Mar 4, 2009 : AISO Unveils Eco Marketing Initiative

📅 March 4, 2009 - The first completely solar-powered web hosting company, AISO.net (aiso.net), has launched a new website, logo and brand identity with the announcement of its "Total Eco Web Server" initiative, symbolizing its commitment to having a complete environmentally friendly hosting ecosystem.

"This new look reflects the values that AISO.net has been known for in the business community, while also representing our new strategic direction for a complete environmentally-friendly hosting solution," AISO.net chief technology officer Phil Nail said in a statement. AISO.net offers Linux and Windows-based shared hosting as well as reseller and dedicated hosting. Its customers include the Discovery Channel and the Indianapolis Zoo.

Located in Romoland, California, where the annual precipitation is a minimal 13 inches and the sun is out over 70 percent of the year, AISO.net has been able to completely power its office and servers through on-site solar power, however, according to the company's Wednesday announcement, it has added water recycling and virtualization technologies to make its facilities even more environmentally sound.

For less than a month, AISO.net has been able to use recycled rain water to cool its data center, having added four 2,500 gallon water tanks behind the data center to harvest rain and nightly condensation. Special air units from Coolerado (coolerado.com) use this recycled rain water to cool the hot desert air down to 67 degrees using less than 600 watts of power.

Since being installed 20 days ago, AISO.net has already harvested 6,000 gallons of rainwater and the company has plans to add four more tanks to up its capacity to more than 20,000 gallons. The water collected will also be used for landscaping.

San Francisco advertising firm Thunk (thunkinc.com) helped AISO.net re-brand its image as an all-around green hosting provider.

"Solar web hosting is not a novelty, this is serious," Thunk founder James Tucker said in a statement. "There is no excuse for companies to use data centers and hosting providers that have old infrastructures and antiquated models with fancy websites that brag about buying energy credits.... I discovered this working on are-brand for a large data center company and was inspired to shift my clients, company and mission to use alternative energy for web hosting."

AISO.net also uses LED lighting, solar tubes, thin servers and green techniques to give the facility more capacity without having a large physical footprint housing hundreds of servers and cages. The dedicated servers offer high availability and are extremely scalable. All data resides on fiber drives and all data is backed up hourly. The servers utilize NetApp for the data storage and VMware to maximum server uptime. This same solution is used by 95 percent of all Fortune 500 companies.

Nail said that beyond just being environmentally friendly, AISO.net also offers service, reliability, uptime, and customer service, all the traditional demands of web hosting customers, however, he does believe that this new branding initiative will not only will attract new customers because of its niche, but it will also make expansion easier.

"The IT industry is not a glamorous world but we believe our way is how data should move through the Internet," Nail said. "It's logical and environmental, and that thinking has helped give us exposure. We are in a sweet spot right now because our infrastructure is built on solar panels so the more energy we can get out of 120 panels the easier it will be to scale - and we plan to scale. All it takes is another 120 panels and more efficient technologies and we keep staying ahead of the demands for data."