Eric Mandel, CEO of BlackMesh noted, ”We selected R1Soft because of their ability to provide cost effective features and performance that fit our business and customer needs. By providing a stable, scalable backup solution, R1Soft helps BlackMesh implement a companywide offering that gives an added level of protection to our business and our customers.”

BlackMesh currently uses R1Soft’s Continuous Data Protection technology on both its Linux and Windows servers. The company also uses R1Soft’s MySQL add-on, allowing live database protection and selective restoration in individual cells through True Granular restoration.

In addition to leveraging R1Soft’s solutions, as a member of R1Soft’s Hosting Partner Program, BlackMesh can take advantage of an array of marketing resources and sales tools from R1Soft. It also receives priority technical support and volume licensing discounts.

David Wartell, Vice Present of R1Soft, a division of BBS Technologies remarked, ”Our Hosting Partner Program allows BlackMesh to leverage our data protection products in the mission-critical hosting market. As a partner, we will work with BlackMesh to maximize the company’s managed solutions and services, thereby increasing IT reliability and customer satisfaction.”

Founded in 2003 and headquartered in Herndon, Va., BlackMesh is a provider of information technology solutions for small and mid-sized businesses. BlackMesh specializes in the design, deployment, and administration of managed hosting and managed services in both off-site and on-site locations. Combining powerful, high-performance technologies with world-class service and support, BlackMesh provides its customers with the tools they need to lower costs, accelerate growth, increase agility, and improve efficiency.

Founded in 2003, R1Soft is a provider of disk-based backup solutions. The company’s customer list includes some of the world’s largest hosting providers. R1soft products provide Continuous Data Protection (CDP) for over 85,000 mission-critical Linux and Windows servers worldwide. In November, 2007 R1Soft was acquired by BBS Technologies, Inc.

To learn more about BlackMesh, please visit: www.blackmesh.com.

For more information about R1Soft and Continuous Data Protection, please visit: www.r1soft.com.

The integration was completed in the first quarter of 2008 and the joint solution has already deployed at one of their top-tier European ISP customers. The company avers that through its partner program and collaboration capabilities, it is creating a network of providers that enables customers to access the applications and services that best suit their business need and operating environment.

David Harvey, head of alliances for Bizanga noted, ”We chose Mailshell in response to explicit customer demand. We’re able to provide customers with a broad range of filters, fully integrated into our platform.”

Bizanga’s customers may access LiveFeed, Mailshell’s solution designed to quantify email reputation via advanced statistical models. Unlike binary ‘good’ or ‘bad’ rating systems, LiveFeed produces graduated trust ratings that automatically adjust over time as reputations change.

Tonny Yu, CEO of Mailshell remarked, ”We see growing demand among service providers for high-speed, highly scalable messaging platforms like Bizanga’s Intelligent Message Processor. ISPs expect high throughput as well as high detection rates. This makes Bizanga the perfect complement for the more accurate, highly scalable and language-agnostic reputation solution provided by LiveFeed.”

Bizanga is the global company that developed the most scalable and full-featured E-mail message processing and security platform, the Intelligent Message Processor® (IMP). The IMP can be deployed to protect an E-mail infrastructure from blended threats including spam, viruses, denial-of-service and harvest attacks. It can also be used to perform parental control, compliance/encryption services or simply to manage infrastructure migration or new service deployment. Designed especially for service providers, the IMP is extremely easy to integrate with existing infrastructure, including provisioning systems and message store. IMPs handle E-mail for millions of mailboxes throughout North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. Bizanga sells direct to Internet service providers, cable operators, fixed-line and mobile operators. The technology is also available on an OEM basis to application software vendors. Bizanga is a member of the Messaging Anti-Abuse Work Group.

Mailshell is the world’s leading email reputation, anti-spam and anti-phishing engine provider. Via Mailshell’s OEM partners, more than 6,000 companies and 15 million consumers worldwide rely on ”Powered by Mailshell” filters to block spam and phishing. Mailshell’s software helps its OEM partners, including Computer Associates, Secure Computing, Oracle, ZyXEL, Webroot, and AVG, among others, generate new anti-spam revenue, up-sell existing products to new anti-spam customers, and cut anti-spam engineering and support costs to near zero. Mailshell’s headquarters are located in San Francisco.

To learn more about Bizanga, please visit: www.bizanga.com.

For more information about Mailshell, please visit: www.mailshell.com.

The companies have signed a definitive agreement for Hostopia to purchase customer assets including approximately 14,000 Domain Direct, NetIdentity and ItsYourDomain.com (IYD) customer accounts. The companies indicated that accounts involved in the transaction will continue to be served under the familiar Domain Direct brand, which will operate as a managed service by Hostopia.

