Sep 26, 2003 : The webhost industry: week review

📅 September 26, 2003 - While this week was in some ways a very ordinary week in the Web hosting industry, with several companies announcing acquisitions, and several others launching new facilities, the turmoil stirred in the communications business by VeriSign's recently launched SiteFinder service led to an interesting dispute between the company and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
Late last Friday, ICANN posted a message to its Web site asking VeriSign to voluntarily suspend the new service, which it said was causing "widespread expressions of concern from the Internet community." The VeriSign service, launched September 15, sends users who type in domain names not associated with a Web site to a customized VeriSign page, containing suggested alternatives and paid-placement advertising links. ICANN called on VeriSign to voluntarily suspend the service until the reviews currently underway are complete.
On Monday, without taking the service offline, VeriSign issued a response to the ICANN request, saying that the Site Finder service had been tested rigorously, and was in compliance with all applicable technical standards. The company said Internet users were benefiting from the improvement in Web navigation provided by the new service. VeriSign also said it had scheduled meetings with ICANN chairman Vint Cerf and chairman of the organization's security and stability advisory committee, Steve Crocker, to discuss the issues raised by the matter. According to VeriSign, the Site Finder service was visited 65 million times from September 15 to September 22.
Along with the struggle brought on by the launch of Site Finder, there was a considerable amount of the kind of news more typical of the Web hosting industry as well this week. Particularly of note, and particularly common in the current climate of consolidation, were several announcements relating to acquisitions.
On Tuesday, anti virus software firm Symantec Corporation said it had signed an agreement to acquire PowerQuest Corporation, intending to combine that company's storage management and disaster recovery technologies with its own Active State Management enterprise solution. PowerQuest's storage management products and solutions, said Symantec, allow enterprises to build, manage and protect corporate data systems. No terms of the deal were disclosed, but Symantec said it expected the acquisition to close by the end of the year.
And, according to reports published on Thursday, the parent company of Australian Web hosting firm OzHosting.com signed an agreement this week to purchase the virtual hosting business of GlobalHost Pty Ltd., building its base of customers by 1,000. The Australian company GlobalHost is not associated with the American company with the same name. The dedicated server business and other assets of GlobalHost were acquired earlier this month by Hostway, which entered the Australian hosting market in April of this year.
In addition to the acquisitions, several hosting companies announced the introduction of new data center facilities this week.
On Wednesday, e-commerce service provider Digital River announced that it had opened a new European data center, intended to add to the scalability, availability and reliability of its e-commerce infrastructure. The company did not disclose the location of the new facility, but said that it had been integrated with Digital River's two existing US data centers and is being used to help manage online stores and other services for more than 34,000 clients. The European facility is also designed to improve service for the company's European customer base.
And on Thursday, HostMySite.com announced its plans to build a second data center facility at 350 Pencader Drive in Newark, Delaware. According to the company, the 12,000-square-foot facility is designed to meet worldwide demand for its shared and dedicated hosting services. The company says its revenues have grown 200 percent during the past year, and the new center is required to meet anticipated future demands. In October, the company will begin developing the new site, which is expected to have the capacity for several thousand servers.
In what would already have been a particularly active, if not particularly exciting, week in the Web hosting business, the struggle between VeriSign and the numerous organizations opposed to its new service added a particularly interesting element, and one that may not be resolved soon. In the weeks to come, the developments surrounding the company's controversial endeavor will certainly be worth watching, and will undoubtedly have a considerable impact on the Internet in general.