In terms of overall growth, almost one-third of cloud providers say they experienced “amazing growth,” while none shrank. Roughly half of hosting providers experienced “moderate growth.”

OnApp found itself the most popular platform, with 65 percent of service providers as customers. VMware has 35 percent, followed by Virtuozzo and OpenStack at 13 percent each, and CloudStack at 6 percent. A further 24 percent run one or two platforms.

A strong majority of both service providers (79 percent) and customers (86 percent) say support is a main reason for provider choice, while price was selected by just over half on each side. Ease-of-use, however, is an important reason for choosing their service provider according to 91 percent, and the same portion of service providers agree. The survey shows that service providers generally have a good understanding of what their customers care about.

SEE ALSO: Is Hybrid Cloud the Future of Enterprise IT?

When asked what has stopped customers from buying their services, 18 percent say a lack of cloud functionality was a big problem, ahead of price and “cloud fear/uncertainty/doubt” (15 percent). Vendor tie-in is sometimes a problem for half of service providers surveyed, while legislation is considered easily the least problem among the 11 choices provided.

While AWS is commonly seen as a major threat, local competitors are considered the top threat by a quarter of service providers, and Digital Ocean (22 percent) is named just as often as AWS.

Overall, service providers are optimistic, with 70 percent feeling positive about the future, and more feeling neutral (18 percent) than worried (13 percent).

Source: TheWHIR

Related Web Hosting Talk Thread: Can I get your quick opinion? Looking for new host for WordPress blog

WP Engine cites surveys by Akamai and Gomez showing that a one second increase in page load time results in significantly fewer page views, lower customer satisfaction, and a reduced conversion rate. Bob Buck, VP of Technology for Deep Information Sciences explained some of the causes and risks associated with slow page load times for the WHIR in January, and specifically mentioned the potential performance challenges of running a demanding enterprise load on WordPress. Enterprises are finding way to deal with the limitations of the open-source content management system through third parties like WP Engine that enable enterprise-grade performance, founder Jason Cohen told the WHIR in March.

“The managed WordPress platform space has grown significantly over the last few years, with increasing adoption of WordPress among enterprises,” said Liam Eagle, senior analyst at 451 Research. “As WordPress pushes deeper into the enterprise, and consequently more complex sites, the need for services that optimize the performance of those sites has grown. With the launch of Page Performance, WP Engine becomes the first managed WordPress platform to offer a product that addresses this need with a web page speed performance tool integrated into the user dashboard, enabling customers to quickly make adjustments that improve the performance of their sites.”

Media Temple launched a competitor managed WordPress offering for enterprises and agencies earlier this month, as enterprise WordPress demand grows.

Source: TheWHIR

Other topics include metrics, e-commerce, and of course lots of security. HostingCon attendees can also learn from and share with the other industry players in the sessions they choose. In the Monday afternoon technology speed roundtables, and in all other sessions in the technology track, valuable insights will be shared about the latest hardware and software affecting the hosting and cloud computing.

Exhibit hall continues to fill, as do the two official hotels of HostingCon Global New Orleans. Early bird rates are available for a few more weeks, so register now to get your $100 off.

Source: TheWHIR

SEE ALSO: Contents of Megaupload’s Canadian Servers Still Unknown as Ontario Court Determines Next Steps

The filing by the RIAA and MPAA was in response to a request for a six-month pause in the ongoing lawsuit between the industry groups and the alleged piracy enabler. The RIAA and MPAA objected to the delay, complaining of the risk of data loss.

Cogent says its inability to read the data could be caused by “drive heads” which are “frozen,” but is unwilling to perform free diagnostics and maintenance or repairs on machines it is essentially holding for the DOJ.

In the criminal case against Megaupload, Carpathia parent QTS recently moved to be relieved of its obligations relating to the storage of over 1,100 servers once leased by Megaupload. A decision by the court on that matter is pending.

