(The Hosting News) – Savvis, Inc., a global leader in cloud infrastructure and hosted IT solutions for enterprises, today announced that it has completed its acquisition of Fusepoint, Inc., a leading independent provider of managed IT and colocation services to enterprises in Canada.
Fusepoint, a portfolio company of M/C Venture Partners, was acquired for approximately $121 million in cash (after adjustment for estimated working capital and debt levels and subject to a final working capital adjustment). Savvis expects the acquisition purchase price to approximate 5.0x EBITDA after synergies of approximately $8 million, which are expected to be fully achieved in 2011.
“Savvis and Fusepoint share a leadership position within our industry. Our synergies will lead to many exciting opportunities for new and existing clients,” said Jim Ousley, Savvis chairman and chief executive officer. “Not only will we have a Canadian platform – which our largest clients have requested – Fusepoint’s clients will gain access to Savvis’ global footprint and enterprise-class managed service offerings.”
Established in 1999 and headquartered in Toronto, Fusepoint’s offerings include managed infrastructure and hosting, colocation services, application development and maintenance services. Fusepoint’s three data centers, located in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, offer a total of more than 40,000 sellable square feet. The company has more than 300 clients.
“This deal is consistent with our strategy to further strengthen our hosting business, to expand geographically and to focus on major financial centers like Toronto,” Ousley said. “We have been impressed with Fusepoint’s performance over the past several years, and our combined operations are well-positioned within the highly promising Canadian hosting market.”
Savvis funded the acquisition by upsizing, through syndication, its revolving credit facility with Wells Fargo Capital Finance LLC to $150 million. The revolving credit facility was amended, among other things, to modify certain financial covenants to accommodate the increased borrowings.
Savvis Completes Acquisition of Fusepoint
(The Hosting News) – GoDaddy.com has reportedly paid $12.5 million ($81.45 per foot) to buy a 153,469-square-foot office project at the northeast corner of Hayden Road and Acoma Drive in Scottsdale. The seller was a company formed by Crown Realty & Development Corp. in Irvine, Calif. (Robert Flaxman, Jamie Sohacheski, partners).
The cash transaction was brokered through Bob Buckley, Steve Lindley, Tracy Cartledge, Mike Kitlica, Blake Hastings and Jeff Wentworth of Cassidy Turley BRE Commercial in Phoenix. The three-building project, called Scottsdale Technology Center, is 66 percent occupied. Go Daddy currently occupies about 75,000 sq. ft. of the complex, and eventually will occupy the entire development. Go Daddy, which houses its corporate headquarters at Scottsdale Technology Center, provides a one-stop shop for individuals and businesses to establish, maintain and evolve an online presence. The privately owned company offers a variety of domain name registration and web site hosting services, as well as web site creation tools, e-commerce and security solutions and productivity and marketing tools. Go Daddy has more than 41 million domain names under its management.
Read more on this transaction, who was involved, how to contact them @ BrewAZ.com
The Scottsdale Technology Center is at 14455-14505-14555 N. Hayden Road in the Scottsdale Airpark.
Crown Realty owns several properties in the Valley, including the now-shuttered Mountain Shadows resort in Paradise Valley. The company also built the InterContinental Montelucia Resort & Spa in Paradise Valley, which was noticed for foreclosure in 2009 by the construction lender, EuroHypo AG, a German bank. The bank took possession of the resort through an auction earlier this year and now owns it, with InterContinental Hotels Group of the U.K. continuing to operate it.
Real estate attorney Scott Stein, principal of Stein Law PLC in Scottsdale, announced the sale, which closed June 4.
GoDaddy Acquires Scottsdale Technology Center
(Gawkwire.com) - Nextopia, a pioneer and leader in providing information retrieval technology for businesses and online retailers, today announced the integration of its eCommISearch and eComm|ShopNAV applications with the NetSuite cloud computing platform.
The Nextopia applications use techniques such as fuzzy matching and behavioral analysis to help retail customers find the exact products they are looking for. Built using NetSuite’s SuiteCloud development platform, the combined solution can help NetSuite ecommerce customers increase prospect conversions and boost top line revenue by simplifying and improving their customers’ online shopping experiences.
