Sep 17, 2004 : The webhost industry: week review

📅 September 17, 2004 - While disastrous weather has been among the biggest news stories in North and South America for the last few weeks, the Web hosting industry's news, at least in those same areas, has been no exception, as hosting companies battened down the hatches and reported successes in battling the storms.
Late last week, Web hosting provider Verio announced that it was implementing emergency preparedness and business continuity planning in preparation for the approaching Hurricane Ivan. The company said it had made similar preparations for Hurricane Frances, and added that it had suffered no outages to data center service or performance degradations as a result. Verio said its data centers, including one in Boca Raton, Florida, would be monitored around the clock as part of the effort. The Florida building, according to Verio, is housed in a building designed to withstand extreme weather conditions like hurricanes.
And on Wednesday, data center operator Peak 10 networks announce that it had prepared a disaster recovery planning seminar, featuring Agility Recovery Solutions' Marylaine Canavan, as a part of its ongoing educational seminar series, for the week of September 20, 2004, in each of the company's four data centers. "In light of recent events," said Peak 10 co-founder David Jones, referring to the weather, "we feel it's very time;y and appropriate to bring a thought leader like Marylaine Canavan in to speak on disaster recovery and business continuity."
Of course, while the weather led to some unusual Web hosing this news, there was also plenty of significant Web hosting news of a somewhat more ordinary variety. In particular there were several significant acquisitions made this week, along with several data center launches.
On Thursday, Web hosting provider Web.com announced that its CEO Will Pemble had acquired the company from its parent Web Services Co. The company said the transfer of ownership was amicable. Pemble has run Web.com since becoming the company's chief executive officer in 1999, and says the company plans to introduce new reseller and affiliate referral programs, as well as expand its domain registration service.
Also on Thursday, Web hosting provider WebXess announced that it had acquired shared hosting and e-commerce hosting accounts from VeriCenter company AppSite Hosting, as well as certain assets of Sprint's Dellhost, which VeriCenter acquired earlier this year. The customers acquired fit with the shared Web hosting specialization of WebXess. VeriCenter is reportedly getting out of the space to concentrate on its dedicated managed hosting services.
Along with the acquisitions, this week's news included announcements from several hosting companies that introduced new data center facilities.
On Wednesday, software firm AlphaZeta Inc. announced that it had launched a data center facility designed to house applications, enterprise-level Web sites and Web-based applications. The company also announced a partnership program intended to help design, communications and technology firm provide secure hosting facilities to their clients. The data center is located within the Equinix IBX facilities at the Lakeside Technology Center colocation facility.
Also on Wednesday, managed hosting provider Siteserver Hosting Inc announced that it had opened its newly constructed data center in Simi Valley, California. The company says the facility was built from the ground up, to exact specifications tailored around mission-critical applications. Siteserver says the new data center is connected through SBC, Sprint, AT&T and other Tier 1 providers. The company plans to begin providing tours of the site beginning in the fourth quarter of 2004.
While the last few weeks have seen most of the attention of Web hosts in the affected areas preparing for approaching weather, the industry elsewhere continued as normal, producing some very significant news unrelated to the storms.