(The Hosting News) – Liveclicker recently announced the release of the e-commerce industry’s first HTML5 interactive e-commerce video player. The Liveclicker HTML5 player enables advanced interactive video shopping in HTML5 compatible web browsers and mobile devices such as the Apple iPhone and upcoming Apple iPad.

“HTML5 is an emerging standard for web video with potential to gain significant market share over the coming years,” says Justin Foster, VP Market Development for Liveclicker. By developing the industry’s first HTML5 video shopping experience while still fully supporting Adobe’s Flash video standard, Liveclicker becomes the only video platform on the market capable of helping e-commerce sites future-proof their businesses against uncertain technological developments.

Peter Leech, CMO at web retailer Onlineshoes.com, concurs. “By partnering with Liveclicker, we are now confident in our ability to support web video on platforms like the iPhone and upcoming iPad, neither of which support Flash.”

Onlineshoes.com is among the Liveclicker clients benefiting from the new interactive HTML5 player technology. Costco Wholesale, Bed Bath & Beyond, eBags, OnlineShoes.com, Crate & Barrel, and drugstore.com are among the sites deploying Liveclicker’s HTML5 video player without having made any changes to existing site infrastructure or writing new custom code.

“Liveclicker is committed to remaining at the forefront of e-commerce video optimization, customizable interactive video shopping experiences, and intelligent e-commerce video distribution,” says Foster. “This innovation is only the latest in a series of industry firsts brought to market by Liveclicker. We are looking forward to a strong 2010 and thank our clients for their overwhelming support to date.”

(The Hosting News) – Search Engine Strategies (SES) New York 2010 will allow public relations professionals, journalists and marketers to receive much valuable information and many networking opportunities. SES New Yorks will be held at the New York Hilton, March 22- 26. With the transition to online PR, SES New York programming staff will be featuring a plethora of sessions designed to introduce attendees to the state of public relations in 2010 and beyond.

SES New York, the industry’s largest search engine marketing (SEM) conference, will attract more than 5,000 marketers who come to learn about the latest trends and issues and see the newest search products. The conference offers presentations, panels and networking events for marketing professionals working in mainstream marketing and the search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) arenas. Marketers can register for the conference at a pre-show discounted rate through March 22.

“Recent feedback on our conference programming reflects that PR people are looking to the search community for guidance on how to deal with the new world that combines SEO and public relations,” said Matt McGowan, Publisher and Head of U.S. for Incisive Media. “So we decided to feature sessions and speakers tailor made for the PR industry. In addition, the keynote speaker on the first day of SES New York is David Meerman Scott, who wrote the most currently definitive book on the new rules of PR.”

The sessions geared toward the PR community include:
Social Media Checklist takes place Wednesday, March 24 at 10:30am and contains a discussion of what comes after the easy part of entering the social media world (i.e. setting up a Twitter/Facebook/YouTube account). The panel reviews the practical issues you should consider when developing your brand’s social strategy.

News Search Optimization takes place on Wednesday, March 24 at 2:15pm and covers how to make use of press releases to tap into the power of news search. The session contains a discussion of how news search engines offer a great way to target traffic during a public relations campaign.

Real Time SEO: No More Yesterday’s News takes place on Wednesday, March 24 at 5:00pm and focuses on specific aspects of SEO for large media companies. Attendees will learn about the future of video SEO and the tools that media companies utilize to help them rank highly for breaking news keywords, as well as to capitalize on social media opportunities within news content.

Social Media 101 takes place on Thursday, March 25 at 10:30am and is about how social media has become a major piece of the search marketing puzzle. It is designed to guide you through the “complex landscape” of social media and how it can best relate to your brand or web property, as well as leverage your brand using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr and more.

The Business Value of Social Media takes place on Thursday, March 25 at 12:45pm and contains a discussion of how social media and micro-blogging platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are transforming your business, your customers, your colleagues and your partners in revolutionary ways. The session will look at the economic potential of social media, and how to tackle an ROI strategy and move past outdated business models.

Social & The Marketing Mix takes place Thursday, March 25 at 2:15pm and will feature speakers who have seen first hand the meteoric rise in exposure of social media. Attendees will learn how to make their presence felt in the social media world by designing a campaign that resonates throughout their entire marketing strategy.

Search, PR, and the Social Butterfly takes place Thursday, March 25 at 4:00pm and contains a discussion of the demise of “traditional” media outlets and the rise of search and social, and notes how PR firms have now muscled their way into territory once ruled by advertising agencies.

