The Latest Internet Explorer 8.0 Challenges The Hosting Companies

Microsoft’s latest version of Internet Explorer isn’t exactly causing outright panic, but hosting providers, managed service providers and software as a service companies still find plenty of challenge in the new browser.

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 didn’t incite the kind of panic that occurred with last years’ Daylight Saving Time debacle, but MSPs and hosted application providers say there’s still plenty of work to be done to ensure that customers weather the transition smoothly.

“This impacts our entire customer base and all our delivery models, from managed services to SaaS and even our systems integrators,” says Stephen Moss, chief operating officer at NSPI – a Microsoft partner.

While end users familiarize themselves with the new features, capabilities and quirks of the browser, their MSPs, SaaS providers and/or solution providers are doing the same thing. What they are finding is a browser that isn’t exactly services ready.

“We have to add the caveat that customers are upgrading at their own risk while we also get fully up to speed,” Moss says. “Absolutely, yes, we can help them work through any issues that arise, but we are on the same page and we are going through it with them.”

Urvish Vashi, director of product management for hosted applications provider The Planet, is already seeing about 3 percent of the site’s traffic coming in via IE 8. Customer challenges aren’t just limited to Internet Explorer, but customers are seeing functionality and rendering issues as more vendors join the browser market, he said.

“As the browser wars heat up, customers are seeing the same problems no matter whether they’re using IE, Firefox, Safari,” Vashi says. “While all these browsers say they support proper rending of standards-based Web pages, customers find that things don’t work the same or they don’t look the same,” he says.

At the MIX09 event held in Las Vegas last week, Microsoft’s Mike Nash said IE 8 has more than 500 new add-ons for the browser including accelerators, Web slices and visual search. Accelerators invoke an online service from any other Web page using only the mouse, eliminating the need for users to copy and paste content between Web pages. Web Slices allow users to subscribe only to small pieces—slices—of a Web page, and are updated by the browser.

Nash, corporate vice president of Windows product management, said security, ease of use, and improvements in RSS, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) support also are key priorities for IE 8.
IE 8 also features the Internet Explorer Administration Kit 8 (IEAK 8), which lets users configure the browser to meet their company's customized default settings. This feature standardizes functionality across all browsers, making administration easier, and also blocks access to unwanted or risky internal or Internet applications for greater security.

Moss says IE 8 will impact each facet of NSPI’s three major routes to market in different ways, but adds that NSPI is quite familiar with how to help customers make the changes.

For NSPI’s traditional systems integration practice – which includes software, infrastructure and services from large vendors like Microsoft, Cisco, EMC and IBM—the process will be fairly straightforward, says Moss, as NSPI ensures that applications and infrastructure work seamlessly with the new browser.

The managed services practice challenges are much the same, although some customers have challenges related to data hosted in a co-location or in an off-site data center.

“These customers will need our help to ensure that what we tested in the lab before the actual release will work in real life,” Moss says. “There’s a lot of due diligence we’re doing right now to make sure their Web applications can work correctly.”

The trickiest customers are those who use NSPI’s SaaS offerings, says Moss, since these can include insurance, financial and healthcare customers who have stringent change management policies and that must remain in compliance with government regulations.

NSPI also has a number of custom software and environments developed for customers, he says, and those will need to be completely recertified for the new browser. Same goes for hosted application environments, such as Exchange, he says, which must be tested to make sure they work seamlessly.

While the certification and configuration work for optimizing IE 8 is time consuming and disruptive to end users, there’s a bright side, says Moss. “Yes, this involves a lot of time and hassle for them, but for us, there’s revenue that’s going to be driven as we make these changes,” he says.

Moss says past experience with Microsoft upgrades leads him to believe NSPI’s customer base will be fully migrated to the new version of IE within about six months given the number of new and enhanced features and security fixes that can be added to their environments.

While the changes do require some effort and patience, that overall he expects things will go smoothly. “We’re certainly not freaking out and panicking, and neither are our customers,” Moss says. “Everyone sees the changes coming now and with our help they’ll be prepared.”

For The Planet, the challenge is much the same – quickly resolving customer issues to make sure they can continue to run their businesses successfully with minimal disruption.

“Customers work with hosting providers like us because their Web presence is their lifeblood, their applications are crucial to them and that’s what they do best,” Vashi says. “The onus is on us to do better validation and testing across all platforms and browsers to make sure everything works right and looks right.”

Reseller Hosting Plans, Upgraded at AvaHost Web Hosting Company

Houston, Texas - (The Hosting News) - March 16, 2009 - AvaHost.Net web hosting company has offered to upgrade each of its Reseller Hosting Plans so that those interested, may easily start a web hosting business.

