Web merchants receive best-of-breed transaction and connectivity performance.

We are happy to announce a new partnership with Magento, Inc., the leading open source eCommerce platform provider. The alliance will enable merchants using Magento’s feature-rich eCommerce platform to deploy sites via PEER 1 Hosting to optimize their web presence and performance.

The Magento eCommerce Platform provides online merchants with unprecedented flexibility and control over the look, content and functionality of their online store. Its modular architecture, industry-leading features and powerful marketing and merchandising tools have quickly made Magento the fastest growing eCommerce Platform on the market and fueled its adoption by global brands and retailers.

As a global web business hosting provider, PEER 1 Hosting offers Managed Hosting supported by a 100 percent uptime guarantee, plus high-speed network connectivity through its 10GB SuperNetwork™, 17 data centers and 21 POPs around the world.

“This partnership with PEER 1 Hosting enables us to offer top-notch hosting environments for Magento merchants,” said Roy Rubin, CEO at Magento. “It is paramount that our customers’ eCommerce sites are not only fast and secure, but also reliable and scalable as their businesses grow. PEER 1 Hosting offers a robust progression path for online merchants, backed up with peace of mind based on 100 percent uptime. PEER 1 Hosting is a superb choice for our customers considering a hosting partner that provides a superior standard of high performance hosting that does not compromise on service, security or performance.”

Full press release.

Apprenda, the creator of SaaSGrid, the world’s first SaaS application server,  announced today that the company has closed a $5 million investment round led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA), a leading global venture capital firm with a 30-year track record of successful investing in companies including Salesforce.com, WebEx, Juniper Networks and XenSource.  Existing investor High Peaks Venture Partners also participated in the round of funding.

With SaaSGrid, Apprenda has changed the way that software is built and delivered, providing a solution to the architecture and management complexities of delivering software across distributed web scale environments. Cloud computing is driving software companies toward on-demand delivery models and enterprises toward aggregating internal and external compute resources into cohesive delivery networks for their internal software. SaaSGrid, a distributed application execution layer, mitigates the traditional burdens associated with tackling these trends. As a result, SaaS companies and enterprises alike can dramatically reduce time to market and service delivery costs.

Full press release.

We’ve just announced a partnership in which PEER 1 will provide integrated IT-compliant intrusion detection and log management services for its e-commerce customers using Alert Logic’s cloud-based IT compliance and security solutions.

PEER 1’s numerous customers operating transactional, credit-card based e-Commerce businesses are required to comply with PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard), the worldwide security standard designed to help control and prevent online credit card fraud. By partnering with Alert Logic, PEER 1 can ensure IT compliance for Managed Hosting customers as an additional service, without the customer having to invest in security infrastructure or monitoring resources.

Tim Varma, Director of Product Management at PEER 1 commented: “Offering on-demand intrusion detection security and continuous threat monitoring takes away the headaches of compliance for our customers. Through our partnership with Alert Logic, business customers can now benefit from a convenient, compliant and affordable end-to-end security solution that allows them to focus on their business with the peace of mind that their IT solutions are actively being monitored by security experts.”

Alert Logic will provide its Threat Manager and Log Manager solutions to address intrusion detection, vulnerability scanning and log management requirements within PCI DSS. PEER 1 Managed Hosting customers will have access to Alert Logic’s world-class web-based management portal for easy visibility to issues that could impact the security or compliance status of their IT assets. Through the dashboard interface, customers can view incoming data and traffic analysis from vulnerability scanning, as well as monitoring of traffic and threats inside the firewall.

Full Release Article here: http://www.peer1.com/aboutus/news.php?id=132

PEER 1's 1981 Turbo Mercedes Diesel Race Car

If you’re following us on Twitter, you’ll know that some of our staff from our Atlanta and San Antonio offices hit the road this past Friday for the 24 Hours of Lemons.

I flew in from San Antonio to Atlanta the night before to cover the event and to join our Atlanta racers on their RV ride pulling the PEER 1 race car from the rear. We left early morning to start our long journey, take pictures, call one other for location updates, and post it all on my personal Twitter account. Members from both offices traveled to meet in the middle at the No Problem Raceway in Belle Rose, Louisiana.

The road trip for our racers traveling from Atlanta wasn’t an easy one. The plan was to leave Atlanta at 7 AM in order to make it to the event in time for tech which closed at 5:00pm. Due to an incompatible trailer wire harness, the trailer was coming off the RV’s hitch, so we weren’t able to leave Atlanta until 9 AM. Our racers were worried that they wouldn’t make it to the track on time to check in for tech and would get disqualified. This would mean turning right around and heading back to Atlanta.

