Dedicated Server Web Hosting Provider, The Planet, Powered by NTT IPv6 Network

Houston, Texas - (The Hosting News) - March 26, 2008 - Privately held dedicated web hosting company, The Planet, along with hosting and web infrastructure service integrator, NTT America, Inc. (NTTA), will offer over 22,000 customers, access to IPv6, the next-generation Internet protocol.

Development on the project begins immediately, and The Planet expects to announce availability in late 2008. IPv6 provides a vast improvement over the current IPv4, deployed in the 1980s, by increasing address space, providing support for mobile devices, and improving quality of service and data security.

Stan Barber, Vice President, Network Operations, at The Planet noted, ''One of our top priorities at The Planet is to make sure all of our customers have access to the best technologies to keep their businesses competitive now and in the future. As the Internet grows in complexity and becomes even more ubiquitous, we're looking to the future so that we are fully prepared to meet the vast needs of our customers. Working with NTT America allows us to add the considerable benefits of IPv6 to The Planet's network and to help our customers prepare for the continued impact the Internet will have on their companies.''

As one of the first hosting companies to announce its plans for IPv6, The Planet continues to provide enhancements that give current customers methodologies to be ready today and for the future. By adding NTT America's IPv6 transit to The Planet network, The Planet will be able to offer each hosting customer an innovative, dual-stack approach, which provides the most efficient approach for using both IPv4 and IPv6 simultaneously.

NTT Communications Group has been directly involved with the development and deployment of IPv6 technology since 1996. With the launch of IPv6 transit services in 2001 and the first IPv6 managed firewall solution in 2005, which was provided by NTT America, the NTT Communications Group established itself as the global leader in commercial IPv6 managed services solutions.

Michael Wheeler, Vice President of Sales and Business Development at NTT America remarked, ''As the operator of the world's largest commercial IPv6 network and with more than ten years of direct involvement with its development and deployment, we are pleased to be able to be working with The Planet to create long-term sustainable growth for their customers on the Internet. We continue to be committed to bringing superior technology, solutions and services to our customers worldwide.''

The NTT Communications Group provides IPv6 Gateway services that are available globally and allow enterprises to connect to the world's only commercial-grade Global Tier One IPv6 Backbone operating in four continents-North America, Europe, Asia and Australia-and serving thousands of customers. In addition, NTT has improved upon the inherent security features of IPv6 with the creation of its IntelliSecurity IPv6 Managed Firewall solution. The solution complements the NTT Communications Group's existing suite of managed IPv6 Gateway Services, and satisfies the need for increased security for IPv6 users. NTT America also provides IPv6 transition solutions through its IPv6 Transition Consultancy, which supports companies' and federal agencies' smooth transition to the upgraded IPv6 network with specialized products and knowledge accumulated through the NTT Communications Group's successful commercial implementation of IPv6 technology.

Ultimately, The Planet's goal is to provide:

• High levels of network capacity and speed to deliver peak performance
• Instant scalability to handle even the largest spikes in network traffic
• Parallel, redundant, multi-tiered network routing and switching architecture to assure reliability and stability
• Multiple layer network security that prevents Delayed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks from harming businesses
• Knowledgeable experts with a passion for excellence and a commitment to operate the best networks in the business

The Planet is a leading provider of On Demand IT Infrastructure solutions, hosting over 22,000 small and medium size businesses and 3.1 million web sites worldwide, using the best choice of servers, software tools and support, backed by enhanced facilities and network connectivity.

For more information about The Planet, please visit: www.theplanet.com.

Firefox Extension for Server Status

There are many server monitoring services out there, but not many have ways for you to easily take in and read that information on your own. One of the few that do is WebSitePulse. They provide a Firefox addon that will give you a brain dead simple way of keeping a watchful eye over your own domains.

Here is a little more about the extension from the developers:

The WebSitePulse Current Status extension provides an easy way to keep an eye in real-time on the status of your servers, websites and web applications when you are using the WebSitePulse monitoring service.

The WebSitePulse extension is broken off into two components. The sidebar will display all targets and their current status. To get more details, all you have to do is click on the name of the target in question.

At the bottom it will also give you a counter telling you when was the last time it was refreshed.

The second component would be the status bar icon which indicates if everything is alright. Here you pretty much play red light, green light. Red is bad and green, well… green is good. You can then right click the status bar icon to customize the extension’s settings.