Elliot Noss, President and CEO, Tucows noted, ”I am confident these shared hosting customers will enjoy quality service and support with Hostopia directly. This move is the first part of a strategy to reposition our retail business to help individuals and small businesses build their identities online.”

Hostopia will pay US$1.6 million in cash for these assets, with adjustments made on closing. This amount is payable 20% on signing of the agreement and 80% upon the closing of the transaction, which is scheduled to occur on May 15, 2008. The companies plan to migrate these accounts to Hostopia’s unified web service platform by July 2008.

Colin Campbell, CEO, Hostopia remarked, ”We are very pleased to have concluded this transaction. We are already hosting some of the Tucows Retail Service Group’s users so the impact on customers should be minimal. Our plan is to provide customers with numerous upgrades and additional value-added services to earn their loyalty and continued business. Traditional web hosting is fast evolving to the SaaS (software as a service) model and Hostopia is perfectly positioned to offer these services to these customers.”

Tucows provides Internet services for web hosting companies and ISPs. Through its global network of over 9,000 service providers it provides millions of email boxes and manages over eight million domains. Tucows is an accredited registrar with ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers). Tucows holds a domain name portfolio of approximately 150,000 domain names that are available for sale, monetized through advertising and support our wholesale Personal Names Service. Our Retail division sells Tucows services to consumers and small business owners through Domain Direct, ItsYourDomain.com and NetIdentity. Tucows.com remains one of the most popular software download sites on the Internet.

Hostopia is a provider of web services that are designed to enable small and medium-sized businesses to establish and maintain an Internet presence. The company’s customers are communication services providers, including telecommunication carriers, cable companies, internet service providers, domain registrars, and web hosting service providers. Hostopia’s customers purchase its web services on a wholesale basis and resell these services under their own brands to small and medium-sized businesses. The company provides customers with the technology, infrastructure, and support services to enable them to offer web services, while saving research and development as well as capital and operating costs typically associated with the design, development, and delivery of web services.

For more information please visit: http://about.tucows.com.

To learn more about Hostopia, please visit: www.hostopia.com.

The Green Grid’s agreement with the EPA will first promote energy efficiency in EPA computer facilities and then broadly share results in order to impact change within both other governmental agencies and the private sector. The alliance with SNIA, formally announced by SNIA earlier this month, is designed to further networked storage best practices for energy efficiency.

The Green Grid’s Memorandums of Understanding with the EPA and SNIA highlight the organization’s continuing efforts and progress in working with government agencies and key industry players to define and promote the adoption of standards, processes, measurements and technologies for energy efficiency in the data center.

Roger Tipley, Director of The Green Grid noted, ”The goal of the agreement between the EPA and The Green Grid is to build further collaboration between the private and public sectors, and to set an example by improving energy efficiency in federal government computer facilities. The Green Grid will play a key role in this project by providing a team of technical experts who will perform the assessment and direct strategies and techniques for maximizing energy efficiency.”

The Green Grid’s collaboration with the EPA will accelerate the adoption of best practices for energy efficiency in existing computer/server rooms throughout the EPA. As an initial step The Green Grid and the EPA will identify an existing small EPA computer/server room as a target for an energy efficiency showcase, and execute a public project demonstrating the feasibility, approach and benefits of optimization. The results, best practices and real-world takeaways from this project will be shared with other governmental agencies, industry stakeholders and the private sector.

The Green Grid and the EPA formalized their MOU in a signing ceremony held today in Washington, D.C., highlighted by remarks from EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson and John Tuccillo, director of The Green Grid.

Earlier this month, SNIA announced a formal alliance with The Green Grid. The Green Grid will work with SNIA and its Green Storage Initiative to develop and promote standards, measurement methods, processes and technologies to improve data center energy efficiencies. SNIA will use its expertise in networked storage and membership (over 400 member companies and 7,000 individual members) to work with The Green Grid on best storage practices for achieving more efficient storage infrastructures, including more efficient storage networking technologies.

Vincent Franceschini, Chair of the SNIA remarked, ”Addressing the challenges associated with energy efficiency and green computing will require collaboration across all IT areas, including the storage industry. The Green Grid is a key industry organization for improving energy efficiency within data centers and business computing ecosystems. Through its Green Storage Initiative — dedicated to applying the technical and educational expertise of the storage industry to develop and find more energy efficient solutions in the data center — SNIA will work with The Green Grid to develop best practices and education for the industry.”

