Round Tale

(The Hosting News) – Fasthosts today announced the launch of Rise, an IaaS (infrastructure-as-a-service) provider enabling thousands of resellers to move into cloud computing.
 
Rise (www.rise-partners.co.uk), a brand new company from Fasthosts, will provide cloud and dedicated infrastructure as well as end-to-end solutions for channel partners to either resell, or offer as a white label service under their own brand.
 
Andy Burton, CEO of Fasthosts and Rise, said: “There is a lot of talk about cloud computing and much of it is hype right now. Vendors obviously thought that if they made enough noise then consumers would find them but that’s not how many small and mid sized businesses in particular buy IT. They’re aware of the cloud, but are often confused about what it delivers and how they can utilise it, and usually rely on a third party ‘trusted advisor and supplier’ to guide them. What we’re addressing with this launch is how SMBs buy IT, not just why they should. By providing cloud services to the channel partners, we’re enabling those companies that have the trusted relationship with the end customer to deliver the benefits in a way that is clearly understood by the customer.”
 
Rise will ensure that the IT and telecommunications channels have the opportunity to embrace the considerable benefits that cloud infrastructure can offer in terms of agility, scalability and cost effectiveness.
 
Burton continues, “This, we hope, is seen as good news for the channel after many predicted cloud computing would be bad news for businesses who traditionally sold packaged software or on-premise hardware. If anything this should give resellers an even stronger bond with their customers as they can continue to provide on-premise solutions as they always have, but can now add hosted solutions to that portfolio as well. A combination of the two looks the best bet for some years to come.”
 
Rise is offering value-added resellers and systems integrators the opportunity to partner with them through a new and beneficial programme to add cloud solutions to their portfolio as a complement to their existing business and expand their available market.
 
Rise is in turn launching a new platform called – Data Centre on Demand, an Infrastructure as a Service offering based upon the Microsoft Dynamic Data Centre. It will serve as a showcase for Microsoft’s Hyper-V technology, enabling virtualisation efficiencies in the data centre which can pass scale as well as cost- and energy-saving onto users.
 
Bob Tarzey analyst and director Quocirca, comments, “Many SMBs look to their resellers for advice on new technology developments, such as cloud based services. The cloud has a lot to offer, especially when it comes to commodity applications like email, backup and web hosting; enterprise class capability at SMB prices. Resellers need to look at how they rebalance their portfolios to include cloud based services and continue to help their SMB customers procure the most cost effective IT solutions. To achieve this, resellers need to identify cloud service providers with a strong reseller focus that understand the indirect sales model and are prepared to share the annuity revenue that cloud services generate.”
 
Jeff Lenton, In2itive Business Solutions (www.in2itive.biz) – “We’ve been party to the Fasthosts Internet Group channel proposition for a time now, and believe this is a service that the IT consultancies, VAR’s and SI’s will benefit from. The support to build cloud services into the channel proposition is clear, and the focus from the Rise account teams on the partner growth is very welcome.”

Fasthosts Enables Resellers to Move into Cloud Computing

(The Hosting News) – Fasthosts today announced the launch of Rise, an IaaS (infrastructure-as-a-service) provider enabling thousands of resellers to move into cloud computing.
 
Rise (www.rise-partners.co.uk), a brand new company from Fasthosts, will provide cloud and dedicated infrastructure as well as end-to-end solutions for channel partners to either resell, or offer as a white label service under their own brand.
 
Andy Burton, CEO of Fasthosts and Rise, said: “There is a lot of talk about cloud computing and much of it is hype right now. Vendors obviously thought that if they made enough noise then consumers would find them but that’s not how many small and mid sized businesses in particular buy IT. They’re aware of the cloud, but are often confused about what it delivers and how they can utilise it, and usually rely on a third party ‘trusted advisor and supplier’ to guide them. What we’re addressing with this launch is how SMBs buy IT, not just why they should. By providing cloud services to the channel partners, we’re enabling those companies that have the trusted relationship with the end customer to deliver the benefits in a way that is clearly understood by the customer.”
 
