SingleHop is a cloud hosting company that provides highly scalable, on-demand infrastructure services to both end-users and resellers. It has three US data centers, two in its native Chicago and one in Phoenix and has more than 4,500 clients in more than 114 countries. SingleHop announced that starting from May 1^st; it will expand its operations to Europe with the opening of its New Amsterdam data center. To build its 2,000 server Amsterdam-1 data center the company partnered with Interxion. The new facility will support SingleHop to meet growing demand for dedicated and cloud infrastructure services from value-added resellers, hosting providers and SMBs around the world.

“It’s intended primarily for our partners,” SingleHop CEO and co-founder Zak Boca says in a phone interview with the WHIR. “All of our services are going to be offered at the Amsterdam location which we plan to market through our hosting partners and channel partners, which account for 40 percent of our business.” SingleHop’s server capacity will be expanded by around 20 percent with the new facility, while widening its global footprint to reach high-growth markets in Europe and the surrounding areas.

Amsterdam is the perfect location for a data center, as it is well-connected, is home to skilled workforce and has a significant number of quality network providers and data centers in the area. “We looked at a variety of locations in Europe,” Boca says. “Amsterdam seemed like a good amount of bandwidth, IT providers, and availability. Interxion really stood out [as a data center partner]. They’re a strong partner versus just a vendor relationship. We’re going to actively gain co-marketing. They’ve been very helpful. London was a good location for financial services, but the majority of data centers were full. We found more managed service providers and channel partner opportunities in Amsterdam.”

Jelastic, Java and PHP cloud hosting platform provider announced that it has partnered with innofield, a web hosting provider to launch Beta 1.9 service in Switzerland in an effort to expand its reach to another global market. Without any lock-in or code adaptation, the standards based platform can run any Java or PHP application. The Jelastic PaaS runs Java and PHP applications and it is specifically designed for hosting providers to deploy and provide to customers. Jelastic can vertically scale automatically as RAM or CPU needs change and horizontal scaling and other configurations are accomplished with just a few clicks.

“Switzerland is a very special market known for quality of service and security,” said Jelastic COO Dmitry Sotnikov. “This is why we have seen multiple requests for Jelastic hosting out of Switzerland from both Swiss and international customers. We are happy that Jelastic is now available from one of the most innovative and technical hosting companies in the country – innofield. Our vision is quite simple: Make it easy to host Java and PHP applications from the cloud, with no lock-in, and with availability from multiple hosting companies around the world. Jelastic is all about empowering developers and making hosting easy, and now it is available in Switzerland.”

“As Platform-as-a-Service is the next big thing for the cloud market, and we truly believe in it, we have been looking for a long time for a solution like Jelastic,” said Reto Giezendanner, co-founder of innofield. “Jelastic fits perfectly into our concept. It´s the simplest-to-use PaaS out there, and because it’s so intuitive, our customers are able to set up their cloud environments in minutes. Based on our long-term brand policy, we have named our new PaaS service ‘Flow App Engine powered by Jelastic’.”

Advanced Internet Technologies is specialized in Internet based products and services, a privately held North Carolina based firm and one of the largest web hosting firms in the world. The company announced that it has deployed a new pricing model for dedicated servers to drive value for their customers and force competitors to alter their current offerings. “With our new Model-T Dedicated Servers, customers can configure their own dedicated servers and pay industry standard prices for only six months before the pricing is reduced to a low monthly service fee that is 50-60% of the original price,” said Byron Briggs, Senior Manager and son of Clarence Briggs, Founder of AIT.

AIT’s Model T Dedicated servers are the first affordable, high end dedicated server offering that are available to all classes of customers and it has redesigned its entire production environment to provide the best web hosting solutions. According to the press release, the Model T is the prototype for a new web hosting paradigm complete with a new provisioning system that enables best practices, interoperability with robust infrastructure. With this new “Model T” server customers can customize within minutes and can build their production environment immediately.

 “We are excited and want to get the word out,” said David Green, head of AIT’s marketing. “There is absolutely no reason why customers would go anywhere else when they look at our servers, network and technical specifications combined with the new pricing model and great customer service. By reducing the monthly bill by 50-60%, customers can save thousands. We have compared our configurations with some stop competitors, and with AIT, individuals and businesses can save anywhere from $3,000 to $12,000 or more over the course of two years by switching to AIT.” Said Green.

Data Center 2.0 technology provider IO announced that it has been awarded a contract by Encore Capital Group, Inc, one of Fortune’s “100 Fastest Growing Companies” and a leader in debt management and recovery solutions. Encore will get IO’s Data Center as a Service (DCaaS) that leverages IO’ proprietary technology – IO.Anywhere, the first-ever standard unit of data center product integrated with the IO.OS operating system. With this next-generation Data Center 2.0 cloud enabled approach provides Encore a secure, cost-effective data center with a maintainable, fully redundant solution, without any investment for deploying and maintaining its own data center.