You will need to also login to WebSitePulse.com and create a free account to use this tool. This current status addon for Firefox does a good job at doing real time status tracking. If you are interested in keeping a watchful eye over your server, it might be worth checking out.

Extra: New Bookmarklet Makes it Easy to Add to MySpace!

© Mitch Keeler - like this? visit Mitchelaneous.com | FirefoxFacts.com | WebHostingShow.com

 

Entering the state of readiness

Planning is the power behind readiness, that ability to respond to challenges and seize opportunities. In the 3000 community, few kinds of customers do more planning than manufacturers — that's why their software systems have been called Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP) and then Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). Both are a bulwark of the 3000's populace and power.

With MRP and ERP in mind, then, it follows that one of the most established advisors to 3000 manufacturing firms has started a new service: HP 3000 legacy readiness. Specifically, the Support Group Inc. is now offering HP 3000 sites Ready State Legacy Support, a service which lets an organization store its 3000 platform with tSGi at a new datacenter in Austin, Texas.

Although the Support Group's Ready-State makes a physical space for your HP 3000, the service's biggest benefit may be the care and feeding of the 3000. The Support Group gives the 3000 customer experienced managers to keep a system available, without the cost of headcount.

Loaded headcounts — the kind which include benefits and training — can run from $80,000 to $130,000 yearly for HP 3000 experts, according to the Support Group. These experts might be managing a migration by now, while the HP 3000 needs to remain available. Expertise is the creamy nougat of Ready-State.

HP 3000 and MPE/iX experience might be the most essential part of the Ready-State offering. As community members age and seasoned managers retire or leave their posts, the 3000 world is battling brain-drain. Even though applications inside companies can be up-to-date, man- and woman-power to maintain these systems is falling below needed resource levels.

Budgets to employ these experts are shrinking, too, along with the capital costs to keep upgrading HP 3000s in a homesteading environment — whether it's the interim homesteader working on a migration, or a permanent homesteader looking to reduce costs.

Ready-State is aimed at the migrating customer first, any company which is moving off production use of a 3000 but wants to keep their system ready for archives, reporting or regulatory compliance. Rather than move all the software and data to another system, Ready-State takes on the server altogether.

So the TSG Ready State service offers what's in shrinking supply to the community: seasoned 3000 pros to boot up a system monthly and ensure it can do month-end or yearly reporting, or access for a remote system which a customer once used onsite.

Your system will be prepared, validated, operationally tested, and then cocooned in a ready-system state. At anytime during your annual agreement, authorized users may request access (based on your security requirements).

tSGi system administrators will boot, load and verify application software. You'll have the peace of mind knowing that within four hours of your formal request, your HP 3000 or VAX will be up and running with modem/VPN /Internet access to your authorized users.

Software supplier extends new service

    A growing number of companies have offered this application support services to the community, but Speedware's marketing director Chris Koppe believes Speedware's support for HP 3000 sites can call on more resources.

   "If you walked around the Speedware offices you'd just find an army of HP 3000 programmers and experts, people who've either relocated here to Montreal or others who live on a more permanent basis. It's almost like the retirement home for the 3000." The company is always hiring or contracting with 3000 experts, he added, because it has "a huge amount of projects that we're dealing with."

   Speedware has doubled in size over the past two years, Koppe explained, both at a revenue level and a staff level, while its services department "has quadrupled or more."

Trailing apps in migrations

    Another 3000 scenario where outside support can help is in a migration site, Koppe said, which has most of its applications moved to a new system. But a few apps remain on the 3000, apps which need supporting until they can be moved along with the rest of the system.

   "A packaged system could cover 90 percent of the 3000 apps, but a customer won't move the other 10 percent, "because they'll die out naturally over the next three years or so."

   Some customers are using applications they took over when a vendor went out of business 10 years ago, while others have modified packaged apps so much that the application vendor "wants nothing more to do with it." Outsourced support can help in either case, Koppe said.

Replacing support with new tools

   Companies run HP 3000s which support 20 to 40 percent of the business without any more 3000 programmers around, Koppe said. In these and other cases, application support can be a part of a permanent engagement, where Speedware takes over for a company's help desk, deploys Web-based knowledge base Speedware tools for support. "A lot of it tends to be remote, where we're VPN connecting and handing requests for the application improvement. We can tailor it around a customer."

   Validating the quality of outside support can be an issue unless the support company submits to a Support Center Practices (SCP) certification, Koppe said. "We have either a full-time or half-time person whose job is to make sure we go through this certification process every year — and that we're following the processes that we laid out."