Posted by NaviSite Quarterly

Cutting costs is the top agenda of enterprises in the current economic backdrop. However, cost trims are not synonymous with trimming business efficiency. Some near-term cost-saving initiatives, if chosen carefully, can surely help you execute your long-term vision. Read more…

Posted by NaviSite Quarterly

Did you know that the live coverage of Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration was watched by 21.3 million over the Web, with more than 7.7 million streams flowing concurrently at peak time?

The soaring popularity of the Internet has opened up vast opportunities to deliver your content to your globally dispersed audience. And with democratization of the net, there is no limit to the volume or formats of content that are delivered online. This has created a demand for newer, better Content Delivery Network (CDN) solutions that tap into the power of Internet to deliver a jitter-free user experience, without increasing costs associated with the delivery of content that could include software, games, audio/video, CAD/CAM images, blueprints, and much more. Read more…

Posted by NaviSite Quarterly

NaviSite Bridges the Gap between High-Performance Data Centers and Reduced Costs

Downtime, Disruption, Cost, and Compliance – companies are continuously faced with these IT challenges. Gartner believes that during the 2009–2014 period, delivery of IT infrastructure services will become highly automated. Considering the current economic environment, it is the right time to leverage the IT infrastructure of tomorrow to gain a competitive advantage in the future. However, with infrastructure costs soaring, companies are exploring solutions and providers that can help them keep their data center costs to a minimum without compromising on the performance and availability of IT resources. Read more…

Posted by Mark Clayman

Achieve SaaS application up-time: 97%.  That was the headline on a research report released today by the Aberdeen Group of Retailers use of SaaS solutions.  For those that haven’t done the quick math on this, 97% up-time works out to just under 22 hours of downtime in a month… almost a full day every month without your on-demand application being available.  While this number is fairly shocking in itself, it actually gets worse.  The 97% availability was for the “Best in Class: Top 20%” of aggregate performance scorers.  “Industry Average: Middle 50%” had up-time scores of 93% (just over 50 hours of downtime… over 2 days/month!) and Laggard:  Bottom 30%… well, is it even worth mentioning at this point. Read more…

Posted by Vishal Sharma

If you get headaches thinking about the content formats that you’re delivering to your audience these days, and distances that content travels before getting into the right hands – then you should probably consider getting an outsourced content delivery network (CDN). However, choosing a CDN provider is not an easy decision.

Gone are the days when content delivery by businesses was restricted to static content like images or html files. The digital age has ushered in new formats like dynamic electronic files, large streaming audio/video files, software, games, and many more. These new formats require dynamic, efficient, and scalable storage and routing technologies like load balancing to relieve load on servers and deliver content to end users quickly. Read more…

Posted by NaviSite Quarterly

By Maria Mariotti, Marketing Programs Director, NaviSite US

Built to best-in-class data center standards as well as environmental standards for energy efficiency – NaviSite’s newest UK (Woking) data center makes itself known with its first $10 million contract from a leading European customer.

Proving that the demand for a premium data center and scalable network capacity in the European market continues to outdistance the available supply, NaviSite recently announced that a leading online European gaming operator has chosen the Woking data center to provide colocation services. The contract represents more than $10 million dollars of total contract value over a 10-year period.

NaviSite’s Woking data-center capacity delivers high density power and cooling of up to 2000 watts per square meter, supported by UPS and generator backup. In addition to meeting SAS70 Type II audited and energy standards, the data center is well equipped to provide managed services, including utility computing platform, secure back-up services, on-demand storage, virtual servers and network security solutions. Customers will be able to connect to the Internet via resilient carriers and utilize Content Delivery and Acceleration services.

“We’re thrilled that this customer has chosen NaviSite and will become the first to utilize our best-in-class European data center in Woking,” said Sean McAvan, Managing Director, NaviSite, U.K. “A major figure in European online gaming, this customer will use NaviSite’s new data center to house its network systems, web traffic, and infrastructure services.”

If you have any questions or need more information on the Woking data center, feel free to contact the author of this article at mmariotti@navisite.com.

Posted by NaviSite Quarterly

NaviSite and Intel Working Together to Sell Into the SMB Space

By Sumeet Sabharwal, Senior Vice President, Global Delivery

As you already know, NaviSite announced an alliance with Intel Corporation in April, 2008 to offer a suite of managed services sold through Intel’s value added reseller (VAR) community. The partnership had been in the making for over nine months, and provides NaviSite with an extensive, well manifested, and low cost channel to sell into the SMB market space. NaviSite’s Intel Hosting service, as it is marketed, is more than an addition to our managed services portfolio…it offers exciting growth opportunities both for NaviSite and for resellers in the SMB space.

