Aug 31, 2001 : Public Web Hosts - Last Week in Review

📅 August 31, 2001 - The tech-heavy Nasdaq spent pretty much the entire week in negative territory, although investors went on a little bit of a buying spree Friday afternoon, ensuring gains on the last day of the trading week.
The index picked up 13.76, or 0.77%, to end the week at 1805.44.
There was also some good news out of the Web hosting sector today, as managed solutions provider Worldport Communications announced two new partnerships designed to expand its service offerings to customers.
The company, which trades on the OTC Bulletin Board, said Friday it would form an alliance with Internet development company Spin Solutions to offer clients advanced Web content management tools.
The company also said that technical solutions company Paragon Group would offer Worldport's services and infrastructure to its clients.
Shares in Worldport rose four cents to 80 in mid-afternoon trading Friday.
Thursday turned out to be a big day for the world of Web hosting after two tech giants said they are planning to team up to offer Web hosting services.
Telecom firm Sprint Corp. and computer manufacturer Dell said they would forge an alliance to offer Web hosting services to the SME (Small to Medium Enterprise) market.
While specific details were not released, the companies said they expected the agreement to generate "hundreds of millions of dollars in sales between the two companies over the next seven years."
An interesting twist was revealed Friday, however, when The Wall Street Journal reported that Dell was planning to leave the hosting business altogether, selling DellHost's customer base and technology assets to Sprint.
In return, Sprint will base its hosting offerings on the Dell hardware platform.
A Dell spokesperson also told the paper the company would sell its minority stake in Web hosting firm Interliant, which provides DellHost with most of its hosting solutions. The Journal also said Sprint would hire less than 100 employees from Dell's North American Web hosting operations.
Financial terms of the deal were not released.
Canadian hosting firm NetNation communications created a bit of a buzz Wednesday when it was announced that the company had been named one of Canada's "Hottest Startups" by Profit, a magazine for Canadian entrepreneurs.
The magazine ranked NetNation among Canada's "Hottest Startups" based on revenue growth over two years: fiscal 2000 over fiscal 1998.
Still, shares in the firm have tumbled as of late, and were trading at $1.65 in mid-afternoon trading Friday, up five cents.
Managed services provider Loudcloud also made headlines Wednesday after revealing its quarterly earnings. The company, which is led by former Netscape honcho Mark Andreessen, maintained its lowered guidance.
Andreessen said the company's stock was bottoming, and things were definitely looking better for Loudcloud. "There are clear indications that Loudcloud's business is strengthening," he said.
Investors seemed to agree, and pushed the stock up 6 percent to $2.52 in trading Friday afternoon.
The high-end hosting market got a little more crowded Tuesday when mega-portal Yahoo! announced it was expanding its roster of Web hosting services to include two Web hosting services offering advanced site building and storage features.
The new services will be offered as part of the company's GeoCities community, which it purchased in 1999. The new services will allow users to upgrade their free accounts with additional storage capacity and data transfer for a monthly fee.
And finally, server specialists Sun Microsystems said Monday it has nearly doubled the overall performance of its popular rack-optimized Netra X1 thin server. The good news for hosting companies is that the company also said it would retain the same price of US$995 for the machine.
Despite a number of companies saying recently they can see the light at the end of the tunnel, the Nasdaq seems to keep slipping further and further below the 2,000 level. Hopefully markets will get a bit of good news next week to help give them a boost.