Rise will ensure that the IT and telecommunications channels have the opportunity to embrace the considerable benefits that cloud infrastructure can offer in terms of agility, scalability and cost effectiveness.
 
Burton continues, “This, we hope, is seen as good news for the channel after many predicted cloud computing would be bad news for businesses who traditionally sold packaged software or on-premise hardware. If anything this should give resellers an even stronger bond with their customers as they can continue to provide on-premise solutions as they always have, but can now add hosted solutions to that portfolio as well. A combination of the two looks the best bet for some years to come.”
 
Rise is offering value-added resellers and systems integrators the opportunity to partner with them through a new and beneficial programme to add cloud solutions to their portfolio as a complement to their existing business and expand their available market.
 
Rise is in turn launching a new platform called – Data Centre on Demand, an Infrastructure as a Service offering based upon the Microsoft Dynamic Data Centre. It will serve as a showcase for Microsoft’s Hyper-V technology, enabling virtualisation efficiencies in the data centre which can pass scale as well as cost- and energy-saving onto users.
 
Bob Tarzey analyst and director Quocirca, comments, “Many SMBs look to their resellers for advice on new technology developments, such as cloud based services. The cloud has a lot to offer, especially when it comes to commodity applications like email, backup and web hosting; enterprise class capability at SMB prices. Resellers need to look at how they rebalance their portfolios to include cloud based services and continue to help their SMB customers procure the most cost effective IT solutions. To achieve this, resellers need to identify cloud service providers with a strong reseller focus that understand the indirect sales model and are prepared to share the annuity revenue that cloud services generate.”
 
Jeff Lenton, In2itive Business Solutions (www.in2itive.biz) – “We’ve been party to the Fasthosts Internet Group channel proposition for a time now, and believe this is a service that the IT consultancies, VAR’s and SI’s will benefit from. The support to build cloud services into the channel proposition is clear, and the focus from the Rise account teams on the partner growth is very welcome.”

Fasthosts Enables Resellers to Move into Cloud Computing

(The Hosting News)- Hosting.com, the leading provider of hosting and colocation solutions and a  strategic VMware vCloud(TM) partner, released information today that clients can upload their own VMware virtual machines or VMDK (Virtual Machine Disk Format) files to Hosting.com’s Cloud Enterprise and Cloud Dedicated solutions. This functionality was released  in a limited beta in November and is one of the first cloud service providers to offer this capability to VMware clients and users.

Cloud Enterprise customers now have the flexibility and portability to move their virtual machines, either from their own environment or another host, into one of Hosting.com’s Cloud Super Sites. This solution can provide VMware vSphere(TM) users with a redundant layer of offsite disaster recovery and business continuance services in a secure hosted environment. Current and new Cloud Enterprise customers can access this functionality via the Customer Control Panel.

Dan Chu, VMware vice president, emerging products and solutions, commented, “Cloud Enterprise is an example of how cloud hosting is altering and enhancing the technology landscape, enabling customers to upload their own virtual machine environments. This gives VMware vSphere(TM) users the ability to easily transfer their virtual machines to Hosting.com’s cloud datacenters spread throughout the country for additional fault tolerance or improved service.” He continued, “The virtual machine upload functionality is in high demand from our customer base and Hosting.com has moved quickly to deliver this solution to the marketplace.”

The solution is ideal for companies that have VMware virtual machines at their premise or another host and need additional compute capacity in a secure cloud environment. Uploading the entire VMDK file is a seamless process that eliminates the work associated with rebuilding applications and data in a cloud or offsite environment. In addition, users can easily modify their compute, storage and disc resources through the Hosting.com control panel to meet the resource needs of the applications running within the virtual machine(s).

Joel Daly, Chief Operating Officer for Hosting.com commented, “Our product engineering and development teams were pushed to deliver a solution that allows companies to avoid the typical migration time constraints and technical burdens associated with reinstalling and reconfiguring applications – they have succeeded.” Daly continued, “The client demand through the limited beta displayed the marketplace need for multi-platform solutions; this solution allows our colocation and managed hosting clients to develop applications, websites etc in their own virtual environments and utilize our cloud platform for launch, fault tolerance or geographically dispersed disaster recovery.”