NaviSite’s Intel Hosting Service offered through Intel provides resellers with a comprehensive menu of services to market under their own brands and satisfies the growing demand for such services in the Small and Medium Business (SMB) segment. In addition, NaviSite will assist the resellers in making the business transition to become managed service providers by providing the necessary delivery, technical, marketing, and sales support.

Let’s take a look at the key aspects of NaviSite’s Intel Hosting Service.

Why focus on the SMB space?

The market for managed services among SMBs represents the largest area of growth in this segment. Tier 1 Research, the independent research and consulting firm covering public and private companies within the IT industry, reports that managed hosting remains the largest segment within this sector and will continue to grow at a rate of 24 percent. According to Tier 1, SMBs and Mid-Market enterprises are fueling this growth in hosting services. With the Intel partnership, NaviSite can now access an established network to tap into this marketplace without the need for extensive investments on our end.

Why partner with Intel?

Partnering with Intel gives NaviSite an extensive community of well-established regional VARs who are already offering a wide-variety of services to the SMB marketplace. Some of these VARs are keen to expand into the Hosting space, and offer their customers managed services. However, they lack the scale, expertise, and infrastructure to provide such services, and view something like this as a quick and easy way to capture additional revenue, while extending their relationship with the customer. It also helps them to reshape their business model into the one based on recurring revenue with a higher degree of predictability.

What is the service labeled as Intel Hosting Service?

Given Intel’s established brand and relationships with its VAR community, we have made a conscious decision to leverage this and position the service as one that is being truly backed by Intel. It serves to reassure the VAR that the underlying services are being delivered from a stable platform with a high degree of reliability. In addition, Intel is really assuming the front role in marketing the service and training its VARs.

What underlying services are being offered? Why only focus on a subset of the NaviSite portfolio?

The portfolio of reseller services provided by NaviSite includes hosted email services with filtering and archiving, hosted collaboration suite for online information-sharing, online backup and remote monitoring and management services for all IT assets, including client servers, desktops and network devices. Not only will the program allow resellers the flexibility to select the right service combination to meet their customers’ needs, they will also have the added benefit of dealing with a single provider in NaviSite, thus avoiding compatibility and resolution issues for their customers. As we gain traction with the program, we will be looking to progressively expand the scope and nature of the underlying services.

Who can I go to for additional questions?

The program and relationship is being managed by  Sumeet Sabharwal (ssabharwal@navisite.com). Please feel free to contact him for additional details.

Posted by NaviSite Quarterly

NaviSite Adds New Dimension to Cloud Computing

By Denis Martin, Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President 

In our last newsletter, we talked about NaviSite’s efforts towards developing a next generation application platform to add value to the services provided to our customers. After our extensive research efforts, we launch AppStructure – NaviSite’s entry into cloud computing and beyond. AppStructure is the dynamic infrastructure with bundled software tools for complex application and enterprise hosting support.

We have been using various forms of virtualization technology for processing, storage and network for years. In the past 18 months, we have been focusing on further ‘productization’ of our virtualization platform and expanded features and functions. The result is AppStructure! As a virtualized infrastructure, AppStructure provides all the services expected from an on-demand, elastic platform. With AppStructure, we can quickly provision and even dynamically allocate CPU’s, memory, storage and network. The platform provides inherent business continuity and availability with fail over and redundancy. It also provides greater ability to scale and operate efficiently.

Being an enterprise hosting and application service provider, our virtualized offerings go beyond physical infrastructure and operating systems. Our approach to virtualization is designed to provide support for complex systems and application integration. In line with our original Collaborative Application Management systems and NaviView portal, AppStructure provides support for a range of Web 2.0 and SOA tools.

The SOA software toolset is primarily focused on functionality packaged as services for building application connectors – to facilitate data transfer and application integration. This enterprise system bus approach on the dynamic infrastructure makes AppStructure a truly unique offering. The platform also includes AJAX-based development support with various Web 2.0 tools for wikis, blogs, RSS feeds, etc.

We are extremely excited about AppStructure and believe it will help us further differentiate in a complex market. As Software-as-a-Service and outsourcing continue to grow and evolve, enterprises are increasingly challenged to integrate applications to support business needs. AppStructure’s integrated technology environment makes enterprises more responsive and adaptable to the fast-changing needs.

If you have any questions on AppStructure or want to know how NaviSite can help you benefit from this, feel free to contact the author of this article at DMartin@navisite.com.

Posted by NaviSite Quarterly

NaviSite’s Shared Hosting Platform

By William Toll, Director Product Management, Shared Hosting

NaviSite’s shared hosting platform offers a rare combination of best-in-class virtual infrastructure, continuous support, and unmatched reliability – a reason why over 150,000 end-customers depend on our hosting solutions. As a leader in the hosting space, we continue to enhance our solutions in alignment with changing customer needs. This is what helps us win the confidence of our customers and take them towards newer heights of success.

