Manchester, United Kingdom - (The Hosting News) - October 1, 2009 - UK website hosting firm 34SP.com is celebrating its ninth anniversary, by giving away 9 great prizes designed specifically to mark the occasion. The company was founded by Manchester University colleagues Daniel Foster and Stuart Melling.

Despite its growth, the website hosting industry is a relatively new business segment. With mergers, acquisitions and the threat of continuously increasing competition, it is a testament to a company’s perseverance when that firm reaches the nine year mark.

34SP.com is located in Manchester, United Kingdom and specializes in providing the highest levels of customer service and technical support for website hosting and domain names.Over the past 9 years the company has solidified a reputation for outstanding support, coupled with extremely high reliability at fair prices. A complete list of the company’s website hosting products can be viewed at: www.34sp.com/hosting.

Stuart Melling, co-founder of 34SP.com explained, ”We thought it would be great to reward clients with a truly valuable prize for each year that 34SP.com has been in the website hosting business. It has been a great challenge to grow as we have over the past 9 years and continue to offer our clients world class support, but we are gratified to have had the opportunity to serve our customers over the past 9 years. We are very much looking forward to the next 9 years.”

Anyone who purchases any 34SP.com product during the month of October is eligible to win the ‘9 Years of Hosting, 9 Great Prizes’ contest. Winners will be determined by a random drawing at the end of the month. The prizes being offered are:

* New Apple iPod nano with Camera 8GB (5th Generation)

* Toshiba Satellite L350-20G 17-inch Laptop

* Canon Powershot 12.1 MegaPixel Camera

* Western Digital Elements 1TeraByte USB 2.0 External Hard Drive

* Canon Selphy ES40, a Portable Talking Printer (yes, you read that right - it talks)

* Sony DVPFX730 7-inch Portable DVD Player

* Flip Video Ultra High Definition Camcorder With 8GB Memory

* Toshiba 19AV615DB 19-inch Widescreen HD Ready LCD TV

* The Beatles Rock Band - Limited Edition Premium Bundle

34SP.com was established in the year 2000. The company was founded with the aim of bridging the gap between sophisticated hosting solutions and affordable prices. The owners and core engineering staff have been with the company since its founding. In terms of reliability, independent monitoring service, Netcraft in Bath, England recently rated 34SP.com as the fifth most reliable hosting service in the world for the month of June, 2009. Additionally, a recent internal survey found that 98% of 34SP.com clients would recommend the company to others.

34SP.com offers professional website hosting services for cost conscious web developers and designers. The 34SP.com team of technical experts offers industry leading support and service coupled with a money back guarantee to ensure client satisfaction. Website hosting services offered include: UK domains, UK web hosting and dedicated servers. The company is headquartered in central Manchester, England.

To learn more about 34SP.com, please visit: www.34sp.com.

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Web Hosting Firm, 34SP.com Celebrates 9 Years of Hosting with Giveaway

Parksville, British Columbia - (The Hosting News) - September 30, 2009 - New reseller and dedicated web hosting packages for Canadian and U.S. clients have been launched by web hosting service provider, Hosting Nation.

Sean Enns, Director of Marketing and Communications at Hosting Nation explained, ”We already offer a lot of extra resources in our shared hosting plans. The reseller and dedicated environments are natural extensions of products and services we already provide.”

Users receive WHM and cPanel, as well as the Fantastico DeLuxe and Installatron software installers. Hosting Nation has also added custom resources, such as simple installations of development frameworks like jQuery and Blueprint CSS and the R1Soft Continuous Data Protection. The basic reseller plan from Hosting Nation includes 25 GB of disk space and 250 GB of bandwidth for only $19.95 per month. View all reseller hosting plans from Hosting Nation

Dedicated severs are either dual or quad core Xeon servers with a minimum of 2 GB of Ram and 2000 GB of disk space. Dedicated servers from Hosting Nation start at $259 per month. View all dedicated server plans from Hosting Nation

Hosting Nation is a privately owned web hosting and web service provider headquartered in beautiful Parksville, British Columbia. Hosting Nation is committed to providing their citizens with best in class web hosting technology, software and support by drawing on over 50 combined years of experience in server management, web design, programming, project management and internet marketing.