About SES
Incisive Media’s Search Engine Strategies is a leading global conference and training series focused on search engine marketing. Other Incisive resources for interactive marketers include ClickZ.com for digital marketing news, information, commentary, advice, opinion and research and Search Engine Watch which provides news and information about search, analysis of the search engine industry and tools for improving search marketing effectiveness.

Incisive Media is a leading global provider of specialized business news and information, in print, in person and online. The company’s principal markets include financial services, legal services, commercial real estate, marketing services and risk management. Incisive Media’s market-leading brands include Accountancy Age, Computing, Investment Week, Legal Week, Post, Risk, and Search Engine Strategies. For more information, visit incisivemedia.com.

For more news and event updates visit the SES blog at: http://blog.searchenginestrategies.com/

(The Hosting News) – Digital photo firm Fotobounce announces the addition of its newest partner, 1&1 Internet Inc. Fotobounce’s  program has been  developed by Applied Recognition, Inc. and utilized patent-pending face recognition technology to help users quickly find and organize photos, create albums and share the results with friends and family.

As a Fotobounce partner, 1&1 Internet Inc. will be able to provide its customers with a complimentary version of this sophisticated, yet simple-to-use photo management software tool. This free custom version of Fotobounce is an excellent value for 1&1 customers, saving them the $49 US regular license fee and is another example of the many ways 1&1 provides valuable resources to its customers.

What makes Fotobounce superior to other photo organization tools is its use of advanced face detection and face recognition technology to accurately and quickly tag photos with the names of friends and family members. Tags are keywords used to describe a piece of data — be it a web page, documents, or in this case, digital photos. Once tagged, photos of specific individuals can be located almost instantly. Another advantage is that Fotobounce runs locally on the user’s computer, delivering faster performance and a more enjoyable experience. Because the program resides locally, users also maintain total privacy of their photos without having to upload them to a remote website.

Says Applied Recognition’s President Ray Ganong, “The growth of digital photography and the sharing of these images via social networks such as Facebook is phenomenal. Over 1 billion digital cameras create an astounding number of new images each year. 1&1 customers represent a significant percentage of this market. By partnering with Fotobounce, 1&1 is now able to provide its customers with a tool that makes organizing and sharing their photos even easier and less time consuming.”

(The Hosting News) – Open-Xchange has recently  announced  new enhancements that give users telephone and fax integrated with e-mail, contacts, calendar and task information.

These upgrades have been achieved by combining Open-Xchange (hosted and on-premise editions) with Unified Communications and Virtual PBX solutions, businesses can replace their traditional phone lines — saving on phone bills. Presence and instant messaging services will be added in the coming software releases enabling users to communicate in real-time anytime, anywhere.

Open-Xchange 4PSA VoipNow Bundle — available for both Open-Xchange Server and Open-Xchange Hosting Edition — is the result of a partnership between Open-Xchange and 4PSA, an innovative software supplier specialized in Unified Communications, VoIP delivery solutions, business and operations automation. The companies plan to add instant messaging services and “presence” — the capability for users to see the current status of other phone extensions (much like a multi-line phone) – in the next release of the Open-Xchange user interface.

In addition, the new release of Open-Xchange enhances the user interface with design and usability improvements, and provides new features including:

• Calendar subscription for the Google calendar
• Optimized calendar invitation and confirmation
• Usability improvements of calendar, tasks and permissions

“The combination of our business-class e-mail and collaboration with IP-based telephony, fax and other services provides users unmatched ease of use for their day-to-day communications,” said Rafael Laguna, CEO, Open-Xchange. “Enhancements to the user interface and the addition of Google Calendar integration provide users with a very competitive open-source alternative.”

“Open-Xchange and 4PSA deliver innovative technologies to SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) providers and on-premise customers,” said Bogdan Carstoiu, CEO of 4PSA. “We started the integration by addressing the most common business tasks like starting and receiving phone calls or sending and receiving faxes through the Open-Xchange user interface. And we have an ambitious roadmap to further simplify the customer experience.”

More information on the latest Open-Xchange update is available at www.open-xchange.com/en/ox_6_16_news.

Open-Xchange and 4PSA will be at WebhostingDay, March 17-18, 2010, in Cologne, Germany.

Open-Xchange is used by more than 15 million users worldwide as hosted and on-premise business-class e-mail and groupware. On-premise customers can update their installations immediately after the release. SaaS customers will receive the new features as soon as their provider updates their accounts.

