A difficult economy is impacting IT investments, but advanced communications infrastructures bring opportunities for innovation and cost savings.

IT leaders understand the need to drive business value by leveraging voice, data and network infrastructures. They know that advanced communications services are the backbone of effective customer experiences, providing businesses with quick, efficient and cost-effective ways to reach out and respond to clients and prospects. In that and many other respects, these services contribute to exactly what the business wants in these challenging economic times—lower operating costs, higher revenue, and effective and rapid delivery of new offerings to the market.

Faced with declining funds to invest in these services in a down economy, CIOs must provide their C-level peers with compelling arguments to build new “infrastructures for innovation.” Companies that are still investing see enabling convergence, increasing scalability, and expanding application and information access as efforts that are both vital to opening new frontiers for the business and doing away with the unnecessary costs of legacy environments.
Where Opportunity Lies
Fortunately, both business and IT executives acknowledge that more sophisticated infrastructures bring opportunities for innovation, cost savings and productivity improvements. In a recent survey conducted by IDG Research Services and Fortune Custom Publishing, nearly nine out of ten senior IT and business executives say that data, voice and network services can be leveraged to drive innovation, and they cite facilitating remote access to critical applications and speeding up customer service among the top advances these services enable. Both sets of respondents believe that companies that continue to invest in data, voice and network services during slow economic times will gain important benefits, such as improved efficiencies and reduced costs, and better collaboration.

At PEER 1 Hosting, we’re here to help. We cut through the frustration of under-performing technology and poor service, delivering the power of the internet to any organization that needs it. Interested in learning more about how we can help your business today? Give us a call at 1..866.579.9690.

Infrastructures for Innovation white paper.

We are happy to announce that we’ve partnered with InMon, the leading traffic monitoring solution for high-speed networks, to provide precise bandwidth measurement and analysis capability to our Managed Hosting customers.

We will deploy the industry standard sFlow® network monitoring technology and InMon’s Traffic Sentinel, in all of our data centers to provide an industry leading bandwidth billing solution for Managed Hosting customers.

Bandwidth usage is measured on a per-IP address basis, so we are able to ignore traffic occurring inside the data center, and provide precise traffic charges to our customers in a way that is not possible through per-port or physical-layer network traffic monitoring.

For PEER 1 customers, the InMon-powered network traffic monitoring and analysis is accessible in real time through the online customer portal with customizable graphs and downloadable data.

Full press release: http://www.peer1.com/aboutus/news.php?id=134

We’re happy to share that GeoVPS – a Layerboom entity and CloudXcelerator member has officially launched and is offering 50% off their plans for the first 6 months . GeoVPS is the first VPS provider using Linux KVM as a backbone in North America.

Some of the features included with GeoVPS:

• Full root access with dedicated resources
• Choice of Linux distribution
• Rock solid hardware
• Easy-to-use Management Console

Be sure to visit GeoVPS to learn more – http://www.geovps.com/

To learn more about the PEER 1 CloudXcelerator Program please visit http://www.peer1.com/hosting/cloud.php

Eonic is a leading provider of content managed and eCommerce websites. Within just three weeks of the switch to PEER 1 from DediPower, Eonic’s customers have reported a significant improvement in site performance on page loading and pay transaction speeds. This in turn has resulted in increased volume of on-site customer clicks and dwell time.

Rod Shoveller, Director at Elite Models, a specialist model aircraft e-tailer and Eonic customer comments: “We have instantly seen much faster loading of our image gallery and customers are already commenting on the site being much quicker and easier to navigate around. Product images are critical for our shop window and making them simpler for customers to view will transform our business. With customers viewing more products more quickly, ultimately, we’re hopeful of increasing revenue as a result.”

Through its eonicweb4 content management platform, Eonic delivers a full set of web services from bespoke web design to SEO, usability, accessibility, PPC and software development.

Full Press Release.

Whir TV is doing on-going coverage of the latest PEER 1 data center being built out in Toronto, Canada. You can watch the first installment here.

This 41,000 sq ft space will transform into our most eco-friendly data center. The facility will use some of the most efficient products and technologies on the market, including the use of a local well for primary water supply with redundant connection to the city water system to reduce overall carbon footprint and provide lower energy consumption. The first of four planned stages is scheduled for completion in early 2010. Other efficiencies planned are the use of redundant high efficiency VFD centrifugal chillers and heat exchangers to take advantage of “free cooling” during colder months, providing significant energy savings. This also enables us to use more environmentally friendly refrigerants not commonly found in current air-cooled systems.

After six years with our dedicated hosting division ServerBeach, PEER 1 was recently chosen by Serotek Corporation, to provide them with a fully managed hosting solution. Along with text-to-speech screen reader services and remote access solutions for tech professionals who are blind or suffer from low vision, Serotek operates a complete Internet service and online community specifically designed to meet the needs of visually impaired computer users. The company has received considerable interest in its low-cost solutions and interactive community, tripling the business in two years and requiring their infrastructure to expand.

“The ability for PEER 1 to be flexible and scalable is crucial for us as we have to be prepared and able to immediately handle any kind of growth hurdle,” said Mike Calvo, founder and CEO of Serotek. “Going from self-managed hosting to managed hosting was a natural growth progression for us and I applaud the service and forward-thinking we’ve witnessed from both ServerBeach and PEER 1. Partnering with PEER 1, we truly believe the sky’s the limit for our business.”

