Online Tech announced on Wednesday it has increased its data center operations staff by 33 percent, as well as added new partner certifications to its operations team in 2011.

The company has not disclose the actual number of employees it has added this year, but it says in a press release that its "staff operations now consists of Microsoft, VMware, Dell and Cisco certified professionals".

Since the beginning of the year, Online Tech has received Microsoft Certified IT Professional, Cisco Certified Network Professional, VMware Certified Professional, and Dell Equallogic SAN certifications.

In April, the company achieved SSAE 16 Type II certification for its Michigan data centers.

In addition to expanding the knowledge base of its operations team, Online Tech has added additional IT professionals to strengthen its around-the-clock support.

"As our client’s needs have shifted to greater expectations of uptime and hands-on managed services, we have adjusted our staffing model accordingly," said Mike Klein, president of Online Tech. "We are continually looking for ways to drive our ticket response time down closer and closer to zero."

Klein said that Online Tech’s private cloud and managed cloud hosting services have allowed the company to grow by more than 39 percent in 2011.

The company says it has been able to reinvest this growth in its support team.

Source : Boy Hosting, Online Tech

ReliableSite announced on Tuesday that it has partnered with SmarterTools, IT management software developer to bundle software for its Web hosting customers.

According to the press release, ReliableSite will provide productivity software from SmarterTools to its hosting customers at no extra costs. The product bundles SmarterMail, SmarterTrack and SmarterStats.

“Our partnership with SmarterTools enables us to offer an ‘all-in-one’ Windows package that includes SmarterTools and WebSitePanel, without passing on any additional licensing costs to our customers. That continues to provide our company with a competitive advantage, and our customers benefit tremendously,” Radic Davydov, chief executive officer of ReliableSite said in a statement.

SmarterTools has partnered with hosting providers in the past for the same type of package. Last year, SmarterTools announced three different partnerships with companies in the Web hosting business including KickAssVPS.com, AccuWebHosting.com and ServerTastic.

SmarterMail is a Microsoft Exchange alternative for businesses, according to the press release. It complies with SOX, HIPAA and other regulatroy requirements.

SmarterTrack enables businesses to track, manage and report on customer service and communications, including sales and support issues. The help desk application is ideal for companies with multiple locations or mobile workers.

SmarterStats provides website statistics for businesses to help increase conversions and maximize ROI, according to the press release.

Source : Boy Hosting, ReliableSite, SmarterTools

Oracle announced on Wednesday it will acquire storage solutions provider Pillar Data Systems. The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Expected to close in July, the acquisition will help Oracle deliver a complete line of storage products that runs the company’s software faster and more efficiently.

Based in San Jose, Pillar Data Systems is a privately-held company that serves nearly 600 customers across 24 countries.

The company’s storage technology is particularly well-suited for hosting providers, as it provides highly scalable SAN Block I/O storage systems that offer high performance scaling characteristics.

Oracle president Mark Hurd and executive vice president of systems John Fowler will provide an Oracle Storage strategy update on Thursday.

"The acquisition of Pillar Data Systems provides Oracle with a compelling SAN storage architecture that complements our core strengths," said Fowler. "Customers can optimize the value of their Oracle applications, database, middleware and operating system software by running on Oracle’s storage solutions."

Pillar Data Systems is majority owned by Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. The evaluation and negotiation of the deal was led by an independent committee of Oracle’s board of directors.

The acquisition is structured as a 100 percent earn-out with no up-front payment. Oracle does not expect that the amount of the earn-out or its potential impact will impact Oracle’s results of operations or financial position.

Earlier this year, Oracle launched its Oracle Cloud File System to enable storage pooling through an elastic storage cloud.

Source : Boy Hosting, Oracle, Pillar Data Systems

Hexagrid Computing announced on Thursday it has partnered with Pourprio to build 13 public clouds on the VxDatacenter platform as a foundation for an integrated Europe, Middle East, and Africa cloud network.

Pourprio is a regionally focused enterprise cloud computing services advisor and provider.  

The firm is currently in talks with telecom providers to launch 13 public clouds in 12 EMEA countries over the next year, establishing the region’s first true cloud network.

Using Hexagrid’s VxDatacenter platform, Pourprio offers service providers turnkey cloud solutions, including public, private and hybrid clouds, that cater to the needs of diverse market segments.

"The Pourprio-Hexagrid union strategically delivers integrated cloud solutions through a distributed network covering the entire EMEA region," says Suresh Mandava, CEO and founder of Hexagrid Computing. "We are excited to support Pourprio in the development and deployment of their unique cloud service offerings. From IT agility to energy efficiency and interconnectivity, the Pourprio-Hexagrid combination promises to accelerate business expansion by addressing the rapid growth of ICT demand in the region."