World’s First Low-Latency Measurement Summit for Converged Data Centers to be hosted by Ixia

(The Hosting News) – IP solutions provider Ixia (NASDAQ: XXIA), stated today that over 25 enterprises, network equipment manufacturers, and service providers will be present at the world’s first Low-Latency Measurement Summit which is taking place today at its iSimCity facility in Santa Clara. The purpose of the Low-Latency Summit is to assist NEMs, data center planners, and enterprises that require low-latency communications create and deploy next generation converged data centers. Speakers will address the representatives of the firms in attendance on how latency affects the key issues and trends in data center technology, including cloud networking, bandwidth needs, design and scale, traffic patterning, and testing methodologies. Ixia will post videos of the summit to the iSimCity solution page next week.

“Low-latency devices are critical to the delivery of time-sensitive data flows, as in financial transactions,” said Douglas Gourlay, Vice President of Marketing for Arista Networks. “Low-latency testing, as performed at iSimCity, is crucial for data center equipment and network deployment.”

As data centers are used to deliver more real-time traffic, including voice, video, and time-critical data over a converged network infrastructure, testing to determine actual latency values becomes imperative. Ixia’s award-winning precision hardware and software test platform provides high-scaling, large traffic emulations that not only simulate city-sized traffic levels, but model real-world traffic patterns. Ixia provides the greatest testing methodology and hardware precision, with latency resolution down to 2.5 nanoseconds and support for 1, 10, 40, and 100 Gbps data rates.

“Next-generation converged data centers need highly granular and accurate measurements of end-to-end latency for superior design and high-confidence deployment,” said Atul Bhatnagar, president and CEO of Ixia. “Ixia’s breakthrough innovations in precision measurement technology, with full support for lossless Ethernet, priority flow control, and the ability to report network convergence times via new hardware features, enables us to demonstrate our data center testing solutions at this event.”

Ixia opened iSimCity, its executive briefing center and proof-of-concept lab in Santa Clara, California in 2008. iSimCity was designed from the ground up to serve multiple functions for customers and visitors. iSimCity serves as an executive briefing center, large-scale proof-of-concept lab, professional services venue, and a lab test environment.

For more information about Ixia’s low-latency summit, or iSimCity, see our solution page at www.ixiacom.com/solutions/isimcity/index.php.

(The Hosting News) — NetSuite Inc.(NYSE: N), has officially released information regarding it’s plans to develop its cloud computing enterprise resource planning (ERP) suite available in the Google Apps Marketplace, Google’s newly created online storefront for Google Apps™ products and services. NetSuite’s cloud-based ERP suite enables users to run their key back-office operations and financial business processes—including accounting, inventory and supply chain, order management and business intelligence—with a single, comprehensive SaaS application.

“NetSuite is committed to bringing the power of cloud computing to businesses, so integrating with Google Apps is a logical choice for us,” says Zach Nelson, CEO of NetSuite. “By adding NetSuite to the Google Apps Marketplace, we plan to make it extremely easy for Google Apps customers to get a powerful cloud computing ERP application that works seamlessly with their technology platforms.”

Google Apps customers integrating with the NetSuite business management software suite will get instant visibility into real-time financial, operational performance and documentation across their entire company securely from any browser-enabled devices. In addition, companies can reduce cost and increase productivity by enabling real-time collaboration on financial data across geographically dispersed teams.

“We are very excited to soon be offering NetSuite in the Google Apps Marketplace,” adds Scott McMullan, Google Apps Partner Lead for Google Enterprise. “Through the Google Apps Marketplace, software vendors like NetSuite are helping us build a rich ecosystem of integrated business apps that work seamlessly with Google Apps, allowing IT administrators to leverage the benefits of cloud computing and extend Google Apps to meet more of their business needs.”

The Google Apps Marketplace makes it easy for more than 2 million Google Apps customers to discover, purchase and deploy integrated business applications and related professional services. By integrating with user account and application data stored in Google Apps, these cloud applications provide a simpler user experience, increase business efficiency, and reduce administrative overhead. To learn more, visit http://google.com/appsmarketplace.

Google Apps brings simple, powerful communication and collaboration tools to organizations. With Google Apps, users can use applications such as Gmail™ webmail service, Google Talk™ instant messaging service, Google Calendar™ calendaring service, Google Docs™ program, Google Sites™ web application, and Google Video™ for business on their own domain to work together more effectively. Best of all, it’s all hosted by Google, so there’s no hardware or software to download, install or maintain.