Mark Monroe, Director of The Green Grid added, ”Within the IT industry, there are a number of professionals who are responsible for data center functionality — from CIOs and IT managers, to heating and cooling experts. It is imperative that we look at the energy efficiency issue from a single, united point of view. Together we can leverage each other’s core expertise and areas of focus to deliver a holistic and complete approach for an energy-efficient data center.”

The Green Grid is a global consortium of companies dedicated to advancing energy efficiency in data centers and business computing ecosystems. The Green Grid does not endorse any vendor-specific products or solutions, and will seek to provide industry-wide recommendations on best practices, metrics and technologies that will improve overall data center energy efficiencies. Membership is open to companies interested in data center operational efficiency at the Contributor or General Member level. General Members attend and participate in General Meetings of The Green Grid, review proposals for specifications and have access to specifications for test suites and design guidelines and IP licensing. Additional benefits for Contributor Members include participation and voting rights in Committees and Work Groups.

To learn more, please visit: www.thegreengrid.org.

The Celerity single-, dual- and quad-channel host adapters offer eight lanes of 5Gb/sec. PCIe 2.0 bandwidth. ATTO was the first in the industry to ship 4-Gb Fibre Channel host adapters. With the introduction of Celerity 8-Gb Fibre Channel products, ATTO has added the next generation in PCIe 2.0 and Fibre Channel support.

Ed Tierney, Director of Marketing at ATTO Technology noted, ”With our comprehensive Celerity Fibre Channel host adapter product line, we continue to provide best-of-breed 8-Gb host adapter solutions to data-intensive applications such as video streaming, image processing and the ability to remove bandwidth bottlenecks created by data consolidation through virtualization.”

As a market leader in high-performance storage applications, ATTO consistently delivers early market solutions that enable cutting-edge technology. Today’s growing demand for media-rich entertainment requires very large, high-performance storage systems. ATTO 8-Gb Celerity products enable the media and entertainment industry’s most demanding applications such as 2K and 4K film, multiple layers of complex, uncompressed real-time effects, and high-definition (HD) video and audio editing. New Celerity 8-Gb Fibre Channel host adapters also feature ATTO’s exclusive Advanced Data Streaming (ADS) Technology that provides controlled acceleration of large and small blocks of data, enabling users to achieve the ultimate in I/O performance.

ATTO offers a comprehensive product line of host adapters and storage appliances. As with all current solutions, ATTO 8-Gb Fibre Channel host adapters will have multiple O/S, port and driver options. This ensures backward compatibility, enabling users to preserve their 4-Gb and 2-Gb Fibre Channel investments. ATTO’s 8-Gb PCI Express 2.0 platform is also backward compatible with existing PCIe bus platforms.

ATTO Technology, Inc. is a global leader of storage connectivity and infrastructure solutions for data-intensive computing environments. ATTO provides a wide range of end-to-end solutions to help customers’ better store, manage and deliver their data. With a focus toward markets that require higher performance, ATTO manufactures host and RAID adapters, bridges, RAID storage controllers, virtual tape appliances and management software. ATTO solutions are based on providing a high level of connectivity to all storage interfaces including SCSI, SATA, iSCSI, SAS and Fibre Channel. ATTO distributes its products worldwide directly to Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), systems integrators, VARs and authorized distributors.

To learn more about the Host Adapter, please visit: www.attotech.com/fibrechannelhostadaptertechnology.html.

For more information about ATTO Technology, Inc., please visit: www.attotech.com.

Level 1 PCI DSS Certified Service Provider! DataPipe delivers the best network & support; top tier data centers; New York metro, Silicon Valley, London, Hong Kong, Shanghai. DataPipe – Personal Touch, Global Reach.

The two-time Nationwide Series champion designed the black, orange and green vehicle (which can be viewed here) for Go Daddy shortly after becoming a company spokesman. In the press release, Go Daddy says that Earnhardt is excited to “rev the car’s engines and compete for his first win of the season in Texas.”

Go Daddy announced the Earnhardt sponsorship in December, after signing a deal with JR Motorsports and Hendrick Motorsports. The deal made Go Daddy the primary sponsor for the No. 5 NASCAR Nationwide Series Chevrolets for six races in 2008.

Mark Martin, the all-time leader in Nationwide victories, and Canadian racer Ron Fellows, will also drive the No. 5 Go Daddy Chevrolet this year. Last month, Go Daddy was the presenting sponsor for the telecast of the NASCAR Nationwide Series race at the Bristol Motor Speedway in Bristol, Tennessee.