According to a recent study, Internet users in the EMEA are estimated to increase by 2.5 billion users by 2015.

This rapid broadband expansion is driving the need for new, local infrastructure to support the extension and introduction of new services throughout the region. 

The Pourprio-Hexagrid partnership will support local service providers with an opportunity to enhance their current product portfolios and shorten their time-to-market for IT solutions.  

Additionally, backing up localized clouds in a centralized safe zone, such as Pourprio’s Tier 4 data center in France, enables efficient disaster recovery and business continuity.

Hexagrid and Pourprio are attending Tier1 Research’s Hosting and Cloud Transformation Summit in London this week to unveil this strategic partnership.

Source : Boy Hosting, Hexagrid Computing, Pourprio, VxDatacenter platform, Hosting and Cloud Transformation Summit

Data center operators The Benaroya Company, Real Property Investors and O’Keefe companies announced on Tuesday they have formed a new partnership to acquire, develop and operate data centers.

The move comes just a few weeks after Benaroya Company acquired from HP a 60,252 square foot data center in Boise, Idaho.

The three companies have been partners on many different commercial projects over the past 25 years.

These projects have included the acquisition and development of data centers, high tech business parks, office buildings, industrial parks and shopping centers.

All three companies have taken on an increased focus on data centers in recent years to meet the growth in demand for data center space.

The US market is filled with a large number of traditional production facilities which are ideal for adaptive reuse as data centers.

The new partnership should better position the companies to compete against current market leaders like Digital Realty Trust and Dupont Fabros Technology.

"This isn’t just about consumer cloud computing," said Tom T. O’Keefe, principal of O’Keefe companies. "There is a tremendous and rapidly increasing need for secure data center space for social media, business and financial, medical, legal and municipal requirements. Computers may be getting smaller but images and multimedia files continue to grow in size. Also, more efficient ‘green’ data center facilities are an absolute requirement for many users while they evaluate their future data center needs."

Source : Boy Hosting, Benarova Company

Security firm Symantec announced on Tuesday that it has released its intelligence report for June 2011, combining for the first time research from its Symantec.cloud MessageLabs Intelligence Report and the Symantec State of Spam and Phishing. The report finds that spam is at its lowest level since November 2008.

According to the report, spam accounted for nearly 73 percent of email in June and more than 75 percent of this spam was sent by botnets. The global ratio of spam in email traffic decreased by 3 percent since May 2011.

“Despite the decrease in botnet spam this month, they should still be considered a dangerous force on the Internet. Cybercriminals continue to use botnets to conduct distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS), carry out fraudulent click-thrus on unsuspecting websites for financial gain, host illegal Web site content on infected computers, harvest personal data from infected users and install spyware to track victims’ activities online,” Paul Wood, senior intelligence analyst, Symantec.cloud said in a statement.

Symantec says that spam relating to pharmaceutical products accounted for 40 percent of all spam in June. The report finds adult spam continues to grow.

“Spam remains a huge problem and spam levels continue to be unpredictable. Following the disruption of Rustock in March, approximately 36.9 billion spam emails were in circulation each day during April. This number rose to 41.7 billion in May, before falling back to 39.2 billion in June," May added. "During the same period last year, spam accounted for 121.5 billion emails in global circulation each day, equivalent to 89.3 percent of email traffic in June 2010. Over a twelve month period, a drop of 68.7 percent in volume resulted in a fall of only 16.4 percentage points in the overall global spam rate."

According to the report, a new spam tactic being used by pharmaceutical firms is using the prefix "Wiki" to promote fake pharmaceutical products.

Saudi Arabia was the most spammed country, according to Symantec, with a spam rate of 82 percent. In the US, 74 percent of email was spam. 72 percent of email in Canada was spam.

Phishing levels in the US were 1 in 1,270 and virus levels for email-borne malware were 1 in 805.

The public sector was the most targeted by phishing activity in June, with 1 in 84 emails containing a phishing attack.

Source : Boy Hosting, Report from Symantec

Microsoft announced on Tuesday it has officially launched Microsoft Office 365, teaming up with several hosting providers to deliver the cloud service in 40 markets. The new service brings together Microsoft Office, Microsoft SharePoint Online, Microsoft Exchange Online and Microsoft Lync Online in an always-up-to-date cloud service, at a predictable monthly subscription.

The service was introduced in beta last year, and in a few months, attracted more than 200,000 organizations registered users.

Businesses using Office 365 are already reporting impressive results and reducing IT costs by up to an estimated 50 percent while boosting productivity.

Microsoft says it is building a "massive partner ecosystem" around Office 365, including systems integrators, software vendors, resellers and other partners.

While some hosting providers may be concerned with how they will compete against Microsoft’s new cloud service, many have chosen to view the new service as an opportunity to increase its market reach by partering with the company.