To learn more, please visit: www.hosting-nation.com.

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Dedicated Server, Reseller Hosting, Launched at Hosting Nation

Phoenix, Arizona - (The Hosting News) - September 29, 2009 - A recent licensing agreement between Microsoft Corp. and SmarterTools Inc. extends Microsoft’s patented Exchange ActiveSync technology to more than 15 million end users through the latest version of the SmarterMail mail server.

The agreement provides a patent license to SmarterTools for this industry-leading technology and allows Microsoft to expand its reach to include SmarterTools’ robust customer base, which encompasses hosting/service providers, enterprises, and small to medium sized businesses.

David Kaefer, general manager of intellectual property licensing at Microsoft offered, ”We are pleased to work with SmarterTools to provide Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync to SmarterMail users. This technology is being sought out by our partners and competitors alike because it enhances their value proposition to their customers, and we believe that to be a testament to the innovation taking place at Microsoft.”

Microsoft has been licensing the Exchange ActiveSync protocol for mobile devices since 2003, and SmarterTools joins a growing number of companies licensing the Exchange ActiveSync patents for implementation on a server.

Tim Uzzanti, CEO of SmarterTools noted, ”With the growing number of mobile manufacturers adding Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync compatibility to their devices, the technology is the standard for mobile synchronization and communication. Mobile devices are becoming the primary device for communication and the ability to accept a calendar event, read email immediately, and track tasks from a mobile device while syncing with the server is a necessity. The addition of Exchange ActiveSync to the SmarterMail mail server is part of our continuing commitment to provide individuals and businesses the tools necessary to compete in today’s marketplace.”

Under the terms of the patent licensing agreement, SmarterMail 6.x users have the ability to synchronize emails, calendars, contacts, and notes between mobile devices in real time using Exchange ActiveSync’s Direct Push technology. SmarterTools has packaged the SmarterMail 6.x Exchange ActiveSync add-on differently than other providers, resulting in a yearly subscription priced well below competitive solutions.

In addition, SmarterTools allows customers to add Exchange ActiveSync to only the mailboxes that need the technology, making adoption of the add-on easy and affordable for small to medium sized businesses (SMBs) and the ISP/hosting industry. Scalable and easy to manage, SmarterMail 6.x features a rich, Webmail interface; reporting; events/notifications; throttling; message archiving; intrusion detection/prevention; advanced synchronization with Microsoft Outlook; over-the-air support for BlackBerry, iPhone, and Windows Mobile devices; and optional add-ons for Exchange ActiveSync and Commtouch Antispam. Enhanced antispam, antivirus, and security features provide superior protection out-of-the-box. SmarterMail is available at the SmarterTools Web site and through authorized resellers.

Founded in 2003, SmarterTools Inc. is an information technology-management software company based in Phoenix, Arizona. SmarterTools builds a Windows mail server, customer service software, and a Web log analytics reporting tool that simplify and automate the day-to-day IT operations of businesses and hosting environments.

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

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Hosted Exchange Provider, SmarterTools, Extends Microsoft Patent Licensing

Amsterdam, The Netherlands - (The Hosting News) - September 29, 2009 - Dedicated hosting provider, LeaseWeb, has made significant upgrades for its Support Department over the past six months in response to signs that the customer support experience could be improved.

Rolph Haspers, Operations Director of LeaseWeb remarked, ”Various developments caused our Support Department to become somewhat overburdened at the end of 2008.In Q4 2008, LeaseWeb experienced a tremendous growth spurt that had repercussions on the Support Department. This department was facing extra difficulties due to the unfortunate lack of engineers at that time, and the fact that it had too many lower qualified engineers. Also, we are traditionally a highly technology-oriented company, which is not always conducive to customer-friendliness and which became more apparent during this stressful period.”

