Dec 12, 2008 : The webhost industry: week review

📅 December 12, 2008 - As far as picking the "big news" goes, this week made it easy. Parallels announced the new major release of its control panel software, along with the accompanying billing solution. And as far as trends go, there was a long list of "green" hosting announcements this week.


On Tuesday, Parallels announced that it had officially released Parallels Plesk Panel version 9, following several months of open beta. The product was introduced officially to partners and resellers back in November, but has since been released for sale universally.

The new version includes a list of about five major new features, which was discussed in detail during an interview with service provider product marketing manager Ravi Pimplaskar, which we conducted for a feature on the new software. The major features include enhanced integration with the APS Application Vault, a new reseller login level, a new theme meant to resemble the Windows Vista OS and tight integration with the company's billing application.

On Friday, the company announced that it had introduced version 6 of its Parallels Plesk Billing application, to coincide with the new control panel version, and further support the tight integration between the two applications. The control panel and billing software, according to Pimplaskar, will be available as a software bundle.

Along with the big news from Parallels, this week's big trend was the long list of green hosting announcements. In particular, Monday saw four different companies issue announcements around green hosting initiatives.

First, security system developer Sourcefire announced that green hosting poster child AISO.net had chosen its Sourcefire 3D System to defend customers against security threats. According to the company, the product is especially well-equipped to defend AISO's virtualized systems, which are key to the energy efficiency efforts at a green hosting company.

UK hosting provider Nativespace said Monday that it had launched a new website, and an accompanying green program. The company says its green program will see it working with carbon offset provider Carbon Offsets to produce an offering called Nativeneutral, an upgrade from its previous green program.

Storage and data solutions provider NetApp announced that it would be receiving a rebate of $1.4 million from California power utility Pacific Gas & Electric, under its voluntary power conservation program. The rebate was awarded specifically for efforts made by the company in the design of its new engineering facility in Sunnyvale. NetApp says it was the biggest rebate ever awarded by the program.

In a not-so-hosting-specific announcement, auto maker Honda said it had invested $25 million in its Longmont, Colarado data center, bringing the facility into compliance with the standards for "silver" certification in the Leadership in Environment and Environmental Design program. LEED-certified data centers are still a relative rarity, even in the hosting business.

Later in the week, we reported that UK data center developer e-shelter had received approval for its plan to build an 829,000 square-foot campus-style data center near London. The data center, the largest purpose-built data center in the country, will be the first to achieve "gold" certification according to the LEED standard, says the company.

While the green news will undoubtedly continue to come in, the biggest immediate impact from this week's news is likely to be the influx of announcements from software companies reporting tweaks to their applications, making them compatible with the new version of the most widely-used control panel in the hosting business. We'll probably cover those all at once, so look for some kind of round-up type article next week.