Last week, Carlos Caneja and Jess Coburn, representing Applied Innovations, attended HostingCon 2007 in Chicago, IL at the Chicago Navy Pier. HostingCon 2007, the 3rd HostingCon event, brought together almost 100 vendors exhibiting products geared towards hosting and Internet and more than 1200 webhosters and 100s of informational and training sessions.
For Applied Innovations, attendance at HostingCon is considered almost mandatory as this we have attended every HostingCon to date. For AppliedI, HostingCon represents an opportunity to meet in person with the vendors we rely on to power our business as well as to learn about new and exciting technologies and of course make new vendor and peer relationships. In the end, attending HostingCon is just an example of our commitment to providing best in class Windows Hosting. It’s through attending events like HostingCon and then bringing this information back, implementing these new ideas and also providing this information to you, our e-business partners, that we continue to establish ourselves as a leader in web hosting.
Some of the vendors we met with.
At this year’s HostingCon we met with the likes of Microsoft, SWsoft, WebHostAutomation, ScanAlert, Smartertools and others. Some of the vendors we met with and some of the information discussed is shown below
The SmarterGuys from SmarterTools
The guys from SmarterTools were Tim Uzzanti (Number 2 from the left) and Jeff Hardy. With SmarterTools we discussed the anti-spam improvements and collaboration improvements made within SmarterMail and also discussed the upcoming new features that will make it even more effective against SPAM as well bring new features to make organizations able to share information in an easier and more powerful manner. We also discussed the new changes being made to SmarterTicket and enhances expected in SmarterStats. It’s clear they’re very busy making great software even greater. Today SmarterMail powers almost all of our mail servers and SmarterStats is the web analytics application of choice.
The guys from Microsoft
In the first picture is Tito Leverette and in the second picture is Brett Hill. Tito is a Microsoft Hosting Technologist/Evangelist and he’s pretty much our point man at Microsoft for any technical questions we may have.
Brett Hill has been instrumental in our launch of IIS7 hosting and has helped us begin to craft what will become the next generation of Windows Hosting here at Applied Innovations.
WebHostAutomation the guys that power Helm
Today, HELM powers our windows shared hosting, asp.net reseller hosting and much of our dedicated hosting network and we have some very exciting plans in store with HELM4 and enjoyed the opportunity to meet in person with WHA to discuss our future plans. We’re really excited with the direction HELM has taken and the new modular architecture that it sports.
SWsoft the makers of Plesk, Virtuozzo and leading Hosting Vendor
SWsoft is one of the top hosting automation vendors in the hosting industry if not the leading technology company. SWsoft makes Plesk, Virtuozzo, Parallels are sister companies with Acronis and many more. SWsoft’s Virtuozzo and Plesk powers our Windows VPS Hosting offering and their sitebuilder product is used as our sitebuilder solution.
With SWsoft we talked about Virtuozzo 4.0 and the new high availability features it will offer when released.
Pictured is Mike Riolo, Director of Hosting Sales. SWsoft probably had one of the strongest presences at HostingCon with all their top executives on staff meeting with hosts and attending the conference sessions.
The guys that keep the Internet Hacker Safe
I know the name is a bit misleading considering what they do is actually keep your website safe against hackers, but I couldn’t resist. That’s Michael Ayers from ScanAlert. ScanAlert is our partner for PCI scanning and website vulnerability detection. ScanAlert offers all of our customers one year free PCI scanning.
It’s more than just meeting Vendors
A big part of any conference is of course networking with vendors and hosting peers but it’s also about learning about the new technologies and how to utilize these technologies to provide a higher level of s
ervice and customer satisfaction. This year was no exception and in the coming months you’ll see us announcing many new changes and partnerships all to make your hosting experience with Applied Innovations the best available. Some of the new partnerships we’ll be announcing in the coming months are with Pinnaclecart and CRE Loaded Ecommerce and much more. I really don’t want to announce more just yet but expect to see a lot of great stuff coming as a result of our time at HostingCon.