecity Group, the leading European data centre provider.

To learn more about UK.Net, please visit: www.uk2.net.

Santa Clara, California - (The Hosting News) - July 31, 2008 - Web operations firm, OpSource, will provide online collaboration services for businesses, eXpresso Corporation's scalable Web delivery of secure collaborate services.

The company selected OpSource On-Demand because of its ability to manage its infrastructure while keeping pace with the volume of eXpresso users and their concurrent sessions.

eXpresso provides a complete and immediately usable Excel collaboration tool that requires no installation, support or training. However, with no in-house IT resources, eXpresso required a hosting solution that provided the technical aspects of its Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering, while also providing complete scalability to address the needs of its rapidly growing customer base.

George Langan, CEO of eXpresso, noted, ''In theory, the volume of eXpresso users can grow exponentially at any given moment, so we need an infrastructure that is dynamic, scalable and can stay ahead of our overall growth. We put OpSource On-Demand through a three-month pilot, during which time they not only provided us with the infrastructure and scalability we needed, but also demonstrated both a personal touch and an in-depth understanding of our needs and applications. We're now also evaluating OpSource Analytics to dissect data in a way that should enhance how it can be used by our sales team.''

A comprehensive, award-winning Web Operations solution, OpSource On-Demand enables Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Web companies to quickly and securely deliver their applications and services over the Web to consumers and businesses alike. Going far beyond full-featured managed hosting, it includes the application management, compliance and business services that are necessary for on-demand business success. OpSource On-Demand includes:

Technical Operations

• Best-in-class, scalable software, hardware and network infrastructure
• World-class data center facilities
• Redundant carrier class load balancing architecture
• In-depth 24x7 monitoring, security, and management procedures backed by SAS-70 Type II audits
• Built-in high availability solutions from simple clustering to wide-area Disaster Recovery

Application Operations

• Data management
• Performance management, including multipoint user-experience monitoring
• Application Roll Out and Change Management
• Application optimization
• Compliant infrastructure, processes and procedures including: SAS 70 Type II audited, HIPAA and PCI DSS compliance and salesforce.com and WebEx certifications

Business Operations

• OpSource Billing - An end-to-end subscription management, metering and payment stand-alone solution, or as part of OpSource On-Demand
• OpSource Connect - A Web services infrastructure and integration toolset, for application integration in the "Cloud" and behind the corporate fire-wall
• OpSource End-User Support - 24x7 customer branded end-user support
• OpSource Analytics - A real-time application and customer usage information, and health of business analysis and reporting tool

Treb Ryan, CEO of OpSource, added, ''SaaS has been readily adopted by consumers and is now going mainstream for the enterprise. This is opening up new markets for SaaS providers such as eXpresso who are adding value including collaboration and file sharing to ubiquitous enterprise-wide applications like Excel. SaaS success in the enterprise requires reliability, scalability and security and we're honored to have earned eXpresso's trust as its Web operations partner.''

OpSource delivers Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Web applications for on-demand companies, with hundreds of applications, millions of users and billions of transactions supported daily. OpSource Connect companies can leverage Web services such as OpSource Billing, OpSource Analytics and OpSource End-User Support and integrate applications with other SaaS applications over the Internet, as well as with enterprise applications behind the corporate firewall. OpSource On-Demand is suitable for companies at any stage of growth, with any type of on-demand application. OpSource is the only company to offer Success-Based PricingSM, a unit-based pricing model that allows businesses to begin with a modest minimum commitment and scale expenses as revenues increase. Headquartered in Santa Clara, CA, OpSource has Web application delivery centers in Virginia, London and Bangalore.

eXpresso is a provider of managed business community solutions. The company offers secure, hosted online workspaces suitable for business collaboration, beginning with the Excel spreadsheet environment. eXpresso's unique capabilities leverage multiple homegrown, patent-pending technologies, enabling users to access, share, compare and collaborate on business information from any location. The privately-owned company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California.

To learn more, visit: www.expressocorp.com.

For more information about OpSource, please visit: www.opsource.net.

Houston, Texas - (The Hosting News) - July 31, 2008 - Internet website security provider, Alert Logic, has surpassed its 500th customer in the first half of 2008, ast one of several significant business and product milestones for company in the past six months.

Michael Turner, President and CEO of Alert Logic noted, ''Today businesses face complex compliance and security challenges that can easily overwhelm the most seasoned IT staff. Alert Logic is focused on reducing that complexity by providing SaaS-based solutions that are easy to buy, own and use. Our growth in the first half of 2008 demonstrates the need for IT compliance and security solutions like ours and we look forward to providing our customers with these innovative technologies in the second half of the year.''

Adoption of Alert Logic's IT compliance and security solutions was driven largely by industry and government regulations such as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). Many organizations struggling to comply with these and other mandates chose Alert Logic because its Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform delivers log management, intrusion protection and vulnerability management solutions that are the easiest to implement and use.

Other important milestones achieved in the first half of 2008 include:

• Alert Logic raised $8.25 million in Series C financing. The round was led by Updata Partners and included existing investors Hunt Ventures, OCA Ventures, DFJ Mercury and Access Venture Partners.
• The company released an upgrade to Alert Logic Log Manager, its flagship log management product. Log Manager 1.1 now fully leverages the power of grid computing and virtualization technologies.
• Alert Logic won a Red Herring 100 Award, a selection of the 100 most innovative private technology companies based in North America.
• Alert Logic announced alliances with two web hosting companies, Hostway and Logicworks, and an IT distributor, Ingram Micro. The agreement with Ingram Micro is especially significant since Alert Logic's solutions are being offered to Ingram Micro's more than 40,000 solution providers and managed service providers throughout North America.
• Demonstrating its commitment to protect its customers's data, Alert Logic received a Statement on Auditing Standards No. 70 (SAS 70) Type II audit report. Alert Logic was also re-certified to perform assessments for organizations that must comply with the PCI DSS.
• To accommodate its growth, Alert Logic moved its Houston, TX-based headquarters from a 6,800 square foot office to one that is more than 21,000 square feet.