“NetSuite retailers will find that Nextopia provides the most affordable way to deliver powerful search functionality, suggestive results and extensive filtering capabilities. These are critical to creating a customer-friendly site that converts well,” said Nextopia CEO Sanjay Arora. “Online retailing is a highly competitive industry, so we feel the combination of our advanced search capabilities and NetSuite’s fully integrated, cloud computing business software, will give ecommerce businesses a compelling reason to consider our integrated solution when they want to improve their online presence.”
Behavioral Analysis, Fuzzy Matching
In operation, the Nextopia applications create dynamic site navigation pages based on the retailer’s current product data. The applications use customer-derived metrics, such as behavioral analysis, to determine the optimum placement of products within each category, so the retailer can do "on-the-fly" merchandising and promote products that are most likely to convert. At the same time, the search technology uses fuzzy matching and other techniques to precisely deliver search results to the online shopper.
The combined solution will help NetSuite customers increase conversion rates and customer satisfaction, manage inventory more efficiently, and improve site traffic by using customer analysis to improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques.
“Adding advanced site search is one of the best ways to increase revenue of an ecommerce store," said Guido Haarmans, Vice President Developer Programs at NetSuite. “If visitors can’t find what they’re looking for right away, they usually leave for the next site. Nextopia helps NetSuite customers improve their site search capabilities and increase conversion rates quickly and cost-effectively.”
For more information on the integrated solution, visit www.suiteapp.com.
(Gawkwire.com) – Anyone with internet access and a spare five minutes can make a free website from scratch, thanks to Wix.com’s revolutionary online site builder. With an intuitive graphic interface, Wix makes it easy for users to add Flash design elements to blank websites, or customize web templates. Today Wix.com released a fresh batch of content offering users an even greater variety of free website design.
Wix Founder & CEO, Avishai Abrahami, comments: “Wix is already a powerful design and promotional tool that users worldwide are using to build successful and marketable websites. But it’s always a pleasure to present our users with even more content to create and promote their websites online.”
The new content includes both brand new free Flash website templates, as well as individual web design elements including new images and animated icons.
Clicking on a template places it inside the website builder where users can drag and drop design elements in a simple customization process. Themes of the new web templates include Restaurant designs, with images, clip art and site structure well-equipped for pizza parlors, sushi bars, old fashioned diners and classic-style bistros. There are also new Lifestyle-themed templates for users to build websites showcasing their collectibles, advertising their yoga expertise or even business coaching services. Beautiful new Jewelry-themed templates are ready for jewelry designers, resellers and collectors to customize and turn into brilliant new websites.
Wix has thrown in a ton of new content to the free website builder itself. There are new free photos with garden and market images and new animated icons. Users with multilingual sites will enjoy new 3D country flag icons. New page arrows were also added, for users to add cleaner navigation buttons to their sites.
This batch of new content reflects the open communication between Wix.com and its international user base. Wix is constantly looking for user-generated ideas for ways to improve the editor. There’s a Wish List inside the Wix Forum where users can make suggestions for content and features they’d like to see added to Wix. There is even a new poll where users can vote for template categories they’d most like to see expanded or improved.
Says Abrahami, “As our international Wix community continues to expand, we continue to provide our users with the latest in web design.”
Established in 2006, Wix.com has its headquarters in NY and offices in Tel-Aviv. It is backed by Mangrove Capital Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners and Benchmark Capital. There are currently over 4 million Flash websites on the web that have been created with Wix.
http://www.gawkwire.com/web_design/wix_adds_new_templates_and_content_to_free_editor.html
(The Hosting News) – Following a successful fundraising campaign, Virtus have appointed ETDE (M&E subsidiary of Bouygues Construction) as their Principal Contractor and have commenced on-site construction.
The carrier neutral data centre is located in Enfield, North London and will provide in total circa 27,000 ft² of net technical space across two phases. EDF have delivered two separate 8MvA power feeds to the site boundary in an ‘active active’ configuration and Virtus have contracted with Virgin Media to be the first fibre provider for dual diverse connections in to Telehouse Metro and Telehouse East.