Read press release

We’ve mentioned previously on our blog that we’re headed to the track again for the 24 Hours of Lemons and we’ve challenged you to a race. Will we see you there?

Last year PEER 1 participated in the 24 Hours of Lemons event that took place in

PEER 1 at 24 Hours of Lemons - Kershaw, South Carolina 2008

Kershaw, South Carolina. We posted pictures and a video interview with Jay Lamm, “The Chief Perpetrator”of the event and we’ll be at it again this year at the “Laissez Les Crapheaps Roulez New Orleans” on June 6-7, 2009.

We’ll have employees from two of our office locations participating – PEER 1 Atlanta and ServerBeach San Antonio. PEER 1’s system administrator Kevin Lee will be leading the team again this year. Last year, we quoted him saying, “I spent so much time at junkyards, I never want to see another one again”. Well, this year he was back at it hitting the junkyards getting the PEER 1 1981 Turbo Diesel Mercedes ready for this years race.

To remind everyone what the 24 Hour of Lemons is all about:

Nasty. Brutish. Not Short Enough.

The crowd. The spectacle. The pall of blue smoke and roasted clutch discs. In all motorsport, no event captures the universal human need to whale on old crapcans and hoover down greasy barbecue like the 24 Hours of LeMons.

Each LeMons race is for cars purchased, fixed up, and track-prepped for a total of 500 dollars or less. But before reaching the grid, you’ll have to survive trials like the Personal-Injury-Lawyer Anti-Slalom, the Marxist-Valet Parking Challenge, and the Wide Open Throttle Rodthrowapalooza. Twelve hours into the race, the car voted People’s Choice is called in and awarded a cash prize; simultaneously, the car voted People’s Curse is called in and summarily destroyed. At the end of 24 hours, a gala awards ceremony plies the survivors with trophies, plaques, and four-figure purses in canvas bags full of nickels. What’s not to like? — 24 Hours of Lemons Website

For requirements, rules, and fees, visit http://www.24hoursoflemons.com. For track information and location, please visit http://www.24hoursoflemons.com/events/noproblem09/

For more information on the PEER 1 race challenge, or if you’re in the neighborhood and would like to say hello, please contact:

Charnell Pugsley
PEER 1 Community Evangelist
cpugsley@peer1.com
210-798-4413

We’ve partnered with Lisa Sabin-Wilson, celebrity blogger and author of “WordPress for Dummies”, to offer free premium blog templates, valued at $1,200 each, designed exclusively for PEER 1 and ServerBeach.

With an estimated 133 million blogs worldwide and growing, social networking and blogging has become the fourth most popular activity on the Internet, surpassing even e-mail.* For those looking to join the fast-growing blogging community, or just wanting to spice up current blogs, PEER 1 is offering five free custom-designed WordPress themes as a download to anyone who visits the PEER 1 or ServerBeach Web site.

The templates won’t be around for long, available for download only until June 30. To view the different designs and download a favorite, visit the PEER 1 Web site http://www.peer1.com/resources/wordpress_themes.php or the ServerBeach Web site http://www.serverbeach.com/resources/wordpress_themes.php.

To view the full press release, please visit http://www.peer1.com/aboutus/news.php?id=118

For the second straight year, PEER 1 is the proud headline sponsor of GigaOM’s Structure 09 event taking place on June 25. Structure 09 will bring industry experts together at San Francisco’s Mission Bay Conference Center to explore the Cloud Computing model and innovations of Internet infrastructure. PEER 1 is also hosting a workshop that focuses on the role of hardware within the cloud and the benefits of testing and incubation of technologies through our new CloudXcelerator Program.

The founder of Structure 09 and GigaOM networks, Om Malik, had this to say about our involvement:

“I am so very pleased to have PEER 1 with us again as a lead sponsor. PEER 1 espouses the same core values we have at Structure, thus making them an ideal partner for our flagship event. The last year has seen much progress in Cloud Computing and PEER 1 has become a vital part of that industry.”

We hope you will attend and participate.

Read press release

A few months back I began a fun little project – exposing our customers and posted about it on our ServerBeach Blog. The goal of this project is to give your business some added exposure. It’s called “You’re on My Shirt”.

Every week I will post a picture of me wearing a client’s branded T-shirt along with a description of your business and a friendly link to your site or blog.

So what’s the catch, you ask? Nothing really. To be featured, all you have to do is be a current PEER 1 client and mail or courier me a T-shirt with your company name on the front and/or back… and that’s it! BTW, size MEDIUM please.

The PEER 1 Blog has a loyal following and is viewed daily by many online users. This new feature is a way for us to extend some love to our clients and get you some more free exposure.

You can view some of the ServerBeach “You’re On My Shirt” pictures and blog posts here: http://serverbeach.wordpress.com/?s=you%27re+on+my+shirt.

To get on my shirt, fire off an e-mail to me and I’ll reply back right away with some details and questions about your business, as well as an address to send me your T-shirt.

Be the first one to get featured!

Charnell Pugsley
Community Evangelist
cpugsley@peer1.com