“NASCAR fans eat, drink and breathe this sport,” says Bob Parsons, Go Daddy CEO and founder. “They are incredibly loyal. The sport is exhilarating and our sponsorship is just a great match all the way around. We believe our car, our drivers and our partnership are a formula for fun and success.”

Nationwide Series races are broadcast live on ABC, ESPN and ESPN2, with the O’Reilly 300 NASCAR Nationwide Series airing live this Saturday on ESPN2 at 3 p.m. EST.

The company declared that a key topic to be discussed at the meeting which will take place in Dubai, on 1-3 April 2008 is the possibility of getting domain names in Arabic online and making them available to the public. Further Participants will also discuss “finding ways to use Arabic for domain names as well as the use of Arabic invisible characters”, said TRA.

It also articulated that the ICANN community has been working on Internationalized Domain Names to make close to 100,000 characters from the scripts and languages of the world available for domain names. It also adds that the other important topics at the Dubai meeting include how ICANN works and what it does to coordinate the Internet?s unique identifiers, as well as updates on what is happening in developing an application and approval process for new top level domains; the part of the domain name after the dot.

“ICANN had incredibly productive discussions at its recent meeting in India on work being done to get the languages and scripts of that country available for domain names from beginning to end,” said Dr Paul Twomey, ICANN’s President and CEO.

Dr Twomey added: “The ICANN community is working on how these characters will be able to be implemented after the dot in domain names. There also is a process being discussed among our communities about whether there could be a fast track for a group of countries or territories that have a need for IDNs earlier than the others.”

For his part, Mohamed Al Ghanim, TRA Board Member and Director General said: “Being the legal registry of the UAE top level domain name .ae, the TRA is keen on working to enhance the statues of the national domain name in the IDN registry structure. Therefore, we strongly believe that this ICANN Regional Meeting is going to help all of us share experiences and work together to make that happen.”

“Internet penetration in the Arab world is considered very low in comparison to the English speaking societies. One of the obstacles facing the growth of this penetration is the language barrier. The TRA evaluates the importance of the Meeting’s objectives on IDNs as the best scientific way to provide the technological means to the UAE and the Arab countries to share an easy, available and vast source of knowledge with the goal of bringing Arabic to domain names,” Al Ghanim concluded.

New cabling will be laid up to the building to transport the large quantities of power (green electricity: Zeeuws Groen) to the data center. EvoSwitch has been working with a power capacity of 10 MVA (Megavolt Ampere) since the data center’s opening in April 2007. This is ample for the data center’s current requirements. At present, 2000 out of the available 9000 m2 are ready to accommodate customer equipment. The second phase will be completed in the second quarter of 2008, resulting in a total available surface of 4000 m2 . Once all phases are complete, a total surface of 9000 m2 will be filled with customer equipment. Work to expand the power capacity is expected to be complete by 2009.

Laurens Rosenthal, Innovation Director for EvoSwitch noted, ”The expansion of our data centre requires a total power capacity that can accommodate the growth of our customer base. EvoSwitch users must also be certain that they will be able to buy the power they need for their equipment in the future as well. With 20 MVA, we can give our customers that guarantee.”

The capacity doubling means that the power supply for EvoSwitch customers is safeguarded in the future. This is especially true in view of the continually rising power consumption of many machines.

Mr. Rosenthal added, ”Fortunately we see more and more equipment on the market with reduced energy consumption. This makes us happy, because it reinforces our own power saving of 20 percent in the total EvoSwitch infrastructure. Of course, there are also market developments that increase power consumption per rack in a data center. Blade servers, for example. We need to be able to accommodate this development, now and in the future. On the other hand, virtualization will increase CPU computing power compared to power consumption proportionately.”

Increasing the power capacity requires an additional investment on EvoSwitch’s part. Among other things, EvoSwitch will buy four additional transformers with a capacity of 2.5 MVA each. Continuon will ensure that the network is able to handle EvoSwitch’s increased power capacity. To this end new cables will be laid from the power station to the data center via different routes. The power station itself will also be enlarged.

Mr. Rosenthal explained, ”Our investment illustrates our faith in the market for data center services. In view of the warm interest customers have shown in our green data center and the speed at which we have filled cabinet space in recent months, we are confident that we will actually use the doubled power capacity.”

20 MVA means that EvoSwitch has an amply calculated power supply even once the data center reaches its full customer capacity. This means that the cabinets will have higher power and cooling capacity than is the rule for many data centers. On average the cabinets will have 5 KW available, even when the data center is filled to capacity.

Mr. Rosenthal concluded, ”This is double the regular capacity in the market; therefore the use of blade servers, for example, is easily possible.”