The first phase of the Tier III, concurrently maintainable data centre is scheduled for practical completion in late February 2011 delivering 8,632 sq ft of raised floor technical space across two dedicated stand-alone data halls of 4,316sq ft each. The data centre is designed to deliver and average of 1.5kW/sq m with a power compliment to each data hall in phase 1 of 640kW. Phase 2 will see the introduction of a further 18,000 sq ft.
Data Centre features include:
•LEED accreditation.
•2N UPS configuration dedicated to each stand alone data hall.
•N+1 configuration on standby generators.
•N+1 configuration on chillers with ‘Free-cooling’ functionality.
•Robust physical and virtual security features including CCTV and biometric recognition.
•Build and storage areas.
•Meeting rooms, presentation facilities and hot-desking.
•Remote hands and eyes services.
For interested parties the Virtus team is on call to address any enquiries for further information or arrange site visits please contact sales@virtusdatacentres.com
Virtus Announces Construction of New UK Data Center
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(The Hosting News) – More and more frequently, imitations of well-known domains are misused for various, sometimes criminal, activities. The target of the masterminds is primarily companies, and the effect on the victims’ image is often tremendous and can lead to a loss of customer trust.
In the fight against the increasing misuse of brand names on the Internet, 1&1 Internet Ltd has launched an initiative – the provider now offers domain packages in bundles of 5 to help companies protect their reputation by simply securing the closest alternatives to their desired Internet address. This prevents cyber-squatters from using addresses that are deceptively similar to company domains for their fraudulent activities.
According to the latest publication of the Brandjacking Index, the risk of brand misuse worldwide is the highest in US, Germany and UK. More than 80 per cent of all websites using brand names for illegal purposes originate from these three countries. The most popular method used by the online fraudsters is cyber-squatting. Cyber-squatters are those who tap into unused domains to get an Internet address very similar to that of a company. In 2009, the World Intellectual Property Organization created by the UN handled 2,107 cases of suspected misuse. According to experts, however, the estimated number of unrecorded cases exceeds several hundred thousand.
Another very popular fraud scheme is typo-squatting. In this case, the perpetrators speculate on misspelled URL entries and register domain names with a slightly different spelling. The goal of the fraudsters is to lure as many visitors as possible to their website where unsuspecting Internet users are offered third-party goods for sale. Visitors to these sites can also get stung with malware, such as viruses and Trojans.
Private users may also land on deceptive phishing websites that appear genuine and prompt them to enter personal information such as passwords or bank and credit card information. “The increasing misuse of domain names does not only put companies at risk, but presents a threat to private users as well. We believe that there is an urgent need for action, and see our initiative as another step in our fight against online fraud” says Oliver Mauss, CEO of 1&1 Internet.
The 1&1 initiative consists of two elements. Firstly, 1&1 will suggest strategic domain names for registration that utilize other common domain extensions. Secondly, 1&1 offers a domain product that includes the additional domain reservations at a significantly reduced price. A 1&1 bundle of 5 domains, for example, costs £19.99+VAT for the first year. Compared to the respective individual prices, the bundle offer provides great savings.
The offer also applies to existing customers – a customer who already has a domain registered with 1&1 can now register additional domains via the 1&1 Control Panel. Following an availability check, a list of available alternative domains will automatically be displayed on the 1&1 website page for customers to consider.
For more information on 1&1 domains visit the website at www.1and1.co.uk
1&1 Offer Helps Prevent Misuse of Domains
(Gawkwire.com) – ResellerClub has launched its Localization Partner Program with a huge splash attracting 100s of signups in just a few days.
ResellerClub recently opened up its control panels for translation and is inviting a select set of Resellers to work closely with the team to roll out translations in a host of languages.
With interfaces available in Spanish, Turkish etc., ResellerClub has taken its translation efforts one step further. Adopting a collaborative approach, ResellerClub’s localization program engages Partners from across the globe to work on translations in the language of their choice.
