Jul 16, 2004 : The webhost industry: week review

📅 July 16, 2004 - While activity in the Web hosting industry was scarcer this week than usual, and lacked any one dominant theme, the week's biggest stories were no less significant, and a set of smaller themes offered variety, from acquisitions to product launches and some remarkable promotional efforts.
On Tuesday, hosting firm Superb Internet announced that it had acquired the Web hosting division of dedicated server specialist Cove Software Systems. The deal, said Superb, added more than 150 MB/S of traffic to the company's network, and more than 200 client servers to its data center. Superb said it would move all of Cove's dedicated servers from their facility in Annapolis, Maryland to Superb's Virginia-based data center.
Also on Tuesday, Internet portal Yahoo! announced that it had acquired Web-based email service provider OddPost, which offers a service featuring an interface similar to desktop applications like Microsoft Outlook for a price of $30 per year. The acquisition takes place amid a building war in the business of Web-based email, as the launch of Google's 1GB Gmail service was followed quickly by increases in storage allotments by Yahoo! and Microsoft's Hotmail. OddPost said its email service would continue to operate without interruption, and that the company was working on building additions to Yahoo! mail.
Along with the acquisition news came the announcement of several new product advances from SWsoft, maker of some of the most popular software in the Web hosting space.
On Tuesday, the company announced that it had released version 2.6 of its Virtuozzo server virtualization software. The new version, says the company, includes more than 50 new features, and is capable of creating thousands of virtual private servers on a single box. The new features include a control panel for VPS IP, reboot working "out of the box," support for Sendfile over VZFS, Vzlist utility and name-based hosting support. The software is compatible with both 32-bit and 64-bit Unix or Linux platforms. Windows and Solaris versions are expected later this year.
On Thursday, Swsoft announced that it had released the full production version of its Plesk 7 Reloaded software, just a few weeks after the beta version debuted in June. Plesk 7 Reloaded, says the company, includes 50 new features, many of them developed in response to customer feedback. New features include antivirus by Dr. Web, browser-based install and a new user interface, as well as a built-in migration manager, designed to simplify the process of migrating to Plesk 7 Reloaded from other software platforms.
And, while most of the week's biggest stories were of acquisitions or product launches, some of the week's most interesting news stories dealt with some unusual marketing efforts made by Web hosting company.
On Wednesday, hosting firm FortuneCity announced plans to promote its online photo album service MyPhotoAlbum through a partnership with New York City street performer the Naked Cowboy. MyPhotoAlbum, says FortuneCity, will help to develop the "Official Online Photo Album of The Naked Cowboy," promoting the service by having the Naked Cowboy take pictures with visitors and place the photos in his online photo album at MyPhotoAlbum.
And on Thursday, it was reported that Web hosting firm C I Host, known for its high profile efforts at promotion had sent winning customer Steven Ellum of Harlingen, Texas to the Major League Baseball All-Star game in Houston, Texas, which took place on Tuesday. Ellum won the trip, valued at $8,000, after signing up for a basic Windows 2003 shared hosting plan.
While it wasn't necessarily a busy week for news in the Web hosting industry, it was still a week of significant news, with some notable acquisitions and product launches, and it was an interesting week too, thanks to a ballgame and a naked cowboy.