The Planet Extends Industry-Leading Private Rack Solution With New Virtual Rack

May 7, 2008; 08:53 AM

          HOUSTON, May 7, 2008 – The Planet, the world’s largest privately held dedicated hosting company, today extended its popular private rack portfolio with the addition of a new virtual rack solution.  For customers with as few as two servers, the new virtual racks provide an advanced hosting solution that is both cost-effective and offers a smaller footprint. 

           Virtual racks provide customers who require cost-effective scalability and security with the power and flexibility to host advanced multi-server solutions.  By providing a broad choice of servers as well as bandwidth pooling and unlimited server-to-server data transfer, customers can host complex multi-server online applications in The Planet’s world-class data centers without giving up the control they desire.

           For a limited time, the company is offering the first month free on all Kentsfield servers hosted in a virtual rack.  The new virtual racks are available beginning today. 

           “We create high-end interactive media campaigns, which means clients rely on our company to be up and running around the clock.  There’s absolutely no room for error or downtime,” said Mike Glisson, senior systems analyst with Cincinnati-based Bridge Worldwide (http://www.bridgeworldwide.com). “We’ve used the new virtual rack solution from The Planet for the past three months with stellar performance and results.  The scalability allows me to add servers quickly and easily, and still take advantage of the cost-effective pooled bandwidth feature.  With content-rich media, that’s an important added bonus.”                                  

           “Our private rack solutions are the fastest growing segment of our business, which is especially attractive to customers hosting more complex multi-server sites and applications,” said Urvish Vashi, director of product management with The Planet.  “No longer are customers forced to make the difficult choice of purchasing unused capacity or look for costly alternatives like colocation to host their more complex applications.  The new virtual racks offer some of the same economies of scale for companies with a need for more powerful solutions.”

About Virtual Racks

             Virtual racks enhance security, particularly for companies running advanced, high-performance applications that require security and flexibility in multi-server environments:

Unlimited server-to-server transfer:  Multiple servers within the same virtual rack have unlimited connectivity so customers don’t pay for bandwidth between servers.

Reduced risk of bandwidth overages:   Virtual racks allow customers to pool bandwidth across all servers in the environment.  The Planet eliminates the guessing game of which server will accumulate overages, only to find others below their limit.  Pooled bandwidth allows servers to share the bandwidth included with every server purchased from The Planet.

Access  to advanced security and hosting technologies:   A complete hosting solution for complex environments requires advanced firewalls and load balancers.  Virtual racks allow customers to take advantage of these solutions across their multi-server applications.

             To learn more about The Planet’s private rack solutions, please visit the Web site at

http://www.theplanet.com/hosting-products/private-racks/

About The Planet      

             The Planet is the leading provider of On Demand IT Infrastructure solutions, hosting more than 22,000 small- and medium-size businesses and 6.7 million Web sites worldwide.  By offering the best choice of servers, software tools and world-class support, backed by state-of-the-art facilities and unmatched network connectivity, The Planet helps turn information technology into a powerful competitive advantage that enables customers to successfully grow their businesses.  For additional information, visit http://www.theplanet.com.   

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