“Having seized control of the Carpathia servers in order to obtain ‘selected’ portions of the data, the government has triggered its duty to preserve the remaining data because the entire data-set ‘might be significant’ to the defense of the Criminal Action,” Megaupload argues, and that entire data-set includes the Cogent servers.

The RIAA and MPAA filed a motion (PDF) on the same day as Megaupload to have the Cogent data subpoenaed, or copied and preserved by a court-appointed third party.

A judge told the parties to the criminal action to figure out the Carpathia server maintenance issue in April of 2012, and has been attempting to arbitrate some kind of arrangement ever since.

Source: TheWHIR

Block told analysts that all of Amazon now uses Salesforce, and a source told Barb Darrow of Fortune that Amazon had reached a deal with Salesforce to extend all Salesforce software to all of its employees. Darrow speculates that that deal could be the “nine-figure deal” closed this quarter.

Features of Salesforce’s marketing tools announced last week also run on AWS, Block said, as does, perhaps tellingly, “a lot” of company research and development. A Salesforce spokesperson also told Fortune that SMB sales software SalesforceIQ runs on AWS.

Benioff also hinted at more announcements from Salesforce involving AWS at its upcoming developer conference TrailheaDX and customer conference Dreamforce.

Shifting away from the cloud, or AWS in particular, can reduce costs for companies like Dropbox, but Salesforce appears to be betting heavily on AWS to grow its margins.

Source: TheWHIR

The WordPress version is touted as a solution for SMBs needing advanced site functionality, while the simple plan provides a basic, single-page web presence for contact information.

“We’ve talked with many Canadian small business owners and we have heard that they’re challenged to build professional-looking websites within their budgets,” said Jill Schoolenberg, Vice President of GoDaddy Canada. “Our Professional Web Services make it simple and cost effective for Canadian SMBs to benefit from a professional-looking website and SEO services, while enabling small business owners to focus on what they do best – running their businesses.”

GoDaddy’s Logo Design Service was launched in January to allow customers to receive a logo within a week.

Three new tools were launched by GoDaddy for Canadian SMBs in October, including SEO beginner tool Search Engine Visibility.

GoDaddy also launched in 11 new Asian markets earlier in the year, and it seems likely that GoDaddy will extend Professional Web Services to those and other international markets in the future.

Source: TheWHIR

The “strange guessing game” began last Thanksgiving, according to Lovecruft’s blog, when an FBI agent left a business card with an additional phone number and a note to call him written on it at the home of Lovecruft’s parents in California. Her family contacted technology and surveillance law attorney Ben Rosenfeld, who called the FBI agent. The agent reportedly expressed skepticism that Rosenfeld was Lovecruft’s legal representative, and said “but… if we happen to run into her on the street, we’re gonna be asking her some questions without you present.”

Soon after, Lovecruft left the US, planning to complete a previously planned migration to Germany.

“I was worried they’d ask me to do something that hurts innocent people — and prevent me from telling people it’s happening,” Lovecruft told CNN.

A subsequent phone call between a different FBI agent and Lovecruft’s lawyer revealed that FBI teams in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, and Atlanta were looking for her, and that the FBI would prefer a meeting in person to a phone call, so that Lovecruft could share her opinion on documents the agency held. Another phone call indicated that the matter of the documents had been resolved, but the FBI was still hoping to meet with Lovecruft.

Lovecruft’s blog includes speculation about the FBI’s motivation and intentions in seeking a meeting. It also suggests harassment on the part of the FBI, and contains provisions (such as a warrant canary) for communicating as much as possible about the situation in the event that a sealed subpoena or National Security Letter is served.

The FBI has previously subpoenaed Carnegie Mellon University researchers to hack the Tor network, and possibly delivered malware to the network to identify its users.

Source: TheWHIR

“In an industry which lacks leadership and teamwork we are very pleased to be able to work with Jared and the team at Servers Australia to allow us to both deliver a higher level of service to our respective customers,” said VentraIP Australia Chief Executive Officer, Angelo Giuffrida.

