Aug 8, 2003 : The webhost industry: week review

📅 August 8, 2003 - This week's Web hosting news was something of a mixed bag, with companies announcing significant successes and failures, new appointments and a range of new products and services.
Some of the week's most significant developments came in the form of major successes and failures at some of the companies operating in and around the Web hosting business.
On Tuesday, it was reported that one of the founders of HavenCo, the offshore hosting facility located in the Principality of Sealand, says the company is failing as a result of political, technical and management problems. According to Ryan Lackey, former chief technology officer of the colocation facility located on a man-made platform in the English Channel, many of the company's partners have become uneasy about hosting objectionable material. When the report was published, Lackey had said only six customers remained. Representatives of Sealand claimed that HavenCo was a viable operation, and that Lackey was not in a position to understand how the company operated.
While HavenCo was reported to be struggling, other companies announced growth. Digital River announced on Thursday that it had acquired Registration Network, a provider of e-commerce services for try-before-you-buy software vendors. The company said the acquisition would expand its client base, software library and distribution network. In addition to the acquisition, the company said it had created two new executive sales positions, appointing Robert H. McNinch as vice president of sales and marketing for Europe, Middle East and Africa and Gregg Wilkes as vice president of channel sales.
On Wednesday, dedicated server company ServePath announced an appointment of its own, naming Janet Cornell to the position of customer service manager. An Internet veteran with 18 years experience in support operations, Cornell most recently worked as director of support operations for AboveNet and Telegis Networks.
Most common among the significant headlines this week were new product and service announcements, some coming from Web hosting companies themselves, others from the companies providing products and services that support them.
On Tuesday, domain registration firm GoDaddy Inc. announced that it had introduced new enhanced features and reduced pricing for its Turbo Charged Web hosting plans. The new features include a 300 percent increase in disk space, a data transfer speed enhancement of 200 percent and the tripling of email capacity. Prices for the hosting have been reduced by 34 percent, and now range from $3.95 per month for the Junior plan to $9.95 per month for the Deluxe with ASP plan.
On Wednesday, Pogo Linux Inc. and MySQL AB announced that they had launched the DataWare 2600 Server, a MySQL database appliance that combines Linux software with MySQL's open source database. The companies say the DataWare 2600 server provides an open source option for developing systems with critical throughput and performance needs, such as Web hosting and financial institution systems.
Also on Wednesday, Opsware Inc. announced that it will include new "Data Center Intelligence" software with its Opsware System 4.0 in September, giving companies additional visibility into IT usage and productivity. The company says the improved visibility will allow enterprises to improve resource allocation and technology and make more informed labor expenditure decisions.
On Thursday, hosting company dotCanada.com announced that it had introduced Sitecreator.ca, an online Web site building tool. Sitecreator.ca is free, says the company, and includes hundreds of design templates, customizable designs, HTML output, a form page creator and a Paypal e-commerce cart creator. The Sitecreator solution also comes with all the regular dotCanada.com features, including 12GB of bandwidth, 250MB of storage, 250 POP email accounts, Web-based email, 50 mySQL databases and Frontpage 2000/2002 compatibility.
The greatest similarity between all of this week's most significant announcements was their diversity. Even among a sizeable collection of new products and services, we witnessed a great deal of variety. While there was no great common trend in Web hosting this week, there are certainly a number of ongoing themes we can expect to take hold in the weeks to come.