Cloud Enterprise leverages the latest in virtualization platform technology with VMware vSphere 4, and is highly available on both the computing and disk infrastructures. Starting as low as $125 per month, Cloud Enterprise provides on-demand cloud hosting via a secure web portal so businesses can rapidly deploy virtual servers and modify resources as needed. Cloud Enterprise requires no contracts and clients can purchase, provision and add CPU, RAM, and DISK online.

Hosting.com has a portfolio of Cloud Hosting Solutions including Cloud Enterprise, Cloud Dedicated, Cloud VPS, and vCloud Express – that reduce costs, improve efficiency and provide extreme flexibility to businesses of all sizes. Hosting.com has made significant investments in enterprise-class technologies such as EMC, Dell, Juniper, F5, and Intel to deliver a robust, standards-based cloud infrastructure to clients demanding unparalleled performance and security.

Hosting.com offers VMware Cloud Upload Environment is a post from: Hosting News and Reseller Web Hosting information.

(The Hosting News)- Hosting.com, the leading provider of hosting and colocation solutions and a  strategic VMware vCloud(TM) partner, released information today that clients can upload their own VMware virtual machines or VMDK (Virtual Machine Disk Format) files to Hosting.com’s Cloud Enterprise and Cloud Dedicated solutions. This functionality was released  in a limited beta in November and is one of the first cloud service providers to offer this capability to VMware clients and users.

Cloud Enterprise customers now have the flexibility and portability to move their virtual machines, either from their own environment or another host, into one of Hosting.com’s Cloud Super Sites. This solution can provide VMware vSphere(TM) users with a redundant layer of offsite disaster recovery and business continuance services in a secure hosted environment. Current and new Cloud Enterprise customers can access this functionality via the Customer Control Panel.

Dan Chu, VMware vice president, emerging products and solutions, commented, “Cloud Enterprise is an example of how cloud hosting is altering and enhancing the technology landscape, enabling customers to upload their own virtual machine environments. This gives VMware vSphere(TM) users the ability to easily transfer their virtual machines to Hosting.com’s cloud datacenters spread throughout the country for additional fault tolerance or improved service.” He continued, “The virtual machine upload functionality is in high demand from our customer base and Hosting.com has moved quickly to deliver this solution to the marketplace.”

The solution is ideal for companies that have VMware virtual machines at their premise or another host and need additional compute capacity in a secure cloud environment. Uploading the entire VMDK file is a seamless process that eliminates the work associated with rebuilding applications and data in a cloud or offsite environment. In addition, users can easily modify their compute, storage and disc resources through the Hosting.com control panel to meet the resource needs of the applications running within the virtual machine(s).

Joel Daly, Chief Operating Officer for Hosting.com commented, “Our product engineering and development teams were pushed to deliver a solution that allows companies to avoid the typical migration time constraints and technical burdens associated with reinstalling and reconfiguring applications – they have succeeded.” Daly continued, “The client demand through the limited beta displayed the marketplace need for multi-platform solutions; this solution allows our colocation and managed hosting clients to develop applications, websites etc in their own virtual environments and utilize our cloud platform for launch, fault tolerance or geographically dispersed disaster recovery.”

Cloud Enterprise leverages the latest in virtualization platform technology with VMware vSphere 4, and is highly available on both the computing and disk infrastructures. Starting as low as $125 per month, Cloud Enterprise provides on-demand cloud hosting via a secure web portal so businesses can rapidly deploy virtual servers and modify resources as needed. Cloud Enterprise requires no contracts and clients can purchase, provision and add CPU, RAM, and DISK online.

Hosting.com has a portfolio of Cloud Hosting Solutions including Cloud Enterprise, Cloud Dedicated, Cloud VPS, and vCloud Express – that reduce costs, improve efficiency and provide extreme flexibility to businesses of all sizes. Hosting.com has made significant investments in enterprise-class technologies such as EMC, Dell, Juniper, F5, and Intel to deliver a robust, standards-based cloud infrastructure to clients demanding unparalleled performance and security.