Since its founding in 2001, AvaHost has been giving its clients attractive ''packages.'' The new package increases the appeal of the AvaHost reseller hosting plans. Each new package gives a client a monthly traffic allowance that is two times the size that AvaHost provided earlier, before offering any type of upgrade.

In addition, each new AvaHost Reseller upgrade will include an increase in the amount of disk space that is to be made available to the client. Moreover, each AvaHost Web Hosting (http://www.avahost.net) client will have an opportunity to renew his or her contract, a contract that calls for regular payments of only $15.95 per month.

AvaHost knows that each of its clients expects that payment of the monthly fee will provide any one client with top notch web hosting services. So AvaHost has promised some free software to each online company that invests in AvaHost's Reseller upgrade. That company will receive both an Online Web Site Builder and a 1-Click Auto Installer. Armed with such equipment, the same company should be able to install 50 of the most popular, the most 'in demand,' open source software.

That offer of free software comes on top of great guarantees, guarantees that are already mentioned on the AvaHost website. AvaHost now gives each of its clients a 60 day guarantee. An unhappy AvaHost customer can expect to receive back any money that he or she spent for reseller web hosting (http://www.avahost.net/reseller.html) services within a 60 day starting period. (Minus the cost of a domain name registration).

According to the company, Owner of the website dishsatellite.com and client of AvaHost remarked, ''They took the time to answer my questions and have provided great service for this last year.''

Since 2001, for eight years, AvaHost has been providing service/support for personal web sites and small-to-medium sized business with web hosting solutions.

Dedicated Web Hosting, Featured on JDT Web Host Upgraded Website

Milton, Pennsylvania - (The Hosting News) - March 9, 2009 - Managed hosting provider, JDT Web Host, has upgraded its website with a new design, advanced services and a user friendly navigation, with detailed web hosting plans and customer's testimonials.

The upgraded website offers newly designed various web hosting packages for Windows hosting, Linux hosting as well as for new windows 2003 and MS SQL server 2008.

The site comprises a more simple to use structure, with new features incorporated for more flexibility. The company's portfolio provides services such as dedicated hosting, domain registrations, managed hosting, corporate email services and a big range of other services too. The new site was developed using technologies such as whois script, PHP and MySql for an enhanced visitor experience.

JDT Web Host is a Computer and Internet Technologies Firm located in Milton, Pennsylvania. JDT Web Host over 10 years of experience bringing IT, Networking, Computer and web hosting to the public. JDT Web Host delivers US based web hosting, dedicated servers, logo design and corporate e-mailing services.

Web Host eUKhost.com Adds Coldfusion 8

(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Web hosting provider eUKhost.com (www[dot]eukhost[dot]com) has launched ColdFusion 8 web hosting plans, allowing users to create complex, dynamic, database-driven web applications.

According to the company's Tuesday announcement, its ColdFusion 8 web hosting plans are hosted on Microsoft Windows 2003 server and powered by ColdFusion 8 Enterprise edition, offering greater security and performance benefits with features such as application sandbox security, multi-threaded business report and PDF/FlashPaper generation, event gateways and support for enterprise database drivers.

ColdFusion is a software development framework as well as an application server for dynamic web application development. It lets users connect a back-end database, upload and download files on server, embed email messaging feature, embed shopping cart, create and manage scheduled tasks, and publish web pages.

"We planned to include Coldfusion Hosting to our already on-demand hosting plans after some recent demand for it from some potential customers," eUKhost sales and marketing manager Ryan Watson said in a statement. "ColdFusion 8 windows web hosting definitely provides a highly robust and flexible environment, combined with our 99.95 percent up-time guarantee and our reliable 24/7 support and monitoring. We expect a superb response to this brand new offering and we look forward to seeing what the ColdFusion developer community can do with this impressive new product."

eUKhost also adds that its Windows web hosting servers are running Coldfusion MX 8, combined with SQL Server 2005, providing web developers powerful development capabilities.

This announcement makes eUKhost the latest host to offer Coldfusion 8 hosting, placing it among the ranks of Media3 Technologies (www.media3.net), CrystalTech (www.crystaltech.com), and others.

In September 2008, managed hosting provider HostMySite (www.hostmysite.com) began offering ColdFusion 8 Enterprise licenses for $149 per month when customers purchase at least one dedicated server, letting resellers use the licence to deliver ColdFusion capabilities to multiple websites and applications on one or more servers.