December 3, 2008 – (HOSTSEARCH.COM) – Despite the move into the holiday season, November was still a very lively month for web hosting. Some research results released in November indicated the strength of the business by suggesting that 80% of new web hosting resellers turn a profit within a year, although whether that those figures will carry weight through the global economic downturn as it worsens is anyone's guess. Still, November was a more relaxing month with less of that loathsome spam collecting in people's in boxes. An investigation by the Washington Post lead to the closure of a single web host global spam levels dropping drastically worldwide. Perhaps the Washington Post can do the world a favor and keep the journalist who worked on this story on the case! I will pay his salary! Of course the really big news in November was Yahoo! looking for a new CEO after Jerry Yang stepping down. Exactly what the company's new boss will do with Yahoo!'s web hosting business, we will just have to wait and see. Also good to see web hosts getting involved in things - Go Daddy sponsored a "Walk to Cure Diabetes" in November, while The Planet announced sponsorship of two key events in Texas, USA.
Perhaps it was me, but November seemed to be a mega month for mergers, acquisitions and people winning contracts. Big River Telephone acquired ATPRS.net, ResellerClub took over EstDomains Inc's business, Look sold its web hosting business, Sitestar bought DONOBi’s customers and assets,
and UK2 Group acquired WestHost.com. In addition, Tucows announced it would sell its stake in Afilias, and Hosted Solutions said it would provide hosting and managed services for Belk.com. Also in November, masses of partnerships to be seen and contracts won. Education and career transitions site ConnectEDU selected web host NaviSite, Attenda joined the Microsoft BizSpark Program as a Network Partner, French hosting and data center solutions provider Ikoula and R1Soft partnered on backups, Mountain Media and eCommerce Merchants announced a strategic partnership, CrystalTech partnered with PayPal, and it was announced that DediPower would provide managed hosting services for JancisRobinson.com. In addition, CapitalSouth Partners, LLC invested $2M in Hosting.com, UK domain registration and web host LCN partnered with Fotolia to offer free stock photograph credits, eLINIA signed a British Telecom reseller agreement, AptHost.com partnered with TheVisionWorld.com and Alentus joined the London Internet Exchange.
Besides Jerry Yang, there were a few people on the move in November, in particular, Jay Everall who joined Valcato Hosting as Managing Director. It was also good to note that the green revolution was marching on in November. Macquarie Telecom cut energy consumption at its data center by 10% while SiteGround offered low-cost green servers. In addition, a number of web hosts won awards in November. The founder of UK web host Memset received an entrepreneur award, DataPipe was announced one of New Jersey's fastest growing companies, Macquarie Hosting data center achieved payment card industry data security standard accreditation, The Planet was listed in the Fast Tech 50 and its CEO won an Enterprise Champion award, and 1&1 Internet was voted best hosting company. Showing that hosting is going from strength to strength, there were also lots of expansions and people moving into new premises in November. The Planet opened its Dallas Data Center expansion, Site Ox opened its Nashville Data Center, 1&1 announced it would move into a former nuclear fuel facility (???), Limestone Networks opened a new Dallas Data Center, and C I Host announced a new Texas Datacenter facility scheduled to open in 2009. November also showed that Cloud computing is here to stay. Amazon Web Services announced the public beta of Amazon CloudFront, The Planet offered a storage Cloud, and, curiously, Salesforce.com moved into the Cloud computing arena.
Of course, given the economic climate, and the time of year, November saw plenty of promotions.Globat.com gave holiday bonuses to web hosting affiliates, Host Color announced a 25% instant rebate for Thanksgiving Day, Rshosting announced a 50% discount on reseller and VPS solutions for Thanksgiving 2008, The Planet announced November server promotions, and later on in the month, The Planet also offered private and virtual rack promotions. In addition, web hosts tried to keep ahead of the curve by offering new products. ZipServers.com launched Washington DC-based VPS, SSA Host added semi-dedicated servers to its product line, iNFRENION.com offered UK-based VPS servers, Brinkster released a web-based file manager beta, HostMySite offered managed services, and The Planet added the new high-performance Xeon server to its portfolio. In addition, Webeden.co.uk launched free email for Webeden domain names, 3FN offered a new DDOS protection solution, AT&T added ecommerce to its hosting services, and AYKsolutions introduced Virtual Private Servers for businesses. Beyond that, AllureHost launched a new semi-dedicated hosting solution, Host Color released a domain ID shield product, SeekDotNet.com announced ASP.NET 3.5 hosting, Aspiration Hosting launched magento one-click-installer, and SingleHop offered Atom servers.
Rather than bringing in new products and services, many hosts stayed competitive by enhancing their offerings in November. Business hosting provider LeaseWeb doubled bandwidth to 500 Gbps, 34SP.com enhanced reseller hosting plans, SeekDotNet.com added DotNetNuke 4.9.0 to hosting plans, Peak 10 expanded its backup services, InfoRelay added R1Soft to hosting packages, and Cirrus Tech VPS hosting plans updated to Virtuozzo 4. In addition, NetPivotal doubled disk space, ReliableSite offered free daily incremental data backups, and ServerPoint continued to bolster its network with the addition of a Time Warner backbone.
If all this happened in November despite the credit crunch, surely we can be optimistic about December? |
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