HostReview Editor's Desk

Web Hosting Week

Small Businesses on Focus in Web Hosting Industry

by Milena Sotirova
April 15, 2005

According to the recent Netcraft report, Rackspace, is once again ranked as the most reliable hosting company site this month, followed by OLM and InetU.

Rackspace was also the top performer in February in the Netcraft's list. This month's top 10 includes five sites running on Linux, two on Windows 2000, one on Windows Server 2003 and two on FreeBSD.

The acquisition of the week was announced by VIA NET.WORKS, Inc. The provider has signed a letter of intent with Claranet, an independent and privately held European internet service provider. Claranet will purchase all VIA's business operations for a total of between $26.5 million to $27 million in cash.

Small businesses are in the spotlight of the new web hosting plans of Yahoo! Inc. The company's division Small Businesses introduced a new service that lets any small business sign up for a free Web page to appear in Yahoo's local directory.

"Our hope is over time that certainly Yahoo will be top of mind as they think of promoting their site" or for other services, Levine said in an interview.
More than half of the 20 million U.S. small businesses are without a Web site, according to estimates from the Kelsey Group.

New hosting plans announced Verio this week. The company unveiled a series of product innovations and new services for 2005. To begin this initiative, Verio has introduced new product enhancements and packages for its shared hosting solutions.

Facilitating easier web design for small business owners, Web hosting and design firm Aplus.Net announced that they have developed a tool that converts PDF documents into standard web pages.

The conversion tool, called PDF2Web, allows web site owners to easily convert Adobe PDF documents into HTML code.

New product launches news this week came from LogicBoxes, a software and consultancy provider. The company announced the launch of a Perl API kit for OrderBox - the complete Automation Platform for ICANN accredited registrars and Web Hosting companies.

Covad Communications Group, Inc. will conduct a conference call to discuss its first quarter 2005 financial results on Wednesday, April 27, 2005 at 5:00 p.m. eastern time / 2:00 p.m. pacific time.

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