Nov 5, 2004 : The webhost industry: week review

📅 November 5, 2004 - Given our relationship with the news, those of us covering the Web hosting industry have access to a certain perspective that enables us to pick up on not just the trends that are taking place from week to week, but also some of the things that are, specifically, not happening.
In some cases, the lack of activity in certain departments represents a departure from what ordinarily seems like the normal course of business in the hosting industry. This week's news, for instance includes a return of a degree of hiring and acquisition news that has been conspicuously absent from the hosting news in the last few weeks.
On Monday, hosting automation provider Ensim announced that it had named Shay Mowlem its vice president of marketing and alliances, making him responsible for building the company's brand and driving its product and alliance strategies. Before joining Ensim, Mowlem was vice president of product management and product marketing at Portal Software.
On Tuesday, domain name registrar Register.com announced that co-founder and former chairman and CEO Richard D. Forman had decided to resign from the company's board of directors. Following his resignation, said Register.com, the company would reduce the size of its board to eight directors. Forman had been a member of the company's board since its inception in 1994, and served as its chairman from May 1999 to September 2002. He has also served as both president and CEO of the company.
And on Thursday, outsourced IT service provider Infocrossing announced that Robert B. Wallach, a vice chairman and director, would re-assume the role of president and chief operating officer, replacing the resigning Patrick A. Dolan. Wallach held both positions up until April of this year, when Dolan was appointed.
Along with the news of several appointments this week came more nuts-and-bolts hosting news in the area of acquisitions, as several companies announced important purchases.
Reports published Monday said that telecommunications carrier AT&T had sold a data center located at 9701 S. John Parkway in Orlando, Florida to investor Jeffrey Burges, president of Burges Property Co. of San Diego. Burges reportedly paid $10.5 million for the 130,863 square-foot facility, which was sold as part of AT&T's efforts at restructuring. Burges reportedly plans to market the facility as an information-processing complex, and is seeking to buy other facilities.
On Tuesday, Internet service provider Internet America announced that it had acquired the assets of Houston, Texas-based ISP My Linux ISP. Internet America said the acquisition, the company's third in 60 days, would give it access to My Linux ISP's base of 1,500 residential and corporate customers. As part of the deal, My Linux ISP's founder Brian Walters was appointed director of operations for Houston at Internet America.
And on Friday, data center and managed service provider Peak 10 announced that it had acquired hosting provider Xodiax, based in Lousville, Kentucky. Peak 10 says the acquisition expands its geographic footprint, giving it a total of five enterprise-class data centers in key markets.
Along with the strong return of certain fundamental elements of the news, this week saw the announcement, by several hosting software providers, of new versions and feature upgrades.
On Wednesday, hosting automation software developer Positive Software announced that it had released version 2.0 of its dedicated server management solution CP+. According to Positive Software, CP+ version 2.0 introduces a simplified and streamlined user interface, separate mail end user and FTP end user control panels, bandwidth monitoring and a range of smaller additions.
And on Thursday, back-end automation software provider Rodopi announced that it had upgraded its modules designed to integrate Rodopi tools with the Ensim Pro 4.0 hosting automation software platform. Rodopi says the updated integration modules allow administrators and resellers to bundle service plans, provide integrated bandwidth management, automatically suspend delinquent accounts ad re-activate accounts once payments have been made.
After several weeks in which the Web hosting news was dominated by some very specific, and very unusual, trends, this week's news was something of a return to hosting as usual. And, while there weren't a whole lot of surprises, surprising news isn't necessarily what a business is looking for from its industry.