Hosting.com offers VMware Cloud Upload Environment is a post from: Hosting News and Reseller Web Hosting information.

One of the first and most annoying things that can happen to a new web site owner is being blasted with spam.  There is a dilemma presented when wanting to have potential customers or clients contact you or your company.  Either your email has to be publicly posted or you will need to enable a form to allow quick and easy contact.  When you do implement either choice, spammers will come and they will do as much damage as is possible.

Email link – bad idea

The first thing that should be done is to toss out the idea of publicly placing your email address in any form that can be clicked as a link.  Using a linked email address publicly is an open invitation to spammers.  Nothing can be more unpleasant than having to start off your business day wading through hundreds upon hundreds of spam content in your email in-box.  If you must use this route, simply place your email in text only – this will make it harder for a potential spammer as they will have to physically copy and paste your address into any email.  Inconvenience is the bane of the spammer.

Contact form – can be attacked

If you’ve decided to place a contact form anywhere within your web site, you’ll want to enable some type of security to ensure that an actual human is utilizing the form.  This sounds simple enough because, after all, the purpose of the form is to gather human information.  However, most email forms have a standard “name”, “email”,  “subject”, “content” style to them that is easily recognized and exploited by spammers.  Using this standard information, spammers use automated systems to attack a contact form – computer to computer.  What can stump them is requiring something that only a human can input or answer and that isn’t part of the standard email form.  This is where Captcha comes in.

Contact form with Captcha – better idea

Captcha is a type of test that is used to ensure human interaction.  The premise behind Captcha is that computers should not be able to solve something that requires human input.  The very early implementations of Captcha were simple generations of a word or series of letters with some small amount of warping.  However, spammers quickly adjusted to this warping and this initial Captcha implementation had to be abandoned.  Modern Captcha uses two to three regular words that are segmented and have lines through the words making it much more difficult to automatically guess via a computer system.

This all culminates into a small bit of either PHP or Javascript that is placed within your form before the submit button coding.  After filling out the rest of the form, a user must then enter the correct words generated within the Captcha coding.  You can set the form to lock out a user after a certain number of errors thus staving off the possible attack of spammers for yet another day.

Conclusion

Of course, the simplest way to avoid spammers at all is by not allowing any sort of email contact within your site.  But this is not a feasible option – after all, you have your web site online for the purpose of contacting new and old customers or clients.  So, before putting your email form online, use a bit of quick security and incorporate Captcha.

Houston, Texas – (The Hosting News) – May 22, 2009 – Privately held dedicated web hosting company, The Planet, has made available its new Storage Cloud service. The company offers globally dispersed locations to meet their customers’ requirements, at all world locations.

Customers can choose from an on-premise local node in The Planet’s Dallas D2 data center, or from locations on the East or West Coasts, Europe or Asia, through its partnership with Nirvanix. The company also offers Storage Cloud options for organizations that do not require hosting solutions.

Rob Walters, general manager for The Planet’s Storage and Data Protection business noted, ”With other cloud storage platforms, we hear time and again from customers that invoices are dramatically inflated due to unexpected and hidden transactional fees. Our no-surprises philosophy removes the uncertainty. In addition, other companies by contrast offer a one-city cloud storage option, typically resident in their city of operation. Our customers can choose options from multiple replicated global or domestic nodes. With three access methods included with every Storage Cloud account — including API, Nirvanix CloudNAS or Nirvanix FTP Proxy — customers can eliminate the development requirements typically associated with other platforms. From early customer evaluations, we’ve heard first-hand that they appreciate the scalability, exceptional performance, simple integration and competitive pricing that are The Planet’s industry-recognized hallmarks.”