“We’re confident that IO and their Data Center 2.0 technology is the best fit for our growing organization. At Encore, we believe IT plays an integral role in business success. In addition to meeting our strict policies on security, compliance and availability, we’re now able to leverage our data center as a strategic asset,” said Carl Eberling, Senior Vice President, Information Technology and Chief Information Officer at Encore Capital Group, Inc. “As we grow, IO delivers us greater economies of scale and offers us reliability, security and the flexibility to expand capacity as we need it.”

 “The nature of Encore’s operations made security, availability and performance essential factors in their rigorous selection process,” said Rick Crutchley, Senior Vice President of Global DCaaS Sales for IO. “The DCaaS approach at IO.Phoenix supplies Encore with enterprise-grade data center infrastructure that is cost effective and allows their team to concentrate on their customers and business initiatives.”IO provides highly secure, 24×7, enterprise-class data center at an affordable price of a traditional, facility based data center.

CommScope is the premier provider of data center infrastructure management has announced that it acquired iTRACS Corporation, a global leader in open, enterprise-class data center infrastructure management (DCIM). The acquisition transaction has been completed Monday and terms are not being disclosed. iTRACS is a leading global innovator in open physical infrastructure management with a track record of 25 years for supporting enterprises to enhance operational efficiency, maximize capacity utilization, reduce costs and optimize the business value of their infrastructure investments.

With this acquisition CommScope will strengthen its position in infrastructure management that allows it to offer one of the most comprehensive and automated infrastructure management platforms. Now it will offer customers with an industry-leading, best of breed infrastructure management portfolio to help them in many ways. According to the press release, iTRACS’ open-systems alliances and partnerships are vital for the future and the company intends to honor and build on those relationships to provide customers with the most comprehensive DCIM solution on the market.

“Together with iTRACS, we can provide business enterprises around the world with the broadest and best possible solutions for designing, managing, monitoring and planning data center infrastructure,” said Kevin St. Cyr, senior vice president of Enterprise Solutions, CommScope. “iTRACS Converged Physical Infrastructure Management will build upon CommScope’s imVision solution to position us with a platform that we believe will bring to our customers best-in-class network and power infrastructure documentation and asset management. This open architecture platform, coupled with a 3D visual modeling that is second to none in the DCIM market segment, provides a complete visual representation of the entire physical ecosystem, including energy consumption, thermal conditions, network connectivity, power connectivity, and can incorporate additional statistics like server performance and storage capacity.”

Webhosting UK Com (WHUK) provides a range of web hosting services including Linux/Windows shared hosting, reseller hosting, cloud hosting, virtual private servers (VPS), semi-dedicated servers, dedicated servers, SSL and offsite backup solutions. The company has announced the launch of its new Channel Partner Program in order to assist the businesses to develop new product and revenue streams to reinforce their positions in this competitive industry. Their channel partner program is customized to various market vertical partners such as IT Value Added Resellers, technology service providers, web designers, web developers and other IT professionals.

Webhosting UK provides many options that includes on-demand provisioning, sales/technical support and discounts for partners, all these services offered without any monthly revenue commitment from the partners. The main motive of the program is to help WHUK’s present and prospective partners to improve their businesses with the most advanced and comprehensive suite of web hosting services. WHUK has more than 25000 customers and 7000 affiliates which makes the company one of the reputed web hosting providers in the UK and it specialized in providing domain registration, shared hosting, reseller, VPS cloud, dedicated and other services based on Linux and Windows platforms.

“WHUK has always been offering highly professional and reliable web hosting services at very affordable prices,” said Ross Taylor, WHUKs Channel Partner Manager. “We have been and will always be striving to offer the best-in-class customer service combined with speed across our service offerings, from instant setup, fast connections and website loads, to prompt customer support. The Channel Partner Program not only gives our partners a reliable hosting environment, but also provides seamless support on our product range, to our partners and their clients.” “We continue to develop these programs to maximize the benefits to our partners,” she further added.

Virtual Internet offering managed IT services and specialized in managed infrastructure such as managed VMWare cloud hosting, managed dedicated servers, server colocation and more. They announced on Friday that it has launched colocation services at its Central London data center that utilizes some of the most sophisticated and modern cooling technology available on the market today. With this technology, the datacentre can be able to maintain PUE as low as 1.06 which will reduce cooling costs and carbon footprint by maximum of 90% as well as ensures servers are maintained and protected effectively.

Normally, PUE of datacenters will be around 2.0 which mean that half of the energy they consume is utilized to cool servers and equipment. But using a top of the range cooling system enables energy usage to be dramatically slashed resulting in an energy efficient service in order to support any company’s environmental policy. The major benefits of the new colocation service includes, save money on power, easy access whenever you required, maximum uptime, high security, safe from fire, fully populated rack potential, redundant power systems for added resilience.