Google, Google Apps Marketplace, Google Apps, Gmail, Google Talk, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Sites, and Google Video are trademarks of Google Inc

(The Hosting News) – Proceeding a rigorous and independently performed assessment it’s internal policies and procedures controls, Codero has completed its first SAS 70 review. The purpose of SAS 70 Type I certification is to analyze the current state of a service provider’s control environment and effectiveness in meeting control objectives. This structured, multi-step process focused on the following areas:

• Operations and control environment
• Monitoring and risk assessment
• Information systems and general computer controls
• Control of access to computer programs and security of data
• Control of new development and changes to existing programs and systems
• User responsibilities

SAS 70 – Statement on Auditing Standards (SAS) No. 70, Service Organizations – is a widely recognized auditing standard developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), which has been in place since 1992. A Type I service auditor’s report provides a description of controls at a specific point in time; a Type II report includes the service organization’s description of controls as well as detailed testing of its controls over a minimum six-month period.

“Completing SAS 70 Type I certification has been an important process for Codero to undertake,” stated Shawn Hashmi, Director, Operations at Codero. “In light of Sarbanes-Oxley and a growing number of state privacy laws and rulings, the audit allows us to be very transparent with customers in demonstrating that we utilize a sound system of internal controls.”

With this in-depth audit now concluded, Codero is pursuing SAS 70 Type II certification for its data center and corporate-wide operations, scheduled for completion by July 31, 2010.

Auditing services for the SAS 70 Type I report were provided by Mayer Hoffman McCann P.C. (MHM) through a strategic association with CBIZ. MHM is an independent public accounting firm specializing in high quality attest and accounting services, including audits, reviews and compilations. CBIZ, with offices in major cities throughout the country, is one of the nation’s leading providers of outsourced business services, providing accounting and tax services; employee benefits and insurance; as well as a wide range of consulting services.

See SAS 70 at Codero for details on the company’s recent SAS 70 Type I audit of control objectives and activities within its Phoenix data center and Overland Park, Kansas corporate headquarters.

(The Hosting News) – Spain based web hosting firm Arsys, has officially announced it is the recipient of  Parallel’s Rookie of the Year Award by Parallels, a worldwide leader in virtualization and automation software.

Faustino Jimenez, CEO of Arsys, collected the award during the Inaugural Partner Awards at the Parallels Summit 2010 in Miami, Florida that took place earlier this week. The conference brought together industry leaders from around the world to discuss trends in the hosting industry, such as cloud computing, cloud hosting and IAAS (Infrastructure as a Service).

The Parallels Rookie of the Year Award acknowledges Arsys’ significant growth in sales during the first year in the Partner Program. This is the first year Parallels recognizes this achievement. In 2009, Arsys introduced several technologies from the software company in different technology projects, such as its control panels, and new services such as Virtual Private Servers (VPS). During that same year, Arsys pioneered the development of a commercial cloud hosting platform in Spain.

“With this award we want to recognize the significant growth of Arsys over the past year. Its projects in virtualization and cloud computing are driving the hosting industry in Spain and represent a new generation of Internet services”, said Jack Zubarev, President of Parallels.

“We chose Parallels as our partner in these projects because it allows us to offer maximum reliability. The services are proof of our ongoing commitment to innovation, letting us continue to grow and deliver the highest quality to our more than 250,000 customers”, said Faustino Jiménez, CEO of Arsys.

In 2009, Arsys attained the Parallels Platinum Partner status, the highest commitment level of the Parallels Service Provider Partner Program.

(The Hosting News) – Managed hosting provider Carpathia Hosting,  stated this week  it has teamed up with Citrix® Systems, Inc. to launch the second generation of its enterprise cloud offering, Carpathia InstantOn™.  This new offering, powered by Citrix® XenServer™, InstantOn is the first cloud solution truly aimed at meeting the needs of enterprise computing for public clouds and private virtual datacenters, while delivering cloud solutions that are managed, flexible and scalable.

Carpathia InstantOn is easily-accessed and managed through Carpathia’s web-based E3 Portal™ and is powered by XenServer, the only enterprise-class, cloud-proven server virtualization platform.  Enterprises using Carpathia InstantOn can easily deploy custom compute and storage solutions, blending dedicated and cloud resources in a single solution.  Solutions are available in either multi-tenant or private clouds to meet the most stringent security and compliance requirements including government standard like FISMA and DIACAP, financial standards like PCI and healthcare standards like HIPAA.

“Delivering robust public and private cloud solutions for production-ready applications has been our focus from day one,” said Jon Greaves, CTO, Carpathia Hosting.  “With the announcement of our second generation cloud service built on Citrix XenServer, we are giving our customers additional flexibility, scale and management that further allows them to take advantage of both our enterprise cloud services as well as our traditional managed hosting services.”

