Telecommunications provider AT&T (att.com) announced on Wednesday it has signed a new contract with managed business continuity provider AcXess (acxess.com).

AT&T will provide a fully-managed hosting environment for AcXess’s data center services. The physical hosting environment will eliminate single points of failure with multiple fiber entrances, multiple backup power feeds and uninterruptible power supply.

“We selected AT&T as our data center partner because our customers depend on us to provide superior performance and services, especially during emergency situations,” says AcXess’ president Tom Elowson. “AT&T’s facilities and network are unmatched, and we share a strong commitment to delivering the best solutions available in the market.”

Using automated tools, such as real time network routing and fast automatic restoration, AT&T’s disaster-recovery team can route communications traffic around an affected area during an emergency. This will provide AcXess with increased network reliability and security, enabling the company to seamlessly upgrade or integrate future communications services. (Read more ...)

Data center software provider Opsware (opsware.com) announced on Wednesday the company’s strategy for managing complex virtual server environments at the company’s annual user conference, OPSWorld, held this week in San Jose, California.

During an opening keynote Opsware CEO Ben Horowitz demonstrated solutions for automating the management of tough IT assignments from VoIP networks to configuration management databases and discussed the little understood challenges of managing virtual servers.

Opsware also unveiled the longer-term roadmap for automating the management of virtualized IT environments, which utilizes Opsware’s data center automation software. Using Opsware’s strategy, customers would be able to discover and map virtual environments, create virtual servers, track and manage physical and virtual relationships, manage across multiple virtualization platforms and automate the lifecycle of a large number of virtual servers.

“Virtualization has the potential to deliver tremendous cost savings, both from better hardware utilization as well as through the ability to standardize software stacks across heterogeneous environments,” says Tim Howes, CTO of Opsware. “However, you can only achieve these benefits, and avoid huge IT management nightmares, if you automate the management of virtualized environments. Opsware offers greater capability than anyone to do this today, and the roadmap we’re announcing will deliver comprehensive capabilities suitable for even the most complex global enterprises.”

Opsware recently announced it could provide customers with an integrated solution for data center (Read more ...)

Web hosting provider Host Color (hostcolor.com) announced on Thursday it has boosted its Multiple Web site hosting plan and smaller Web hosting packages with new services and increased space and bandwidth quotas.

Priced at $9.99 per month, Host Color’s Multi Domain Web hosting plan enables site owners to host 10 different Web sites, and now includes 50GB disc space and 1,000GB bandwidth. The hosting plan also offers advanced tools that enable anyone to run a network of popular Web sites and to run online business applications.

“Host Color is focused on offering software to ease the Web site businesses in their daily operations,” says Alexander Avramov, customer care manager of Host Color. “Besides Nextcolor, our industry leading Linux server management platform, and all the standard tools such as anti-spam, antivirus and shopping cart, we also offer SSL hosting, and [provide] bloggers, forum owners, advertisers and publishers with reliable solutions that boost their online businesses.”

The Web host says it plans to provide a business-on-demand platform that will enable its customers to pre-configure their Web hosting plans with various tools and programs for a flat monthly rate. Host Color also recently added RoundCube Web mail, a browser-based multilingual IMAP client with a friendly user interface, Web Calendar and Simple Viewr Flash gallery to its hosting services. (Read more ...)

E-commerce solution provider AmeriCommerce (americommerce.com) announced on Wednesday it has selected Internap’s (internap.com) Houston, Texas facility as the primary data center for its shopping cart software hosting services, positioning the company for future growth and the highest service quality possible.

Internap says its patented technology, which finds the fastest route from servers to Web site visitors for every page view, has provided AmeriCommerce online stores with increased performance and availability.

AmeriCommerce made the switch from the Data Foundry data center in Houston’s Galleria area to the Internap data center in downtown Houston to meet increasing expansion and service level requirements. The e-commerce solution provider plans to use Data Foundry’s Austin data center for a disaster recovery presence, providing automatic off-site backups of all databases and online store content.

“Internap was clearly the winner when it came to quality bandwidth, service, reliability and expansion potential,” says Stefan Barlow, IT director of AmeriCommerce. “Since the transition to the new facilities in early September, we have noticed a significant increase in speed across the board for our online store customers.” (Read more ...)

Private label Web solutions provider ResellerClub (resellerclub.com) announced on Wednesday it will accept pre-applications for the .mobi top-level domain for $29.99.

Domain name applications will be taken on a first come first served basis and duplicate applications for the same domain name will not be accepted. Upon successful registration, the domain names will be awarded to the applicant without any auction or any additional payments. ResellerClub says in case it is unable to register the domain name, the fees will be fully refunded.

“The mobile Web market is witnessing rapid growth, with over 1.5 billion mobile phones worldwide, and the WAP Usage in the US alone is expected to grow by a whopping 41 percent in 2008,” says Bhavin Turakhia, CEO of ResellerClub. “The launch of .mobi will not only boost the industry’s growth rate but will also give resellers and their customers a brand new revenue stream and an opportunity to work along mobile content as well as service providers and allied industries.”

The .mobi TLD will be available for pre-application to all resellers and their sub-resellers and customers until September 26, after which point ResellerClub will attempt to register the domains, as well as open the door for live registrations. ResellerClub says the move will enable resellers to augment their products and services and make a foray into the rapidly expanding mobile Internet industry. (Read more ...)