The most recent semi-annual customer survey held among more than 1,300 customers showed that the measures are having a positive effect. The upgrade of LeaseWeb’s Support Department included the hiring of 20 more highly qualified engineers and the improvement of the terms of employment. In addition, all support engineers completed a series of communications training courses to improve their ability to operate in a more customer-friendly manner. These measures have resulted in an impressive 20% increase in the number of fully satisfied customers over the past six months.

More than six months ago, immediately after the disappointing support results from the previous customer survey, both short-term and long-term measures were implemented in order to provide the customers with renewed confidence in a positive support experience. Haspers: The survey results confirmed our gut feeling and we immediately took action. Our short-term measures included the temporary hiring of additional Support staff, partly from the UK. These highly experienced employees were able to relieve some of the pressure and provide effective support to less experienced staff.

For the longer term, LeaseWeb immediately started looking for more highly qualified engineers in an effort to expand its Support Department with additional permanent staff. Haspers: This expansion process is still continuing, although the current staffing of the department already has significantly improved the ability to handle peak loads. This positive effect is clearly reflected in the most recent semi-annual customer survey. In addition, six months ago, we immediately decided to relieve the burden on the Support Department in a structural manner through additional investments in automation, among other areas, and by unlinking the provisioning process, i.e. the process of making servers and other hardware available. That should also help to lighten the work load of the department and improve the quality of support.

Many of LeaseWeb’s customers are Internet professionals or specialists such as system integrators, Web developers and application developers who resell LeaseWeb’s hosting services and integrate them into a total solution. As a result of this particular customer focus, customers have a relatively extensive knowledge of hosting. Support nonetheless remains vital. Haspers: Hosting has become a commodity for these companies. They have some knowledge of hosting, but they want to have the ability to fully concentrate on the services they provide in addition to LeaseWeb’s basic hosting products. In that sense, support remains vital for them.

Are there any other needs when it comes to support? Haspers: The customer survey confirms that we are on the right track and that our quality improvement operation has been successful, but we want to optimize our support to an even further extent. Our focus for the coming six months is to further improve the response and resolution times for issues. In addition, we are continuously working on expanding our engineers’ knowledge, e.g. through additional certification processes, in order to take the customers technical support experience to yet a higher level.

LeaseWeb is an international provider of hosting solutions that is primarily geared towards the professional market. The company is among the top-20 hosting providers worldwide and its services include server virtualization, dedicated servers, collocation, streaming, webhosting, and domain name registration. LeaseWeb is the proprietor of a first-class network that offers a bandwidth of more than 750 Gbps, spanning four data centers in the Amsterdam region via major telecom carriers. LeaseWeb is also present via Internet exchanges in Amsterdam, Londen, Frankfurt, New York, Brussel, Kopenhagen, Parijs, Budapest, Boekarest, Warschau, Praag, Bratislava, Milaan, Wenen, Stockholm, Oslo, Zuumlrich and Madrid. This way, LeaseWeb enables companies around the world to create and continue their online presence in a simple and affordable manner. Since its founding in 1997, hosting provider LeaseWeb has expanded its network to include more than 22,000 servers. LeaseWeb’s clients include Royal Joh. Ensched OGD, 123Video, Jaap.nl, Relatieplanet, MijnAlbum, Starbucks, Hyves, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Twenga, Direct Wonen, Heineken, Wikipedia, and Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.

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

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Dedicated Web Hosting Provider, LeaseWeb, Releases Extensive Support Upgrade

Louisville, Kentucky - (The Hosting News) - September 24, 2009 - Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and a provider of Windows-based hosting and managed IT services, MaximumASP, will soon release a new shared windows hosting platform.

According to the company, MaxESP will be the first highly available completely PCI compliant (web + data) Microsoft ASP.NET shared web hosting platform. The MaxESP core focus is to cater to all aspects of the application life cycle. Customers can quickly upgrade the standard plan and make their application load balanced and more robust with 1 mouse click. Introductory accounts will be available in October free of charge for 30 days and just $49 a month after the trial period.