"We’ve always ensured internationalization of all content in our control panels as we realize the importance and growing demand for content in the customer’s native language. This program is geared to harness the experience of our global partners – who better than our Partners can decide the best translations to be used in the system", said Bhavin Turakhia, CEO and Founder of ResellerClub. "Interfaces in their local languages will enable out Partners to re-affirm their commitment to the local markets & attract the right audience to build a sticky customer base. If you want market penetration and service adoption, you have to localize."
A crowd-sourcing initiative with a twist, this program ensures quality translations from users that will benefit the most from it. Resellers get to vote in translations that they’d like to see on their interfaces. Coupled with attractive incentive bundles including domain pricing discounts, upto 50% off on hosting purchases and free ad spots on webhosting.info, this program has set the ball rolling for active participation from the ResellerClub Reseller Community.
ResellerClub is a Directi business and boasts of the most comprehensive Product Portfolio including Domain Registration, advanced Web and Email Hosting, Live Chat services, Ecommerce modules, Website Builder etc available at the most economical pricing existing today. They also provide complete business process automation and a powerful Promo Engine that allows resellers to introduce and pass on promotions, discounts, special packages etc, to their sub-resellers and customers.
http://www.gawkwire.com/web_hosting/resellerclub_launches_the_localization_partner_program.html
(Gawkwire.com) – Russia is becoming an increasingly important player in the global Internet community according to Rod Beckstrom, ICANN’s President and Chief Executive Officer. Beckstrom made the point earlier today while addressing the opening session of the Russian Internet Governance Forum in Moscow.
“Russia has achieved a major milestone by becoming the first country to be approved for a Cyrillic internationalized domain name,” said Beckstrom. “This means that many of the 96 million Russians not currently online could be among the next billion Internet users.”
The Russian Federation is among the first group of countries to have non-Latin characters used in the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) portion of their Internet addresses – that final segment to the right of the dot. So now instead of having to type dot-rf when writing a Cyrillic address name in their web browsers, Russians will be able to use the Cyrillic character “??”.
“Internationalized domain names will open the door to those whose primary language is expressed in a non-Latin script, such as Russian speakers who use Cyrillic,” said Beckstrom.
But the Chief Executive said Russia’s successful efforts to bring its primary language to all parts of Internet domain names is only one example of the country’s emergence as a prominent force in the new online world.
Beckstrom commended the Russian government and the Russian Internet community for their “ambitious plans to bring Internet service to the entire country.” He pointed out that while 45 million Russians – 32 percent of the population – had access to the Internet, almost twice that number were not online.
The ICANN leader also praised the Russian government’s participation with global efforts to stem cybersecurity threats. “It is a global challenge of immense proportion that requires a solution at the global level,” said Beckstrom. “Russia and many other countries have come to understand that. With the Russian National Security Council, the U.S. State Department, the European Union, China, India and others, talks on further cooperation in the cyber security field are ongoing.”
http://www.gawkwire.com/domains/russia_brings_cyrillic_to_internet_s_top-level_domain_names.html
(Gawkwire.com) – Commercial Network Services (CNS) has seen a 50% overall growth, with an additional 30% aggregate growth among its existing customer base, thanks in part to the personalized, real-time support and zero-latency of NYI.
"NYI has been a crucial component of our success," said Barry Bahrami, CEO and Founder, Commercial Network Services. "More than any other provider we’ve worked with, NYI has given us a stable, seamless and extensible platform to expand our business globally to subscribers in more than 120 countries. We could not have achieved such a milestone, at such a strong growth rate, without them."
"CNS is a company that understands the importance of investing in a data services partner that gives customers the best of both worlds: the technical capabilities of a major provider, combined with the personalized attention of private consultancy," said Phillip Koblence, VP Operations, NYI. "CNS’ success is a tribute to the collaborative efforts between Barry’s team and NYI staff to deliver a solution that perfectly fits their needs. We are proud to be part of what is among the most advanced virtual solutions for traders and developers available on the market today."
CNS has been providing online services since 1995. To find out more, visit www.CommercialNetworkServices.com.
http://www.gawkwire.com/technology/commercial_network_services_scores_50_growth_with_nyi.html