The Shared Hosting business unit at NaviSite has two key components:

• Alabanza: A Reseller platform that powers over 200 SMBs and provides them with a hosted managed infrastructure and associated automation software to run an independent shared hosting business. For example, several of our resellers host, manage and assist over 5,000 small businesses with their Websites and Internet-based applications. An Alabanza reseller has the services and products which enable a small business to have a presence on the Web. Right from an ecommerce storefront, to a blog to the software needed to build an online community, Alabanza has everything they need for success. Today, over 120,000 small businesses depend on Alabanza and our resellers.
• Hosting Ventures: This includes several direct brands including successfulhosting.com, linuxwebhost.com and others that provide shared hosting packages to SMBs and consumers. Our shared Web hosting brands are some of the most valuable and diverse in the industry.

While we generated much unwanted attention during the Alabanza migration, we have come a long way since in rebuilding the confidence of our customers and expanding the platform to provide a continued high level of service. Our customers now enjoy the benefits of a stable enterprise solution with a truly virtual infrastructure – something which is really unheard of in the shared hosting industry. We continue to invest in the proprietary DSM platform for enhancements and new additions to our products and services – enabling our resellers to capitalize on the full value of the relationships with their downstream customers.

Having a shared platform with thousands of well-published domains does present some challenges. A key challenge is SPAM, which we are addressing as a key priority with the introduction of solutions from external providers like MX Logic.

On the direct side, our Hosting Ventures brands, which include SuccessfulHosting, are experiencing growth and customer satisfaction. The customers for these brands are veterans of the Web; they understand and know the importance of the Web and the powerful applications we enable them with. These small businesses share their success stories with each other, and word of mouth keeps our Hosting Ventures growing and lively. In the coming months, we will continue to enhance the offerings and begin a program to attract additional customers.

If you have any questions or need more information on our Shared Hosting business, feel free to contact Sumeet Sabharwal (ssabharwal@navisite.com) or William Toll (wtoll@navisite.com).

Posted by NaviSite

Colocation and datacenter services are becoming an increasingly compelling solution for organizations in the leaner economic scenario. Recently, NaviSite launched a new enterprise class data center facility in Woking, UK to meet the rising colocation demand and has already won a contract worth over USD 10 million for providing colocation services through this facility to a leading online European gaming operator. This facility could be expanded up to 70,000 sq feet of datacenter space.

The demand for premium data center and scalable network capacity in the European market is the main catalyst for NaviSite’s expansion plans in the UK colocation market. Gartner research says that some UK colocation providers are experiencing annual increases in demand of 30% or more. Gartner further estimates that in high-demand areas like London, if significant new data center space is not brought on-stream, there will be no free space left by the end of the decade. In fact, this rising demand and limited supply is what is allowing providers to continue to increase pricing. The UK colocation pricing is the highest in Western Europe and would continue to rise at rates higher than inflation for the next couple of years.

The obvious question here is: what is triggering this rising demand for colocation and data center services in the UK market?

While the traditional benefits of colocation – like reduced costs and premium, energy-efficient infrastructure facilities with multiple carriers, better redundancy, improved power and cooling standards, 24×7 monitoring, and enhanced security – remain an attraction for organizations to reach out to the colocation providers, there is an underlying reason why colocation is healthy and growing.

The emergence of internet-driven business models are a key factor behind the push in colocation demand. Today, rising number of UK retailers are focusing on e-commerce opportunities to maximize sales, engage customers, and strengthen their brand. According to Brand Republic, the UK’s leading online business portal, the online shopping sales in the UK exceeded GBP 4 billion a month for the first time in July 2007 – witnessing an annual increase of 36%. Furthermore on current trends it’s predicted that by 2009, 15% of all shopping in the UK will be done on the internet. In the coming years, surging numbers of consumers will continue to go shopping online for everything from eco-friendly white goods to purely digital content to luxury products. Recent Nielsen Media Research stated that 97% of UK people with internet access already shop online. So, organizations want to cash in every tryst of the users with the net, which is now more accessible – be it at home, at workplace, or even while traveling.

This tremendous growth in e-commerce coupled with rising popularity and easy access of internet tools brings along with it the related demand for server space, secure environments and an increased bandwidth demand to support the increasing traffic comprising customers, partners, suppliers or any other key constituents of a business. This is more valid for small and mid-sized companies with large internet traffic volume who need a server environment that is always up and running with minimal outages and yet cannot afford in-house facilities.

So in this world of e-opportunities, the colocation space continues to thrive. And NaviSite continues to lead and redefine this space with its managed data center solutions that are flexible, reliable, and robust – be it utility computing platforms, secure back-up services, on-demand storage, virtual servers, network security solutions, and cloud computing.