EvoSwitch is a carrier-neutral, ”green” (CO2-neutral) data center. The site in the Amsterdam area has a surface of more than 9000 square meters , allowing companies to put their IT infrastructure in a safe location. The data center started out with a capacity of 10 MVA and has now grown to a total capacity of 20 MVA. With this power capacity, EvoSwitch can guarantee its customers that it will have ample power available at all times. EvoSwitch has 30 employees, which include engineers who manage customer equipment both actively and proactively. EvoSwitch is fully climate-neutral. Together with the Climate Neutral Group, we invest in global projects to restore the CO2 balance in the atmosphere (www.climateneutralgroup.com). Companies that put their equipment at EvoSwitch are allowed to show, on their websites, that they use a climate-neutral data centre via the logos in the partner program The Green Fan (www.thegreenfan.com).

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

The approvals were provided by the Federal Communications Commission and a number of state public utility commissions. At a Special Meeting of Stockholders, held February 29, 2008, holders of a majority of the company’s outstanding shares approved the agreement and plan of merger pursuant to which an affiliate of Platinum Equity will acquire all outstanding shares of Covad for $1.02 per share in cash. The parties expect to close the transaction on April 15, 2008.

Late last year, Covad extended its Line Sharing Agreement with AT and T. The Agreement will continue to May 2009, and also includes extentions of the commercial terms as to former BellSouth territory, and guarantees access to AT and T copper and remote-terminal facilities for new Covad line share customers. The agreement also provides for commercial access to AT and T copper facilities in the former Bellsouth territory, also through May 2009. Covad and ATT also resolved a number of disputes.

Platinum Equity is a global M and O firm specialized in the merger, acquisition and operation of companies that provide services and solutions to customers in a broad range of business markets, including information technology, software, telecommunications, logistics, manufacturing, metals services and distribution. Since its founding in 1995 by entrepreneur Tom Gores, Platinum Equity has completed more than 75 acquisitions with more than $23 billion in aggregate annual revenue at time of acquisition.

Covad is a nationwide provider of integrated voice and data communications, offering DSL, Voice Over IP, T1, broadband wireless, web hosting, managed security, IP and dial-up, and bundled voice and data services directly through its network and Internet Service Providers, value-added resellers, telecommunications carriers and affinity groups to small and medium-sized businesses and home users. Covad broadband services are currently available across the nation in 44 states and 235 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) and can be purchased by more than 57 million homes and businesses, which represent over 50 percent of all US homes and businesses. Corporate headquarters is located at 110 Rio Robles San Jose, CA 95134. Telephone: 1-888-GO-COVAD.

To learn more about Platinum Equity, please visit: www.platinumequity.com.

For more information about Covad, please visit: www.covad.com.

Pricing for the new service is $29 per month. Hivelocity is currently promoting this new feature by allowing a dedicated KMV to be installed with $0 setup fee until April 15th. Once the promotion ends a standard $75 setup fee will apply.

KVM-over-IP (keyboard, video, mouse) enables a customer to have 24/7 virtual hands-on console access to their server. KVM is great for anyone that wishes to maintain control of nearly every aspect of their server without having to involve anyone but themselves.

Steve Eschweiler, General Manager at Hivelocity noted, ”Some people rely on our support team for everything, some people like the idea of relying only on themselves. Allowing any server to have permanent KVM-over-IP access will satisfy those customers who crave 100% control of their server.”

Each KVM unit is connected directly to the server and allows non-blocked access from any web browser, anywhere, at any time. Without the need of any additional software, KVM-over-IP enables BIOS-level control of servers and allows up to 8 simultaneous users.

Recently, Hivelocity garnered placement on Inc. Magazine’s annual list of fastest growing companies in America. With a three year growth rate of nearly 200% Hivelocity came in at #1834, which ranks as the 6th fastest growing IT Company in Florida. Hivelocity attributes its growth and success to its ability to provide the latest in server technology at a fraction of what the competition charges while consistently remaining atop their 99.9% network uptime guarantee. Hivelocity’s most recent server line includes Intel’s latest generation of Quad-Core Xeon Harpertown processors. According to WebHostingStuff’s objective network uptime tracker, Hivelocity has been very reliable with a 99.98% uptime record over several years. With its new line of energy efficient and cooler running servers Hivelocity’s operating costs are sure to decrease which should result in even lower server pricing down the road.

Since 2001, Hivelocity has offered 99.9 percent network uptime, specializing in dedicated web hosting and co-location, providing services to thousands of customers from all over the world.

To learn more about Hivelocity, please visit: www.hivelocity.net.