Besides the usual features of a hosting solution like email, SQL databases, SAN-supported storage, free backups, etc., the MaxESP elastic shared platform adds an SSL VPN service free of charge, PCI compliance at a shared price point, and on-demand application-aware load balancing and simultaneous application instances without forcing customers to rewrite their code.

As a leading Windows-based hosting provider, MaximumASP keeps up with the latest developments in Microsoft technologies while continually seeking customer feedback.

Matt Griffin, product manager at MaxESP explained, ”Windows Server 2008 R2, Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.5, and Application Request Routing, which is an IIS extension, offers tremendous benefits to both our company and our customers in our new shared hosting platform.”

MaxESP is a highly scalable, cost-effective hosting solution that makes it easier for customers to manage their applications. In a shared-hosting architecture, multiple customers use the same physical server. These environments have traditionally been difficult to manage as they grow to include thousands of customers and applications, the MaxESP solution makes it easier for MaximumASP to support a rapidly expanding customer base.

With both its current offerings and MaxESP, MaximumASP simplified the administration of shared hosting for its IT staff. Dominic Foster, CTO of MaximumASP added, ”With Application Request Routing on top of Windows Server 2008 R2, we’ve created a rock-solid platform that’s scalable to any level and takes care of all the headaches normally associated with shared hosting.”

John Zanni, general manager of the Worldwide Software plus Services Industry in the Microsoft Communications Sector at Microsoft Corp. offered, ”With Application Request Routing from Microsoft, hosting providers can offer elastic scalability, optimized resource utilization and reduced management costs to their customers in a simple process. MaximumASP, as our Hosting Solutions Partner of the Year, continues to innovate and demonstrate in-depth knowledge of Microsoft technologies with its MaxESP platform.”

Additionally, MaximumASP takes advantage of the ability of ARR to manage multiple server farms and to manage and monitor all configuration settings through easy-to-use tools including IIS Remote Management.

Mr. Griffin added, ”ARR sits on top of a common, or shared, configuration system provided by IIS, which makes it very easy for us to develop custom modules or apply custom provisioning that plugs into the rest of our IT pipeline. We can use this to support billing, track customers, scale up or down, or add capacity for on-demand products that we want to roll out.”

MaximumASP can quickly provision highly available and scalable server farms and expand customers’ self-service options. Multiple layers of load balancing, enterprise SAN storage and redundant server farms will support high-performance requirements. The result will be better service for hosting customers and savings of up to U.S. $166,000 a year for MaximumASP in labor and hardware costs.

Mr. Foster continued, ”We are very excited about MaxESP as well as the IIS 7.5 architecture and anxious for more customer feedback on how it simplifies management of hosted sites and Web applications. MaximumASP continues to lead the hosting industry by giving our customers a competitive edge and enabling them to be first-to-market with new solutions.”

Created in IIS 7.5 and Windows Server 2008 R2 MaxESP has many exciting new features:

• Easily create and control your applications in IIS 7.5 using IIS Remote Management
• Highly available shared hosting with application aware load balancing
• Need more power? No problem. Add instances of your application to seamlessly scale capacity
• Decrease the number of nodes when not operating at peak times - or allocate to other website(s)
• Customizable scalability right at your fingertips

MaximumASP, based in Louisville, Kentucky, was founded in 2000 as an outsourcing firm for Windows-based hosting services. MaximumASP was named by Microsoft as its 2009 Hosting Solutions Partner of the Year. The company currently hosts more than 50,000 domains for customers in over 120 countries. With a strong focus on hosting solutions that combine advanced monitoring and management tools, MaximumASP has become a top choice for Microsoft developers seeking a robust hosting platform for mission-critical web applications.

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

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Web Hosting Provider, MaximumASP, Develops New Windows Shared Hosting Platform