Alert Logic is a provider of on-demand compliance and security solutions. By enabling its customers to detect threats, eliminate vulnerabilities, and manage log data, Alert Logic provides the easiest way to secure networks and comply with policies and regulations. Alert Logic's on-demand platform utilizes software-as-a-service to deliver the benefits of rapid deployment, zero maintenance, and no upfront capital costs. As a result, Alert Logic customers benefit from easy and affordable compliance and security. The company is based in Houston, Texas and founded in 2002.

To learn more, please visit: www.alertlogic.com.

July 31, 2008 -- ( <http://www.thewhir.com> WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- A new study shows that 15 percent of malware is from legitimate sources with "Good" reputations, and 60 percent of the 100 most popular websites have either hosted or been involved in malicious activity in the first six-months of 2008.

It was a few hours ago now, but this afternoon we held the draw for the 50" HDTV that has been brightening our networking lounge since Tuesday morning.

The winner was the lovely Dianne Stayton of Web Your Business, who seemed more than a little excited to have won the prize.

Congratulations to Dianne. We had a lot of fun at the networking lounge this year.

A while later, at the other end of the exhibit hall, most of the exhibitors who had prizes to give away took the stage at the presentation theater to announce the winners (the TV was a little bit big to bring over there).

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At the conclusion of things, Keith Duncan of Ping! Zine took the stage. After a little grandstanding and the obligatory good-natured potshot at the WHIR, Duncan proceeded with the much-anticipated showstopper, giving five lucky winners the chance to sit on a motorcycle for a couple of seconds.

Nobody wins! Goodnight everyone!

I suppose it was understood in advance that there was really a very slim possibility that somebody would actually win the motorcycle (about 2 percent, I believe - five people each drawing a key from a bowl of 250, one of which apparently unlocked the box containing the actual key to the bike). But it was still a big of a lame duck promotion, and it should have been apparent to everyone hyping it up that it would be a bit of a let-down as big end-of-show prize drawings go.

Sure, it would have been fun if, against all probability, somebody had actually won that motorcycle. As it turns out, there was a bit of "how do we know there's a real key?" and "let everyone take one more key." Nothing too serious, but it wasn't much fun. I'd rather have a Nintendo Wii.

Kudos to Keith for making a big to-do out of what basically amounted to nothing. I suppose it was a pretty good promotion at the end of the day.

By the way, you heard it here first: at HostingCon 2009, anyone who can throw a baseball from Navy Pier to the W hotel wins 100 spaceships, courtesy of the Web Host Industry Review (a challenge made all the more difficult by the fact that the event's going to be in Washington DC).

We ran a bit in the latest issue of the magazine about the new appointments in the marketing department at Verio, and the new marketing strategy ushered in across the company by that move.

The new faces are Ken Giffin, director of marketing, and Wendy Pearson, director of makerting and communications. While Giffin focuses on the Via Verio partner program, Pearson will focus more on the company-wide marketing effort.

Yesterday I met with Wendy Pearson to discuss some of the content of that revamped marketing effort, or the part of it that is complete at this relatively early stage in the redesign.

The new blood in the marketing department starts with Steve Renda, who was made VP of sales and marketing in January of this year. And he brought many of the company's new faces on board.

But the shift, says Pearson, comes from a mandate at the company to reinvigorate a business that has been not quite stagnant but certainly coasting for a period of a few years.

Verio is one of those hosting companies that deals with the small to medium-sized business market, which can be a pretty broad and vague term when you start to really think about the kind of business that describes. Part of the process at Verio in the last 60 days, says Pearson, has been to really narrow the focus within that realm, partly by trying to characterize those hypothetical customers.

At the very high end of a chart she drew that described the importance of IT to a given customer and their competence with IT, she identified a sophisticated, demanding customer that Verio has acknowledged that it just isn't the customer it is best suited to serve, or most interested in serving.

At the low end, they've identified the basic domain-name-and-one-page-website customer that also isn't really in the mould of what they're best suited to, or most interested in, serving.

The customers they're looking at targeting are the kinds of small businesses that are looking toward growing online, changing positions on that chart to move toward more importance of IT, and in some cases a higher rate of competence.

It's an interesting discussion, this idea of a host narrowing its focus and, if not getting rid of certain customers than at least admitting that "these aren't the customers we're interested in serving."

For Verio, the next step in this process - now that it has really polished the notion of what it means by "SMB" - is identifying the means by which it will target these better-defined SMB customers.

I'll keep this one brief. As many of you may already know we're giving away a really excellent tv this afternoon. It's pictured below. Just to give you an idea of its scale, I can say without exaggeration that the laptop sitting next to it is ten hundred feet tall.

Yeah. It's huge.

Anyway, we're doing the draw at 3pm. So you have about two hours to come over to the networking lounge (booth 627 - it's really big) and drop your business card in the fishbowl.

That really only takes about one minute. So you definitely have time.

Good luck!