As the number of web hosting companies continues to grow, the need to implement measures to reduce carbon footprints created by hosting companies also increases.  The world population is becoming increasingly aware of the environmental impact these companies are having and are starting to look for greener options in their hosting choices.  The company that is quickest to implement one of several ways to offset their carbon footprint is the one that will end up with the lion’s share of hosting customers.

Carbon Credits

One simple way to implement a greener style of hosting is by purchasing carbon credits.  A carbon credit is equal to one ton of carbon.  It allows the company to compensate for its greenhouse gas emissions with an equal or greater amount in funding for reducing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.  In some cases, this can even involve reforestation efforts.  Cr8change.org is one such company that does just that with planting one tree every month for every customer that has a hosted account with them.  They are already creating a difference in California which has had its forests devastated on a yearly basis with wildfires.

Green Tags

Green tags are another great way to offset a company’s carbon footprint.  These are also known as Renewable Energy Certificates.  The hosting company purchases these tags and the energy that is delivered to their power grid is certain of being from a green source – wind, solar or hydro power.  A company that can tout being a 300% green web hosting company is GreenGeeks.  They purchase three times the amount of energy they consume in wind energy credits.

Other Ways

Other ways to go green are to use energy friendly server setups or virtualization.  To cut down energy consumption, the server company could house two servers within the same box and have the box use one power source thereby cutting down the total amount of power consumed.  In the case of virtualization, several hosting customers use the same server – paring down the number of servers needed and reducing overall energy consumption.  Many hosting companies choose the virtualization option simply due to it being an easier system implementation and no extra cost being output by the company.

Some companies are going one step beyond and directly using green sources.  One such company is Solar Energy Host.  Their service is entirely powered by energy produced by solar panels.  They sacrifice nothing in reliability or overall service and have the ability to claim themselves as a 100% green powered web hosting company.

As web hosting companies start doing their part to reduce their carbon footprint and more ways to help them implement change are put into place, you can be assured of finding more and more choices when it comes to green web hosting.  Hopefully the end result will be every hosting company out there being able to proclaim themselves as a truly green web hosting company and in turn save our environment from further damage.

One of the hottest concepts in the IT world, virtualization is a revolutionary software technology that is changing the way users all around the world compute.  The powerful computers of today are designed to run a single operating system, leaving most of the hardware underutilized and unable to reach its full potential.  Virtualization enables you to enjoy the full power of a computer by creating multiple virtual machines with a single physical machine.  These virtual computers share the physical resources but can run their own operating systems and applications on the same piece of hardware.  The virtualization market has exploded, evident in the plethora of VPS web hosting solutions and products specifically designed for the desktop environment.  Thanks to this technology, you can now run a copy of Microsoft Windows on your Mac computer.

Virtualization Software in Action

Virtualization software products take hardware resources such as RAM, CPU and hard disk space to establish a fully functioning virtual machine that runs just like a single computer.  Because these virtual machines have their own complete systems, potential conflicts with neighboring environments are virtually eliminated.  Most virtualization programs works by applying a thin application layer on the host machine or operating system.  This layer includes a VMM (virtual machine monitor) more commonly known as a hypervisor, which allocates hardware resources in a dynamic and transparent manner.  After encapsulating the entire machine and its resources, a virtual computer is made completely compatible with all standard x86 operating systems and the applications that support them.  Each machine has access to vital resources on an as needed basis.

Advanced Virtualization Technology

Virtualization technology has evolved so rapidly that some view the partitioning of a single computer as a thing of the past.  Software developer Vmware, one of the virtualization pioneers, helped the technology climb to new heights with its vSphere product, the first cloud computing operating system to hit the market.  vSphere is capable of scaling across numerous physical networked computers and storage devices to create a complete virtual IT infrastructure.  This means there is no need to permanently allocate servers, storage and bandwidth to each individual application.  Instead, these network resources are dynamically allocated when needed.  vSphere offers an internal cloud that ensures your most critical applications will always be able to access the resources they need without shelling out extra money on hardware that is generally only needed during peak times.  Because it can also be connected with an external cloud, vSphere can provide organizations with the flexibility, scalability and availability they need to flourish in today’s fast-paced IT world.  These are just a few examples of how virtualization is quickly growing right before are very eyes.