Our San Antonio racers made it to the track with a couple of hours to spare, and let the 24 Hours of Lemons staff know the rest of the PEER 1 racers and car were on their way. At 4:55 PM, our RV pulling the PEER 1 race car made it… with five minutes to spare! We had just enough time to get through the gate of the event and hit tech. Now the problem was tech didn’t go so well. Our PEER 1 car made it halfway through tech, before we learned that there were a lot of things that needed to be done to the car before they would let our crew drive it in the race. Our racers spent most of the night wrenching and welding the PEER 1 car. On Saturday morning at 8:30 AM, I’m happy to say we passed tech and were given permission to race! Stay tuned for an update on our first day of racing at the 24 Hours of Lemons in Belle Rose, Louisiana.

We’ve just recently launched SmartMonitoring^TM, a full suite of advanced monitoring solutions now available for our managed hosting customers. Utilizing the platform of partner, Absolute Performance Inc., SmartMonitoring provides in-depth data and analysis to better anticipate IT needs for business success. This offering, which will be expanded to all product lines later this year, represents strategic momentum in working together with best-of-breed companies to provide PEER 1 customers a valuable range of products and services.

“With the launch of SmartMonitoring, we are offering the best monitoring services available, while continuing to provide the advanced hosting services that are in greatest demand by our customers,” said Tim Varma, director of product management for PEER 1. “SmartMonitoring will help our customers increase efficiency and maximize IT resources, which is especially vital in today’s economy. With our fully scalable hosting solutions and services, PEER 1 adjusts to customers’ needs and helps them be more cost effective, to keep their businesses running smoothly.”

With SmartMonitoring, PEER 1 customers can choose the services and features, from basic to highly complex, that are most vital to their business success. These services are available through SmartMonitoring’s on-demand platform interface, which provides anyone in the organization, from CEO to system engineer, understandable, information on how application and system components are working together. This real-time data gives insight into potential issues so they can be proactively addressed in the most efficient and timely way.

For more information and full press release, please see http://www.peer1.com/aboutus/news.php?id=117

PEER 1 announced today that we are building out on a 41,000 square foot green data center in the Toronto area. Our new facility will implement 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 stage is scheduled for completion in early 2010, and will include 7,500 square feet of data center space, and 8,000 square feet of office and staging area. The remaining 25,500 square feet will be dedicated to additional data center space and infrastructure which will be built out in three future phases.

We also announced our membership in The Green Grid. The Green Grid is a global consortium dedicated to advancing energy efficiency in data centers and business computing ecosystems. The Green Grid seeks to provide industry-wide recommendations on best practices, metrics and technologies that will improve overall data center and business computing energy efficiencies. By joining The Green Grid, we’re trying to do our part in helping influence both developers and end users of data center technology.

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

PEER 1 announced today the official opening of its European headquarters in Southampton UK and the naming of industry veteran Dominic Monkhouse as managing director. There are many reasons why we have expanded to the UK including favorable exchange rates, falling real estate prices, a UK market growth of 25 percent, and the fact we currently have 500 UK and European-based customers. The opening will allow us to further support these customers while attracting new customers in the region.

The opening also includes the launch of our first UK data center, which will offer managed hosting through the PEER 1 brand and dedicated hosting through ServerBeach. As with all of our other data centers, it will be connected to our company-owned SuperNetwork which offers highly scalable and available content delivery to customers through Fast-Ethernet and Gigabit-Ethernet access over 13,000 miles of fibre connectivity.

PEER 1 will be exhibiting this week at the Internet World Expo April 28-30 at Earl’s Court, London. If you have an opportunity, please drop by for a visit. Drinks are on us! Just ask for Dom.

Official press release: http://www.peer1.com/aboutus/news.php?id=111

For more info, visit http://www.peer1.com/uk

Rajan Sodhi, VP Marketing for PEER 1 and ServerBeach

The title says it all. Rajan Sodhi, VP of Marketing and Communications for PEER 1 and ServerBeach was recently recognized for “Thinking Outside the Box“. Rajan has been called an “Everyday Customer Champion“. He spends so much time doing what he does best – being creative … and it works. Much of the creativity is humorous as you can see from the videos that he’s directed – for example “Growing Pains“. But even while it was humorous, it really hit home with many of our customers and the general public which says that he clearly understands the growing pains that many people face in business. You can find Rajan making his way in the social media scene, listening, communicating, and connecting onthe following:

Twitter – @rsodhi
LinkedIn – rajansodhi
Ning -http://peerone.ning.com/

FaceBook, and several other places around the Internet. So if you haven’t already, be sure to follow him on Twitter and while you’re at it check out his blog too “BIG Marketing for Small Business”.

Read more

PEER 1 UK Managing Director, Dominic Monkhouse spoke at OpenWeb in Southampton yesterday, April 15th about the importance of engaging employees to deliver exceptional service. He shares some fascinating insight on how great service can often trump not-so-great products.

Dominic Monkhouse (PEER1) – Employee Engagement from Rob Hampson on Vimeo.