May 5, 2006 : The webhost industry: week review

📅 May 5, 2006 - Foremost among this week's most significant Web hosting developments was a series of acquisitions, most notably the purchase of domain registrar eNom for an undisclosed amount.

ENom, the third-largest domain registrar in the world, announced on Monday that it had been acquired by Demand Media, a new company led by Richard Rosenblatt, the former chairman of MySpace parent Intermix. Financial details of the deal were not released, but Demand Media is reportedly backed by $120 million in investment funding, and has acquired more than 150,000 domains. The company says it plans to expand eNom's current offerings by developing proprietary content tools and working in domain-based advertising.

On Friday, it was reported that data center operator Profitability.net had acquired Cincinnati-based CNSGroup and its subsidiary DataSuites, a provider of data center environments. Through the purchase, Profitability acquired an existing 11,000 square-foot data center, as well as 12,000 square feet of expansion space. Profitability says the facility will be used as a primary disaster recovery facility for clients.

It was also reported on Friday that legal and financial service provider Corporation Service Company had acquired the corporate services division of domain registrar Register.com from Vector Capital. The acquired business will operate under the name CWC Corporate Domains, and will continue to provide online brand protection for corporations with large domain portfolios. It also provides strategic consulting services and global domain registration, management and monitoring. This is the second acquisition by CSC of a global provider of corporate domain management services in the last six months.

Along with a rush of acquisitions, this week saw a significant amount of news from the increasing number of Web hosting related events and conferences scheduled for the coming year.

On Monday, colocation provider Telehouse announced that its free monthly Breakfast On Broadway seminar scheduled for May 18 would cover new business and connectivity advantages resulting form MSO and CLEC mergers. Along with telecommunications firm RCN, Telehouse will discuss the benefits produced by tier 2 carrier mergers, illustrating points with a combination of MSN, CLEC, CAP and ISP moves.

On Thursday, the World Organization of Webmasters announced that it will hold its Iron Chef of Information Security contest on the exhibit floor at the HostingCon 2006 Conference on July 18. The competition will challenge Web administrators and network security specialists to evaluate and fix security vulnerabilities in an Internet DMZ architecture. The event will enable attendees of the conference to see firsthand how security professionals perform their jobs.

And on Friday, theWHIR spoke to SWsoft's CEO Serguei Beloussov about the company's upcoming partner conference. The first of what the company intends to be a yearly event for customers of its Web hosting software tools. SWsoft intends for the event to provide customers with a chance to learn about its products that they may not have had the opportunity to use, and to provide feedback on and request features for the products they do use.

Most significant of all this week's announcements, of course, was the sale of eNom, one of the Internet's biggest domain registrars and, according to Netcraft, one of the largest Web hosts as well. There is no doubt that any new direction pursued by the company will have a significant impact on the hosting landscape.