More than 20 service providers around the world have partnered with Microsoft by introducing plans to offer Office 365 to their customers this year.

These companies, which include Bell Canada, Intuit, NTT Communications, Telefonica, Telstra and Vodafone Group, will package Office 365 with their own services to deliver the new offerings to millions of small and midsize businesses globally.

"Great collaboration is critical to business growth, and because it’s so important, we believe the best collaboration technology should be available to everyone," said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. "With a few clicks, Office 365 levels the playing field, giving small and midsize businesses powerful collaboration tools that have given big businesses an edge for years."

Office 365 is available in a wide range of service plans designed to meet the needs of businesses of all sizes.

Users can access a centralized interface for instant messaging and virtual meetings, working on files and documents at the same time and sharing ideas.

With Office 365, applications like Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, OneNote and Outlook connect to Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint and Lync to deliver a solution for communication and collaboration.

Many industry analysts believe Microsoft Office 365 will challenge Google’s suite of online productivity tools.

Source : Boy Hosting, Microsoft, Microsoft Office 365

Amazon Web Services announced on Tuesday via its blog it has expanded content delivery service Amazon CloudFront and DNS service Route 53 edge with new locations in Stockholm, Sweden. The edge location marks the company’s 19th worldwide and its sixth in Europe.

Launched in November 2008, Amazon CloudFront is a web service for content deliver that integrates with other AWS to enable developers and businesses to distribute content to end users with low latency, high data transfer speeds, and no commitments.

The service delivers static and streaming content using a global network of edge locations, which automatically routes requests to the nearest edge location for optimized performance.

Amazon Route 53, which launched in December, is a highly available and scalable DNS web service that is designed to give developers and businesses a reliable and cost effective way to route end users to Internet applications by translating URL names into the numeric IP addresses that computers use to connect to each other.

Users will not be required to do anything to their applications, as requests are routed worldwide based on latency so CloudFront will automatically route requests to this location when appropriate.

Therefore, any requests coming from the Scandinavian Peninsula and parts of Eastern Europe are likely to end up at these locations.

Users will have access to the full range of CloudFront features including Management Console support, private content, live streaming with Adobe Flash Media Server, HTTPS support, request logging, custom origins, and invalidation.

The blog post also mentions that Amazon CloudFront team and Amazon Route 53 team are currently hiring.

Source : Boy Hosting, Amazon Web Service, Amazon Web Service Blog, Amazon CloudFront, Amazon Route 53

Managed network security solutions provider StillSecure announced on Tuesday that it has launched its StillSecure Penetration Testing Service for companies to protect their networks that StillSecure’s penetration testing is conducted by its team of analysts within its 24x7x365 security operations centers.

"The StillSecure Penetration Testing Service brings a critical additional layer of security to a company’s vulnerability scanning practice," James Brown, chief technology officer at StillSecure said in a statement. "By discovering security flaws in an organization’s network before hackers do, businesses can proactively address vulnerabilities and adapt to a changing threat environment."

StillSecure says its service complements vulnerability scanning by simulating a hacker’s approach to accessing a network. The service shows vulnerability points and pathways where a hacker can breach the network.

The service includes external penetration testing of IPv4 and IPv6 exploits and remote, local and client exploits.

The penetration testing service can be purchased through StillSecure directly or through its channel partners. It can be purchased individually or with other security solutions like PCI Complete, according to the company.

StillSecure launched its cloud security services platform last month.

Source : Boy Hosting, StillSecure

Web hosting provider Alentus announced on Tuesday it has partnered with NovaStor to offer customers cloud backup platform that the backup platform features 30 times faster data transfers for customers.

The business-class cloud storage and cloud backup service solution, SecureStor, will enable customers to protect and restore important cloud-stored data in an efficient and reliable process.

Alentus will work with customers for the continuous improvement and update of these services, assuring users  that their data is safely stored and backed up.

The backup service starts at $14.95 per month and varies depending on data storage size requirements.

SecureStor helps businesses of all sizes with its online storage and cloud backup needs.

"We are pleased to team up with NovaStor to offer SecureStor, our online storage and backup service that ensures safe and reliable data storage and protection for our customers," said William King, CEO of Alentus. "Through impressive innovation including the fastest cloud backup platform technology to date, the new solution makes data transfer time during cloud backup 30 times faster than the previous version. We believe SecureStor will further enhance our service offerings to our diverse global customer base. In addition, this service is hosted in a separate data center from our standard hosting datacenter as we had requests from many existing customers for such an ‘off-site’ data location for disaster recovery purposes. About 80 customers have already implemented this prior to this public launch."

Alentus provides Windows hosting, SharePoint Hosting, SQL hosting, and Microsoft Exchange hosting services to thousands of small- to medium-sized companies and customized services for larger organizations.

Source : Boy Hosting, Alentus, Novastor