Conclusion

Aside from the cloud, virtualization is perhaps the most talked about computing technology today.  Ironically, these two concepts compliment each other well and make a perfect match when combined together.  Virtualization allows your IT staff to efficiently handle multiple servers, providing users with access to the resources and services the need all while maintaining centralized authority.  This technology has become the perfect way to deliver the security, performance and availability a thriving organization demands from the desktop to the data center environment.

Just announced, web hosting automation and server virtualization software vendor Parallels, will play a host to a traveling show that targets its partners, hosting firms, cloud service providers and ISVs.

The EMEA Partner Roadshow will share insight regarding the best practices for deploying web applications and services in the hosted environment.  The event will also give comprehensive examples of how hosting providers can leverage white-label reseller solutions to generate a profitable indirect sales channel with a broader range of applications, all while maintaining customer loyalty and brand independence.  White-label reselling allows providers to resell and distribute a number of popular SaasS applications such as Microsoft Exchange Server, Office Communications Server and Sharepoint in a hosted environment.  The key selling point of the SaaS model is that customers merely subscribe to applications rather than buying them outright, generally on a monthly basis.  With this pay-per-usage model, small to medium sized businesses get the benefit of an easy to use, affordable service.

Dan Germain, CTO of managed IT solutions provider Cobweb Solutions Limited, explained how that by leveraging Parallels, the company was able to significantly increase its average per user revenue while reducing operating costs and deploying new solutions faster than ever before.  Germain remarked that it was imperative for them to find a provider capable of properly supporting a white-label service on both a modular and infrastructure level.  This in turn, enabled its partners to transparently resell Cobweb hosting solutions under their own brand.  Thanks to Parallels, Cobweb and its resellers can now provide a multitude of solutions, flexible billing and administration options across its wide array of services.

White-label reselling allows hosting providers to adequately delegate service offerings to clients, thus providing them with a way to offer and resell a broader spectrum of applications without all the cost and complexities of maintaining an infrastructure to distribute the applications themselves.  It also opens up an additional sales channel while allowing resellers to maintain their unique brand identity and loyalty within the customer.  This type of solution makes it possible for almost anyone to operate their own web hosting business.  All they have to do is lease the server space, bandwidth and necessary services from an established hosting firm for a low price that spares them the cost of expensive web servers, network connectivity, IT staff, software licenses and infrastructure.

The 2009 Parallels Partner Roadshow is scheduled to take place on September 1 in Stockholm, Sweden and run through September 7, with the final show wrapping up in London, England.  You find more information or register for the events at the Parallels website.

About Parallels

Founded in 1999, Parallels is a global leading provider of web hosting automation and virtualization software.  Its products are designed to optimize the computing experience for cloud service providers, businesses and consumers across virtually every major operating system, hardware and virtualization platform.  Parallels is currently one of the fastest growing companies in the industry with more than 650 employees throughout the continents of Asia, Europe and North America.

ElasticHosts, UK-based web hosting, virtualization and cloud computing solutions provider, recently add to its portfolio with the launch of new cloud server products.  According to an announcement made last week, these solutions are designed to provide easy to use and highly flexible server capacity for the company’s web hosting and on-demand burst computing customers.

ElasticHosts CEO Richard Davies, said that businesses seeking to leverage the scalability and cost benefits of cloud computing have traditionally had to deal with complicated user interfaces and been limited to a few servers of fixed sizes.  Davies noted that ElasticHosts’ new solutions are designed in a manner where the cloud can be used by almost anyone and permits users to customize the servers to meet their specific needs.  Customers can now take advantage of a user-friendly interface that can be effectively maintained right from their desktops, providing them with the ability instantly create virtual servers and instantly resize their capacity on the spot.

