DiscountASP.NET Announces the Open Control Panel Initiative With the Beta Launch of a Control Panel API

HostReview.com
Thursday, November 2, 2006; 05:56 AM

ASP.NET Hosting and SQL hosting leader, DiscountASP.NET, announces the Open Control Panel Initiative with the Phase I beta launch of a control panel API. The goal of the Open Control Panel Initiative is to offer an open hosting system framework, which provides customers with maximum control over their hosting presence management.

To support this initiative, DiscountASP.NET introduces the control panel API, a standards-based ASP.NET web service API library which customers can use to develop their own web, desktop, or mobile applications that interface directly with their web hosting account. In this Phase I API beta launch, DiscountASP.NET expose methods to display news and resource usage, view and modify email settings, and manage some aspects of Internet Information Services (IIS), such as recycling the application pool.

"We believe the Open Control Panel Initiative and our control panel API represent a major step toward a next-generation hosting experience," said Takeshi Eto, VP Marketing. "Our customers can move beyond accepting hosting management using a host-defined web-based control panel. Customers now have a choice to use the control panel as a hosted application product or manage their hosting presence through web services and customized user-driven solutions."

DiscountASP.NET customers activate access to the API through their control panel and are assigned a unique Authentication Key. A Sandbox Key is also provided so that customers can test their applications without the risk of making changes to their hosting account.

To demonstrate some uses of the control panel API, DiscountASP.NET released two sample applications, which can be downloaded from the DiscountASP.NET Community Forum (http://community.discountasp.net). The download includes the binary executable as well as the complete source code. Customers are free to extend these applications. For example, the Usage Alert Tool is a systray application that allows customers to specify their hosting account and set thresholds for various hosting resources such as bandwidth, disk space, email storage space, and SQL database disk space. The tool displays an alert when the hosting account reaches any of the thresholds. With this tool, the customer no longer has to log into the web-based control panel to review their hosting account resource usage.

"Our guiding principle has always been to offer cutting edge ASP.NET technology and provide customers with increased flexibility and control," added Takeshi Eto. "This API launch delivers on these promises and demonstrates our commitment to innovation."

DiscountASP.NET (www.DiscountASP.NET) is an innovative leader in Microsoft Windows-based shared hosting, focused on providing the best value in ASP.NET and SQL database hosting. A Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, DiscountASP.NET was one of the first hosts to launch ASP.NET 2.0 hosting and SQL 2005 database hosting. Through strong word-of-mouth and their commitment to ASP.NET and SQL technology, DiscountASP.NET has become the choice for affordable and feature-rich enterprise ASP.NET web hosting.