Web Hosting Reviews

Online auction company eBay (www.ebay.com) announced on Monday it will build a new data center in South Jordan, Utah, creating approximately 50 jobs in the process.
The news follows eBay announcement earlier this year, where eBay said it was looking for a new site for a data center in the Southwestern United States, specifying locations like Phoenix, Arizona and Utah.

The company currently has six data centers, including facilities in San Jose, Sacramento and Austin.In a joint announcement with the Governor's Office of Economic Development, eBay revealed the company had closed the purchase of the Daybreak Commerce Park site, where it will build the data center in an effort to improve the overall experience of eBay website users.The online auction company anticipates the new jobs will pay 50 percent above the Salt Lake County median wage. In July, eBay was given a $27.3 million tax credit from the GOED board for the South Jordan data center. Additionally, new Utah wages are projected to reach $23.7 million over the next 10 years, while the state's new revenue is estimated at $109.1 million for the same period.San Jose-based eBay currently has about 1,600 employees in Draper, Utah.

According to a report posted today on Data Center Knowledge, which in turn cites a Friday post on Domain Name Wire, United Internet AG (www.united-internet.com) has acquired the United Domains unit of Internet portal Lycos Europe (www.lycos-europe.com), which has been in the process of selling off certain hosting-related assets for several weeks.


United Internet will reportedly pay approximately $48 million to take on the 1.1 million domains managed by United Domains, providing customers with a smooth transition to a new provider. United Internet has plenty of experience with large-scale domain and hosting operations, being the parent company of hosting giant 1&1 Internet and domain aftermarket operator Sedo.

Domain name wire cites the RegistrarStats service, saying that 1&1 has about 4.6 million domains under management already.

Lycos Europe announced that it would be selling off and closing businesses related to domains and hosting back in November, and appears to have been working to help find those customers new homes since then. 

As recently as last week, Lycos Europe was recommending German hosting company Strato (the second largest European host, behind United Internet) as a suitable substitute for its hosting customers seeking to transition their sites out of its hosting service before the company closes those operations early in 2014.

While customers might still be considering Strato, the move to United Internet (as Data Center Knowledge's Rich Miller rightly points out) is more than likely to be accompanied by an offer of a fairly inexpensive and seamless hosting service from 1&1 Internet, which might appeal more to those customers. Domain only customers would presumably have some potential relevance to Sedo's parked domains services.

According to Domain Name Wire, the transition of United Domains to United Internet is expected to be complete by the early part of 2014.

DataPoint, ColoSpace and RagingWire have all recently completed the SAS 70 Type II audit for their respective data centers.

SAS70 proves a service organization has been through an in-depth audit of their control objectives and activities, and requires the company to set objectives and practices to verify that those objectives are being met.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, Section 404 set the SAS70 Type II Certification as an operational benchmark for companies. SOX requires that an external auditor assess internal control's adequacy in regard to financial reporting.

The certification gives INetU's clients and prospective clients the confidence that a third-party source has verified that the company has strong operational controls in place, and that INetU accurately follows the controls.

"It was important to us that SAS70 be an authentic tool through which we provide quality assurance on our service levels for our customers, rather than simply a marketing objective," says Dev Chanchani, president of INetU Managed Hosting. "We designed our controls around all aspects of our service that impact our clients. Our SAS70 Type II Certification is just another step toward providing our clients and future clients a superior quality of service."

After a six-month auditing period, INetU received an "unqualified" SAS70 report, ensuring that the external auditing firm found no major exceptions between INetU's controls and evidence gathered by the auditors.

INetU's SAS70 controls cover a wide range of operations, including physical security of the facilities, installation and maintenance of hardware, and following support best-practices.

In October, INetU Managed hosting also gained EU Safe Harbor Certification, which ensures that it protects its customers' personal information by monitoring all of its data-collection and retention processe

Weeks ago, countless Americans were glued to their television sets watching election coverage and waiting anxiously for the presidential results, but little did they know another important vote was taking place at the Federal Communications Commission. By a unanimous vote of 5-0, the FCC officially agreed to open up the “white spaces” spectrum, making it available for wireless broadband -- unlicensed and free to everybody. This article will explain what white space is, and why you should care.

What is white space exactly? It is slivers of unused spectrum that sit between licensed broadcast channels. The idea of freeing up what basically amounts to blank space may not seem like too hard of a decision to make, according to Americans who are set to benefit from the vote and use the white space just as they already use Wi-Fi, WiMax and 3G wireless technologies, but the decision did not come without controversy.

The Controversy 

TV broadcasters and wireless microphone companies have long opposed the use of this spectrum, saying it will interfere with their services. Similar interference issues were a concern when the FCC was considering the use of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth devices, though those technologies have caused no interference and nothing but commerce. 

Months prior to the vote, several lawmakers and professional sports organizations urged the FCC to delay the vote on opening white spaces for unlicensed use. One of those in opposition to the freeing up of the space was the Sports Technology Alliance, which is a trade group that represents eight major sports leagues including the NFL, MLB, NBA and NASCAR. Several members of Congress, including eight who signed a single letter, as well as House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell (D-Michigan), also sent letters to the FCC asking the agency to delay the November 4 vote on a white-space proposal. The congressional leaders and sports leagues joined the National Association of Broadcasters in asking for a 60-day comment period on the proposal. 

To the dismay of those in opposition, the comment trial obviously did not pass, which is not to say the final ruling did not please countless others. Some technology companies, who acted as the original catalyst for the freeing of the space, were elated with the decision made by the FCC.