Built to meet the needs of small, mid-size and large organizations with production-ready applications, the following cloud services are available with Carpathia InstantOn:

• Virtual networking. Networking solutions to support virtual compute and storage allowing InstantOn to be deployed in enterprise configurations taking advantage of solutions like Citrix® Netscaler® VPX™.

• Virtual Compute.  On-demand computing services for both simple virtual machines and complex topologies including connections to existing dedicated infrastructure in a secure manner.

• Virtual Storage. Object and block storage solutions designed to support enterprise compute requirements.  Storage can be shared between multiple virtual machines and dedicated servers with multiple copies of each object.

• Private Cloud or Private Virtual Datacenters. Virtual Compute and Storage solutions deployed in a private or reserved deployment.  Combines the advantages of cloud technology such as dynamic scaling and instant provisioning while being fully managed.

• Compliant Cloud.  Designed to meet government IT standards including FISMA and DIACAP.  Enhancements include RSA authentication, SSL VPN for management access and inter/intra virtual machine firewalling.

• Virtual Disaster Recovery. Replicated data ensures you have a current offsite copy of mission critical information at a fraction of the cost of traditional disaster recovery solutions.  Pay for cloud resources on-demand during DR testing and DR events.

Virtual Development & Test.  Virtual Compute, Storage and Networking solutions designed specifically for test labs for easy deployment and promotion into production at a dramatically lower price-point than deploying dedicated development and test lab environments.

Enterprises using Carpathia InstantOn can also easily deploy custom compute and storage solutions, blending dedicated and cloud resources in a single solution. InstantOn can be used in conjunction with Carpathia AlwaysOn™, a traditional managed dedicated hosting solution, to deliver the ultimate in flexibility.   Underlying all Carpathia InstantOn solutions is Carpathia Cloud Orchestration™.  Cloud Orchestration allows cloud and managed dedicated resources to scale seamlessly in a single solution allowing customers to select which applications and services fit best in the cloud and which should reside on dedicated infrastructure.

“We have been impressed with how Carpathia Hosting has approached building enterprise cloud solutions for public and private clouds, especially when it comes to access and payment models tailored for enterprises deploying production-ready applications,” said Simon Crosby, CTO, Datacenter and Cloud Division at Citrix Systems.  “The combination of Citrix Cloud Center (Citrix C3) and Carpathia’s unique Cloud Orchestration model has resulted in an enterprise cloud solution that is truly industry-leading.”

In addition to Carpathia InstantOn, the companies plan to team up on additional cloud offerings including virtual desktop as a service.  Carpathia Hosting and Citrix will host a live webcast on March 16 at 1:00pm EST to discuss private and public clouds for the enterprise as well as Carpathia Hosting’s second-generation InstantOn cloud service.  For more information and to register for the webcast, visit www.carpathiahosting.com/enterprisecloud.

(The Hosting News) – Linux based hosting provider PacificHost  announced it’s release of a new cPanel skin for its shared and premium hosting customers. In addition the company also announced the addition of a new auto-installer which permits it’s users to  automatically install a wide variety of new and supported scripts on its services.

cPanel is the most popular control panel used in hosting services today. Pacifichost just unveiled its new “PacificPanel” skin which hopes to bridge the gap between billing, support and managing a website. The new panel features a new twitter widget allowing clients to view the company’s twitter updates in their control panel. It also comes with a list of new icons allowing the customer to switch back and forth between their Client Portal, Support Center and cPanel account.

With the new skin came a few new custom icons, including the “Inode Distribution” and “Running Processes” icons. The Inode page allows customers to view the amount of Inodes or Files on their account. The Processes page allows clients to view processes running on their account and gives them the ability to “kill” any rogue processes that might be hanging.

“The hosting market is a very competitive market and will continue to expand as our reliance on hosting services continues to grow. Our new skin sets us a part from the competition and helps to establish our name in the hosting industry.” said Thomas Perry, the President and CEO of PacificHost.”

Earlier in the week, PacificHost replaced “Fantastico”, a well known script auto-installer in the industry with a new auto-installer known as “Softaculous”. The up and coming installer allows users to pick from over 130 scripts and advertises to be up to 2x faster than Fantastico. Additionally, Softaculous states they update scripts after releases much faster by taking only days to push out a software update.

“Even though Fantastico was free, I truly believe this increases the value of our hosting services and thus makes any cost completely worth it. This is only part of a long list of features we plan to implement as we go deeper in 2010.” said Mr. Perry.