CrystalTech Now Offering MySQL

HostReview.com
Tuesday, January 27, 2004; 12:00 AM

Phoenix, AZ - January 27, 2004 -- CrystalTech Web Hosting Inc, a leading provider of Microsoft Windows-based web hosting serving over 37000 domains, today announced the inclusion of the open source database platform MySQL on their Shared Intermediate and above Hosting Plans. The addition of MySQL complements the other database platforms CrystalTech supports for their hosted web sites and gives customers yet another database alternative for the variety of scripting environments, including PHP, ColdFusion 5 and MX 6.1, Perl, and ASP/ASP.NET, available with CrystalTech hosting plans.

As a Windows-based web host, for a long time CrystalTech was not able to take advantage of the brilliant developments of the open source community. However, as more and more open source applications are being ported to the Windows environment, CrystalTech finds themselves in the enviable position of being able to provide powerful environments like MySQL and PHP in addition to the more traditional enterprise-level applications like ASP.NET, ColdFusion and Microsoft SQL without having to offer customers a choice of hosting platforms. According to Tim Uzzanti, President of CrystalTech, "There is just no way to avoid or ignore the popularity and direction of the open source community. The applications and tools that are being released are amazingly stable and secure, and the fact that they are being ported to our environment is a real achievement. We owe it to our customers to explore and implement the best products and services around, and what is coming out of the open source community just gets more and more attractive. In addition, we can now offer the best of the open source community without having to change our infrastructure or move our focus away from the Windows environment."  

Thanks to the licensing that is associated with open source projects, CrystalTech is able to offer MySQL on hosting plans that, in the past, were relegated to Microsoft Access-only database options. This means that CrystalTech customers now get the benefit of what essentially is a low-cost alternative to the more traditional database management system provided by Microsoft. "I would hesitate to say the MySQL is a direct replacement for Microsoft's SQL, but it is certainly a viable alternative for customers who do not have the resources for hosting plans that feature Microsoft's product," continued Mr. Uzzanti. "MySQL is a stable, reliable and powerful platform, and with all of the administrative options customers have, like phpMyAdmin or mySQLFront, there is a real sense of flexibility associated with MySQL."

In addition to offering MySQL, CrystalTech has also developed systems that are integrated into their industry-leading Control Center that allow customers to restore their own databases and bypass the standard restore request feature needed for the restoration of other files and databases. "In researching MySQL, we found it was very easy to integrate into our existing network infrastructure and Control Center. We were able to easily create tools for creating and deleting databases, in addition to restoring databases from existing backups. This gave us even more impetus to get MySQL to our customers," stated Mr. Uzzanti.

With the implementation of MySQL, in addition to the tools that were added to their Control Center, CrystalTech is again taking the lead in rolling out a rich feature set for both current and potential customers, and doing so without incurring any additional costs for those customers. As this is a major addition to their hosting plans, one can only wonder what CrystalTech has in store for the rest of the New Year.

About CrystalTech
Founded in 1992, CrystalTech Web Hosting, Inc. has grown to be one of the largest, debt-free, privately owned companies in the web hosting industry. CrystalTech hosts customers in over 74 countries, ranging from Fortune 100 customers to small businesses. CrystalTech is responsible for 100's of millions of visits each day on the Internet. We provide this service using a state of the art network operation center that includes: redundant power systems, redundant air conditioning, redundant network connectivity, redundant network transportation (land and satellite), secured environment to the network operations center and more.

About MySQL AB
MySQL AB develops and markets a family of high performance, affordable database servers and tools. The company's flagship product is MySQL, the world's most popular open source database, with more than 4 million active installations. Many of the world's largest organizations, including Yahoo!, Sabre Holdings, Cox Communications, The Associated Press and NASA, are realizing significant cost savings by using MySQL to power Web sites, business-critical enterprise applications and packaged software. MySQL AB is a second generation open source company, with dual licensing that supports open source values and methodology in a profitable, sustainable business. For more information about MySQL, please go to www.mysql.com.

About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software - any time, any place and on any device.

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