Servers Australia Chief Executive Officer Jared Hirst said the move would streamline the company’s internal processes ahead of another “major announcement in the coming weeks,” according to a release. Giuffrida also hinted at an upcoming announcement from VentraIP.

“Dedicated servers are our bread and butter, and we are very excited to be able to put our full attention on extending our product range while chasing new opportunities in the market, with the added benefit of VentraIP Australia referring their customers who require dedicated servers our way,” said Hirst. “I am very confident that Angelo and the team at VentraIP Australia will take great care of our shared hosting customers and be able to offer them a whole new suite of additional products and services to continue to grow their businesses.”

CRN reports that Servers Australia made $5.7 million (AUD) in revenue in 2015, while VentraIP made $6.5 million.

VentraIP has been growing rapidly, and was up to 125,000 customers before the deal with Servers Australia, according to CRN. VentraIP also picked up over 15,000 customers when it acquired Aussie host Intaserve in July.

Source: TheWHIR

“As organizations adopt agile IT delivery models in order to continuously innovate and differentiate themselves, security becomes either a business inhibitor or a business enabler,” said Ram Krishnan, CloudPassage Chief Product Officer. “What’s needed to enable this transformation is on-demand, automated security that delivers a comprehensive set of controls right at the workload, no matter where it lives, in any combination of infrastructure models, at any scale. CISOs now have the opportunity to help their businesses leapfrog their competition.”

Respondents were divided between being “moderately” or “very” concerned about public cloud security, but over nine out of ten report concern. Forty-eight percent saying traditional network security tools are somewhat ineffective when applied to cloud infrastructure, 11 percent saying they are completely ineffective, and a further 25 percent saying their effectiveness cannot be measured in cloud environments. The fallout of this situation is that almost half of those surveyed said security slows down continuous development methods like DevOps, and another 15 percent said security is completely ignored in the process.

As the need for agile development outpaces security tools and practices, it is hardly surprising that verifying security policies, visibility, and compliance are the top three headaches for companies adopting cloud infrastructure, according to the survey.

Encryption is considered the best cloud security technology, for data at rest (65 percent) and in motion (57 percent), followed by intrusion detection and prevention (48 percent) and access controls (45 percent).

Survey results released by ScienceLogic in November showed similar concerns about organization visibility into and control over public clouds, and a survey earlier in 2015 from Vanson Bourne and Tata Communications showed security concerns slowing cloud adoption, and confining much of it to private clouds.

Source: TheWHIR

“Based on the feedback we collected from the WordPress community and our pilot program, we know that enterprises take WordPress very seriously. They also want to partner with experts who can unleash the power of the cloud for them and help increase their overall business efficiency,” said Brendan Fortune, Senior Director of Product Management at Media Temple. “With our highly available managed WordPress solutions, we are bringing them the sophistication of the world’s most popular web and app platform, uniquely combined with high- end, 24/7 support and account management, as well as the reliability of AWS.”

Both new Media Temple plans includes 5 sites and migrations, developer tools, a staging environment, (mt) One, CloudTech Premier support, redundant web, db, and file servers, and scalability. The basic plan starts at 1TB of storage and 1.5TB of Amazon CloudFront bandwidth, with up to 10 EC2 instances, using Docker Containers, and runs an Amazon RDS MySQL database for $2,500 a month. The “Max Performance” version offers four times the bandwidth, double the scaling capacity, and an Amazon Aurora MySQL database.

READ MORE: Media Temple Updates and Expands Grid Managed Shared Hosting Platform

“Many enterprise-level customers consider the level of service and support just as critical as the quality of the WordPress hosting solution itself,” said Deb Shea, Director of Strategy and Operations at Media Temple. “They want real-timeliness and account managers who can advocate for them throughout the business, which is exactly what our new WordPress plans are offering.”

The company is also offering 30 percent off the first year of WordPress hosting for new customers in celebration of the open-source CMS’s 13th birthday.

Media Temple launched managed services on AWS in July, so moving its updated enterprise WordPress services over was just a matter of time.

Source: TheWHIR