“Our new high-spec colocation solution in central London is very exciting, as we continue to expand our data center footprint and the demand for high-quality, energy efficient colocation solutions are greater than ever,” Patrick McCarthy, managing director at Virtual Internet said. “Not only is it amazingly convenient for clients in London, and it’s now the most energy efficient data center in the UK with an incredibly low PUE of 1.06. Not to mention our great value introductory offer, starting at $376.81 a month for a quarter rack. We expect an exceptionally strong take-up of this solution.”

Web hosting services provider VexxHost announced its launch of Cloud Sites service that is powered by cPanel in order to provide the best cloud performance and reliability in the hosting industry. Cloud Sites provides highly redundant, ultra-fast and instantly scalable cloud hosting with the state-of-the-art cloud platform and valuable features.

“Cloud Sites combines the power and reliability of cloud hosting with the convenience of a managed service,” says Mohammed Naser, CEO at VexxHost. “Customers can sign up for an affordable Cloud Sites plan to maximize website performance. Our optimized platform then has an immediate, measurable impact on page loading and application processing times. Meanwhile, our expert team takes care of server configuration and management, allowing customers to focus on their businesses, instead of working with their hosting plan. This is the first time technology like this has been available as part of a web hosting plan.”

The new Cloud Sites service of VexxHost will run individual accounts in isolated virtual containers and it offers allocated hardware resources including RAM, CPU and disk space to improve the performance of the websites and applications. The entire infrastructure is built for better performance and their optimized web servers can handle up to 20 times more connections than standard servers.

“We have optimized every part of our infrastructure to create the best cloud hosting solution,” says Naser. “In addition, Cloud Sites include powerful software and applications to help our customers find success. We also bundle Cloud Sites with CloudFlare Railgun, which increases website performance, valued at over $200 a month and free to Cloud Sites customers. Cloud Sites customers also receive more than 200 web applications, an automated script installer, and $200 in marketing credits. By choosing Cloud Sites, customers get an optimized, feature-packed service that runs on the best infrastructure in the business.”

Jelastic is the next generation Java and PHP cloud hosting platform that can run and scale ANY Java or PHP application without code changes, announced on March 04, 2013 that its US web hosting partner, ServInt, has updated to Jelastic v1.9. According to a Facebook post by Jelastic CEO Ruslan Synytsky, the “signficant” update has been introduced at ServInt, along with a “revolutionary pricing model which was designed exactly for production applications and for big scaling.” The developers can host production apps at a “fair price” because Jelastic provides discounts for reserved resources and for the volume of usage.

In the press release of Jelastic, it describes the updated pricing system as hybrid pricing, a combination of two pricing types when two cloudlet limits can be made at the same time. In addition to that, Jelastic v1.9 new features including FTP support, TomEE and MariaDB 10 support, caching in NGINX, and PBA integration.

“The first limitation is a reserved amount of resources. The payment for reserved cloudlets does not depend on the amount of actually consumed resources. It depends on the first stated cloudlet limit. That means that you are going to pay for the stated amount of cloudlets each hour even if the environment consumes less,” Jelastic says. “The second limitation is a dynamic amount of resources. That means that the first limit can be outsteped for the environment to be able to consume more resources but all extra cloudlets are going to be charged due to another tariff. At the same time instances are scaled automatically up and down, so you only pay for what is actually consumed over reserved amount.”

IceWEB manufactures the best, high performance unified data storage appliances with enterprise storage management capabilities, announced that it has acquired Computers and Tele-Comm., Inc. (“CTC”), a technology company, headquartered in Kansas City, MO., and it owns and operates a full service, uniquely expandable datacenter, a wireless Internet Service Provider and a carrier-neutral Network Access Point (NAP), which is a unique and strategically valuable asset. With the acquisition of CTC, IceWEB can be able to provide a broad range of functions for customers seeking full or hybrid cloud solutions with unlimited capacity and expandability. The acquisition also includes CTC’s expert staff, defensible technology and infrastructure capacity.

“This acquisition positions IceWEB as a complete cloud services company,” said Rob Howe, CEO. “We will now be able to aggressively compete in the cloud computing space, which is estimated by Forrester Research to reach $55 Billion in 2014. We have firmly established ourselves in the storage market and the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) file-sharing space. This acquisition adds a major set of additional critical components, capabilities and extensions to those solutions, beginning with our own fully secure, powerful, and expandable datacenter,” Rob Howe, IceWEB CEO said.

Howe added, “It is important for our customers and shareholders to fully comprehend the unique physical assets of CTC. The carrier-neutral NAP is not only a rare, highly-sophisticated technology, but it also represents a significant competitive advantage in that it enables the datacenter to provide customers with the lowest transmission latency possible. That means their data moves faster, saving critically important time. With this acquisition, we are also gaining the ability to expand the datacenter on-demand into an astounding one million or more square feet of highly secure, energy efficient, disaster-proof space in a purpose-built structure housed in an underground limestone cavern. These capabilities, security and expandability are success-critical in the cloud services arena, and now IceWEB has them.