Coupled with a server hosted at The Planet, customers combine the speed and flexibility of on-premise Network Attached Storage (NAS) with the global access and usage-based billing capabilities of its Storage Cloud solution. All Storage Cloud customers with servers hosted at The Planet are connected through its world-class network, which provides unprecedented performance. Customers eliminate the hassle of managing two separate invoices, one for high-performance on-premise file storage and another for cloud-based offerings. The Planet Storage Cloud provides both services in a single account, which offers a simple method for tracking and understanding file-based storage usage.

Bill Robertson, Founder and CEO of Q Point Technology remarked, ”We conducted extensive testing and evaluated multiple cloud storage options for price and performance, reliability and scalability, and The Planet provided us with the best solution. Our customers choose TrueSafe because it enables them to offer their own Online Backup service. They want a reliable system that is instantly deployed, scales with adoption and offers straightforward, no-surprises billing. Across the board, The Planet delivers the best value, return on investment and service for our customers.”

The Planet Storage Cloud Benefits include, with its usage-based billing and simple integration, that customers can take advantage of unlimited storage options, available on-demand around-the-clock:

Fast, on-premise storage, great rates: Pricing starts at 25 cents per Gigabyte, with discounts as customers use more, while other hosting companies routinely charge between 60 cents and $1 for equivalent NAS-type products. On-premise storage is accessible via the cloud, which reduces server resource utilization and requirements for a separate cloud account. Bandwidth charges are incurred only for outbound-transactions, and all uploads to The Planet Storage Cloud node are free.

Data closer to customers: The Planet offers the industry’s only geographically distributed Storage Cloud platform. For companies with storage-intensive businesses or Web sites, data transfer speeds are dramatically improved by storing data closer to their users. Storage nodes are located in three domestic and two international locations, making it easier than ever to take advantage of cloud storage options.

Simple management and integration: The Planet provides customers a single account for managing both their hosted environment and storage cloud platform. This integrated account is unmatched by other hosting or cloud storage providers. The standards-based Storage Cloud platform is accessible through CIFS, NFS, FTP and HTTP, as well as an extensible API streamlining integration. Unlike other cloud storage providers, The Planet bundles free-access software that enables faster integration and eliminates the purchase of third-party integration products.

Cost-effective disaster recovery, backup and archiving repository: By removing data from servers and into the Storage Cloud, customers can protect against all types of disasters, whether it’s human error, loss of network connectivity or malicious intent.

Ultimately, The Planet endeavors to provide:

• High levels of network capacity and speed to deliver peak performance
• Instant scalability to handle even the largest spikes in network traffic
• Parallel, redundant, multi-tiered network routing and switching architecture to assure reliability and stability
• Multiple layer network security that prevents Delayed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks from harming businesses
• Knowledgeable experts with a passion for excellence and a commitment to operate the best networks in the business

The Planet is a leading provider of On Demand IT Infrastructure solutions, hosting more than 20,000 small and medium-size businesses and 15.7 million web sites worldwide. Customers have the power to choose from the broadest range of hosting solutions in the industry, from dedicated servers, Alpha Professional Managed Dedicated Servers, Northstar Managed Hosting and data center colocation, all backed by 24x7x365 support. With the best choice of servers, software tools and world-class service, backed by state-of-the-art data centers and an enterprise-class network, The Planet turns IT into a powerful competitive advantage that enables customers to grow their businesses.

To learn more about the The Planet Storage Cloud, please visit: www.theplanet.com/cloud-storage.

For more information about The Planet, please visit: www.theplanet.com.

Houston, Texas – (The Hosting News) – May 22, 2009 – Privately held dedicated web hosting company, The Planet, has made available its new Storage Cloud service. The company offers globally dispersed locations to meet their customers’ requirements, at all world locations.

Customers can choose from an on-premise local node in The Planet’s Dallas D2 data center, or from locations on the East or West Coasts, Europe or Asia, through its partnership with Nirvanix. The company also offers Storage Cloud options for organizations that do not require hosting solutions.