ElasticHosts’ cloud computing solutions provide customers with cost efficiency that comes with being able to purchase enough capacity to suit their existing needs, and easily scale up as their demands increase.  Customers are billed for their capacity on an on-demand and by-the-hour basis.  This is in contrast to traditional service contracts that lock customers into fixed capacities over a certain amount of time.  The ElasticHost servers are compatible with all PC operating systems and can be fully configured and tailored to suit all types of web hosting.  In addition, the company offers a 100% Service Level Agreement along with 100x credits for any downtime ensued.  ElasticHost is currently the only IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) provider to offer its customers reliable service out of two European data centers, leaving PEER 1′s lightning fast, high-performance SuperNetwork infrastructure.  These network features give the company the power to comfortably support the mission-critical IT needs of companies for whom disaster recovery and business continuity are of the utmost importance.

Andrew Fear of UK firm Trana eCommerce and an ElasticHosts client, remarked that while he has tried many other virtual and cloud server solutions in the past, none even came close to the efficiency of what ElasticHosts has to offer.  Now with multiple servers at his disposal, Fear added that the cost savings and scalability were huge benefits, but support was the key advantage as the provider’s technical staff were actually able to communicate fluently on a technical level.

To help offset the launch, ElasticHosts began by allowing customers to experience the cloud’s power and ease of use with a four-day free trial offer.  While this period has since concluded, its cloud services remain very competitive for as low as £29 per month.

About ElasticHosts

Founded in 2008, ElasticHosts delivers extremely affordable and flexible server capacity for a wide range of scalable hosting and on-demand burst computing needs.  The company provides easy to use hosting solutions, with highly customizable platforms that offer the flexibility and control of a traditional hosted server, but with the ability to be maintained from any browser to unleash all the added benefits of virtualization technology.

Microsoft has placed its stamp on the virtualization phenomenon with the launch of Hyper-V, a new technology that adds to the power of the Windows Server 2008 platform.  Hyper-V represents the next era of virtualization, allowing administrators and hosting customers to get the most out of their sever investments and usage.  What sets it apart from other virtualization platforms is the ability to run a number of different operating systems in parallel on a single physical server.  It doesn’t matter if you prefer Windows, Linux or Unix, Hyper-V allows you to take full advantage of 64-bit computing.

Server Consolidation

Today’s businesses are under a lot of pressure to simplify management processes all while reducing costs and maintaining competitive benefits such as flexibility, scalability, reliability and security.  Hyper-V enables organizations to meet these goals by consolidating multiple servers within a single system while maintaining isolation.  Aside from saving money on individual servers, this type of virtualization also provides for lower processing power, cooling and management costs.  Businesses of various sizes can benefit from an asset standpoint as well as capabilities that allow them to effectively balance workloads across multiple resources.  This results in improved flexibility that allows for the integration of 32-bit and 64-bit operations in the same environment.

Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity

Business continuity refers to the ability to reduce both scheduled and unscheduled downtime.  This includes time lost due to routine operations such as backup and maintenance as well untimely events caused by failures and outages.  Hyper-V offers extensive business continuity features such as live backup and seamless migration capabilities that enable businesses to meet demanding uptime and response metrics.

Disaster recovery is an essential element of business continuity.  Emergencies, natural disasters, malicious physical attacks and even simple configuration issues such as software conflict all have the power to cripple an organization’s vital data before administrators have a chance to back it up.  Leveraging the clustering features integrated into Windows Server 2008, Hyper-V supports disaster recovery across diverse IT environments and data centers.  Fast, reliable disaster recovery and business continuity tools help to ensure minimal data loss and enhanced remote management capabilities.

Improved Testing and Development

Testing and development are usually the first functions businesses take advantage of with virtualization technology.  The use of virtual machines allows development staff to create and test a wide range of scenarios in a secure, self-contained environment that precisely approximates the operation of physical clients and servers.  Hyper-V enables the maximum utilization of test hardware, helping to reduce costs, improve test coverage and life cycle management.  With support for numerous operating systems and checkpoint features, this virtualization solution makes an excellent platform for test and development environments.

Server virtualization is a hot commodity in the IT world for the potential of benefits that can be weighed on the scales of cost and performance.  Already one of the pioneers in web technology, Microsoft can now be credited for enhancing the virtualization concept and enabling businesses all over the world to enjoy a more dynamic IT infrastructure.