May 30, 2003 : The webhost industry: week review

📅 May 30, 2003 - This week's news from the Web hosting industry was something of a mixed bag, with several companies announcing important assets changing hands, several others announcing the resignations of high-level executives and even the development of an interesting new trend with the release of several new specialty VPS services.
On Tuesday, Opsource announced that it had acquired the managed services business belonging to colocation provider Quadrix Solutions. The company says the acquisition will strengthen its presence in the Northeast, adding 16 new customers. The acquisition is OpSource's fourth in the past six months. Under the terms of the agreement, OpSource will absorb Quadrix's technical operations staff, immediately taking over responsibility for Quadrix customers.
And on Wednesday, it was reported that search engine Northern Light had been resurrected as a separate company, purchased by the company's former CEO C. David Seuss at Divine Inc.'s bankruptcy auction. Seuss said he contacted Northern Light customers following the purchase, assuring them that customer support would be returning to the high levels it had previously held. The company says customers have already begun to renew contracts in anticipation of the return to form. Seuss also said the company is planning to release a 64-bit enterprise version of the Northern Lights search engine.
In addition to the continued changing hands of assets, this week saw some interesting news from several large telecommunications companies who announced that senior executives were planning to retire.
On Tuesday, XO Communiations said that Nate Davis would resign as the company's president and chief operating officer. Davis joined XO in January of 2000, and has overseen the restructuring of the company's finances and operations. His resignation will reportedly take effect on Saturday. The company said he is stepping down in order to pursue other business interests. Davis says he is confident the company is in good hands with new CEO Carl Grivner.
Also on Tuesday, telecommunications carrier Cable & Wireless announced that non-executive director and deputy chairman Win Bischoff is planning to resign from the company's board of directors following the annual general meeting on July 25. Bischoff has been a member of the company's board since 1991. C&W says it has appointed Graham Howe and Kasper Rorsted as non-executive directors.
Along with the high-level decision-making news, this week also saw the release of several new products that may prove to be a part of an interesting new trend in the web hosting business toward particularly specialized virtual private server offerings.
On Tuesday, ColdFusion hosting specialist CFXHosting announced that it had launched a Windows-based virtual private server hosting offering for Macromedia developers. The CFXHosting VPS solution partitions a server into isolated, dedicated-like areas for each client, says the company, providing them with control over their own operating systems, including remote rebooting capabilities, the freedom to install customer applications and the ability to host additional Web sites and applications in their partitioned area.
And on Thursday, Java hosting specialist JCentric announced that it has introduced Linux-based virtual private server hosting designed for Java developers. The JCentric VPS, says the company, is powered by SWsoft's Virtuozzo platform, and comes preinstalled with Tomcat 4, MySQL and a range of open source J2EE tools like servlets, JSPs and EJBs. JCentric says its VPS plans start at $30.57 per month for a Professional account and $45.87 per month for a Business account. The company is offering a promotional 15 percent discount for the first six months of service in May and June.
While this week was shorter than most, it certainly wasn?t short on interesting announcements, as the Web hosting business continued in its ongoing trend toward the buying and selling of assets, and struck out in interesting new directions, with the resigning of several telecommunications higher-ups and the launch of several specialized virtual private server hosting services.