Rob Walters, general manager for The Planet’s Storage and Data Protection business noted, ”With other cloud storage platforms, we hear time and again from customers that invoices are dramatically inflated due to unexpected and hidden transactional fees. Our no-surprises philosophy removes the uncertainty. In addition, other companies by contrast offer a one-city cloud storage option, typically resident in their city of operation. Our customers can choose options from multiple replicated global or domestic nodes. With three access methods included with every Storage Cloud account — including API, Nirvanix CloudNAS or Nirvanix FTP Proxy — customers can eliminate the development requirements typically associated with other platforms. From early customer evaluations, we’ve heard first-hand that they appreciate the scalability, exceptional performance, simple integration and competitive pricing that are The Planet’s industry-recognized hallmarks.”

Coupled with a server hosted at The Planet, customers combine the speed and flexibility of on-premise Network Attached Storage (NAS) with the global access and usage-based billing capabilities of its Storage Cloud solution. All Storage Cloud customers with servers hosted at The Planet are connected through its world-class network, which provides unprecedented performance. Customers eliminate the hassle of managing two separate invoices, one for high-performance on-premise file storage and another for cloud-based offerings. The Planet Storage Cloud provides both services in a single account, which offers a simple method for tracking and understanding file-based storage usage.

Bill Robertson, Founder and CEO of Q Point Technology remarked, ”We conducted extensive testing and evaluated multiple cloud storage options for price and performance, reliability and scalability, and The Planet provided us with the best solution. Our customers choose TrueSafe because it enables them to offer their own Online Backup service. They want a reliable system that is instantly deployed, scales with adoption and offers straightforward, no-surprises billing. Across the board, The Planet delivers the best value, return on investment and service for our customers.”

The Planet Storage Cloud Benefits include, with its usage-based billing and simple integration, that customers can take advantage of unlimited storage options, available on-demand around-the-clock:

Fast, on-premise storage, great rates: Pricing starts at 25 cents per Gigabyte, with discounts as customers use more, while other hosting companies routinely charge between 60 cents and $1 for equivalent NAS-type products. On-premise storage is accessible via the cloud, which reduces server resource utilization and requirements for a separate cloud account. Bandwidth charges are incurred only for outbound-transactions, and all uploads to The Planet Storage Cloud node are free.

Data closer to customers: The Planet offers the industry’s only geographically distributed Storage Cloud platform. For companies with storage-intensive businesses or Web sites, data transfer speeds are dramatically improved by storing data closer to their users. Storage nodes are located in three domestic and two international locations, making it easier than ever to take advantage of cloud storage options.

Simple management and integration: The Planet provides customers a single account for managing both their hosted environment and storage cloud platform. This integrated account is unmatched by other hosting or cloud storage providers. The standards-based Storage Cloud platform is accessible through CIFS, NFS, FTP and HTTP, as well as an extensible API streamlining integration. Unlike other cloud storage providers, The Planet bundles free-access software that enables faster integration and eliminates the purchase of third-party integration products.

Cost-effective disaster recovery, backup and archiving repository: By removing data from servers and into the Storage Cloud, customers can protect against all types of disasters, whether it’s human error, loss of network connectivity or malicious intent.

Ultimately, The Planet endeavors to provide:

• High levels of network capacity and speed to deliver peak performance
• Instant scalability to handle even the largest spikes in network traffic
• Parallel, redundant, multi-tiered network routing and switching architecture to assure reliability and stability
• Multiple layer network security that prevents Delayed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks from harming businesses
• Knowledgeable experts with a passion for excellence and a commitment to operate the best networks in the business

The Planet is a leading provider of On Demand IT Infrastructure solutions, hosting more than 20,000 small and medium-size businesses and 15.7 million web sites worldwide. Customers have the power to choose from the broadest range of hosting solutions in the industry, from dedicated servers, Alpha Professional Managed Dedicated Servers, Northstar Managed Hosting and data center colocation, all backed by 24x7x365 support. With the best choice of servers, software tools and world-class service, backed by state-of-the-art data centers and an enterprise-class network, The Planet turns IT into a powerful competitive advantage that enables customers to grow their businesses.

To learn more about the The Planet Storage Cloud, please visit: www.theplanet.com/cloud-storage.

For more information about The Planet, please visit: www.theplanet.com.