Apple launches “Field Trip to the Apple Store” program (- InftekHosting.Com - Hosted Kerio Email)

Apple launches “Field Trip to the Apple Store” program
Apple continues to come up with innovative ways to introduce younger generations to its family of products, the latest of which invites teachers to book a field trip to a local Apple retail store ahead of the holiday shopping season.

Rackspace Web Hosting Provider, Powers 2008 US Presidential Race Website

San Antonio, Texas - (The Hosting News) - October 8, 2008 - Clustered hosting provider, and Rackspace Hosting’s cloud division, Mosso, has been chosen to power a website in the 2008 US Presidential Race, to meet traffic spikes with its hosted computing application.

Operators of high traffic political websites have discovered how scalable, on-demand hosting provided by Mosso’s flagship offering, The Hosting Cloud, is well suited to support their sites and backend applications which are subject to unpredictable demand increases during the election season. Currently home to numerous election-oriented websites, including a presidential candidate and political national committee, Mosso also provides the hosted computing power for YouDecide2008.com, a bi-partisan website and blog supporting lively discussions and information about this year’s election, which experiences great spikes in demand.

In January 2008, information was posted about the presidential debates on YouDecide2008.com, resulting in an increase from 25,000 visitors to more than 300,000 in one day. When a shared hosting provider was not able to scale to support the spike and the site crashed, the site was migrated to Mosso’s The Hosting Cloud.

Nathan Ashworth, Founder of YouDecide2008.com noted, ”Since making the switch, Mosso has helped YouDecide2008.com stay up and running with usage numbers spiking more than 600 percent during pivotal points of this year’s election. They’ve given us the freedom to grow and not be punished by our own success. Additionally, their customer service has been phenomenal - it really feels like our business matters to them.”

YouDecide2008.com was created by political information junkie and IT industry professional Nathan Ashworth. Since 2006, he has been populating the site with commentary, speeches, surveys, video, general information and news from both the Republican and Democratic parties. YouDecide2008.com’s growth demanded a solution that would scale seamlessly without compromising speed or end-user experience in any way. Mosso’s The Hosting Cloud provides cost-effective clustered processing, load-balancing, and redundant storage specifically designed to support high performance sites subject to frequent and unexpected traffic surges.

Nathan’s sentiments are echoed in a recently published review by Bitsource, a blog that promotes and evangelizes various trends, opinions, and practical use cases in the technology and enterprise computing community.

Matthew Sachs, systems administrator and owner of Bitsource added, ”Mosso’s cloud scales extremely well and with absolutely no user intervention, which allows it to claim the title of a true cloud computing platform.”

Jonathan Bryce, co-founder of Mosso explained, ”YouDecide2008.com shows exactly why Bitsource rated us so highly and why flexibility is needed in this sort of landscape. As this election year continues to unfold, there will be millions of people looking to the Internet for information - especially as we get closer to November 4th. Our core strength is the ability to quickly scale and adapt to changing circumstances, including huge traffic surges as visitors hit these popular sites looking for up-to-the-minute information on the elections. It also explains why customers are counting on Mosso to host important sites such as those related to the presidential race.”

In August, Mosso named technology industry and operations veteran, Bruce Runyan, as its new Chief Uptime Officer. Mr. Runyan is responsible for ensuring that Mosso continues to provide a reliable and consistent customer experience as the cloud scales, and creating an environment that allows Mosso to introduce new capabilities and capacity without impacting the experience.

A recognized leader in the global IT marketplace, Rackspace delivers a diverse suite of enterprise-class hosted IT services to businesses of all sizes. Customers choose Rackspace for its hosting specialization and expertise, backed by the company’s award-winning Fanatical Support. Rackspace serves as an extension of its customers’ IT departments, by handling infrastructure maintenance and management. Rackspace’s portfolio of companies also includes the Mosso cloud computing platform and Mailtrust, a provider of business-class hosted email solutions. Rackspace is recognized as one of FORTUNE Magazine’s 100 Best companies to work for, ranking number 32 on the 2008 list. Rackspace’s portfolio of hosted IT services includes managed hosting, email hosting and cloud hosting.

Mosso, LLC is the home of The Hosting Cloud, providing enterprise-grade hosting through an easily managed interface so that developers, designers and IT managers can deploy reliable web applications quickly and easily. Founded by two former Rackspace employees, The Hosting Cloud is built upon a cross platform, clustered-computing architecture.

To learn more about Rackspace, please visit: www.rackspace.com.

For more information, please visit: www.mosso.com.

Data Center Provider, PHASE 2, Gains IBM, Cisco Executive

Honolulu, Hawaii - (The Hosting News) - October 8, 2008 - Data center provider, PHASE 2 International, has appointed a new Vice President of Sales. Mike Peterson comes to PHASE 2 with nearly 25 years of sales executive experience in Fortune 100 companies, including IBM and Cisco Systems.

Kevin Doherty, CEO of PHASE 2 noted, ”We’ve been expanding our sales team in an effort to service the continuing demand for - and success of - our SaaS offerings. Mike is charged with building and managing a global sales presence. It’s truly a testament to our continuing success that we are able to recruit executives with his pedigree.”

Mr. Peterson joins PHASE 2 with a wealth of experience gained over the past 24 years in technology sales. He has built and managed sales organizations in excess of $150M. A high-achieving sales, channel management and marketing leader, his talents in opening markets, managing a geographically dispersed sales force and closing business are well-demonstrated. His experience-building years took him from technical consultative account management to executive management with three Fortune 100 tech companies and a leading privately held tech company.

Mr. Peterson added, ”Having worked in large, Fortune 100 company environments as well as in smaller technology startups, I have built a good overall understanding of what works and doesn’t work - both for a sales team and for the customer. I am thrilled to join a company with the energy and innovation that PHASE 2 demonstrates. It’s going to be great to move this company to the next level as we expand markets and cross borders.”

PHASE 2’s SaaS application solutions include its ShareCAD Pro, a powerful centralized platform based on Microsoft SharePoint for contractors, architects and manufacturers; and a host of other applications that it provides to customers on a central server-based ‘pay as you go’ basis. Offering use of Microsoft’s SharePoint, Exchange, Project Server, CRM, Office Communicator and Team Foundation Server, as well as PHASE 2’s own ShareMeeting, the low total cost of ownership incorporated in PHASE 2’s SaaS model allows customers to benefit from a broader range of products than they could otherwise consider.

PHASE 2 International delivers affordable and scalable access to high-end business software applications via a Software as a Service - SaaS - model. Ideal for businesses of all sizes, and especially practical for small-to-medium-sized businesses, the hosted applications available through PHASE 2 currently include Microsoft SharePoint, ‘Exchange,’ Project Server, CRM and Office Communicator along with PHASE2’s ShareMeeting and award-winning ShareCAD Pro. All of PHASE 2’s business applications are delivered across the web to enable on-demand access to corporate information whenever and wherever in the world the user happens to be. PHASE 2’s SaaS solutions ensure a scalable and secure IT foundation that provides scalability for future requirements, automatic data back-up, along with the most reliable, state-of-the-art infrastructure that removes the burden and risks of hosting solutions internally.

PHASE 2, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, is headquartered in Honolulu, Hawaii, and operates a secure, state-of-the-art data center.

To learn more, please visit: www.Phase2.com.