Nimbula Director is an in-house cloud management system similar to Amazon EC2. Developed and launched at the end of 2010, Nimbula Director announced the public availability of the Nimbula Director Cloud operating system in addition to a free, functional enterprise version with limited scalability.

This software allows users to administer in-house as well as off-site resources guaranteeing the flexible and efficient utilization of data centers. The platform is solely based on Nimble’s cloud operating system which provides users with easier management of public and private cloud systems.

Due to the excellent innovation of Nimbula Director, it delivers scalability and flexibility. Therefore, users will experience the following features:

• Self-monitoring
• Zero touch installation
• Layer 2 networking provisions
• Federation to public clouds
• Distributed layer 3 firewall
• Self-service provisioning

With the self-monitoring function, the software will manage any failovers without the need for human intervention. This will free up time for information technology professionals for being required to maintain and manage the system so they are able to focus on development and implantation of innovative ideas.

Zero touch installation employs Nimbula across multiple servers including those that will be added in the future. This automated function installs the software and sets the configuration on new systems without the need for human intervention.

Layer 2 networking is provisioning guarantees resources are allocated to separate, individual users as they are entered into the system. Federation to public clouds provides a controlled association with public cloud servers like Amazon EC2. In turn, this permits limitless scalability options as users can draw from other sites resources.

Distributed layer 3 firewall protects users with security that is independent of network configuration, geographic location or topography. Finally self-service provisioning allows users to easily amend resources, create and launch instances all well reducing the need for interaction with information technology departments.

Although so many useful features are provided with this program, Nimbula Director is offering free of charge licenses for deployments fewer than 40 stations. For those organizations requiring additional licenses, an annual subscription is required which includes maintenance and support.

Nimbula is a promising new piece of software that can greatly benefit small to medium sized businesses for free. Many of the development team worked on the Amazon EC2 project; therefore the software is robust due to its roots. Add in free software for a limited number of stations and a software winner is born.

Employees from HIT Web Design were seen carrying boxes from their headquarters in Provo, Utah to their cars on Tuesday, March 8^th. The company was founded as Heritage Web  Solutions in 1999. In 2007, HIT achieved the amazing accomplishment of rising to number 22 on the Inc. 5000 list, appearing again in 2008 and 2009. HIT Web Design was a full-service  web design and hosting provider for thousands of customers.

The liquidation and eventual shutdown of the company comes a year after controversies. During its time in business, HIT Web Design was the topic of 972 complaints at Utah’s Better Business Bureau. These mishaps range from employees not being paid for working to customers claiming the work they paid for was never complete. The company has used a variety of “Doing Business As” (DBA) names over their many years in service. These names include:

• The Heritage Group
• Heritage Web Design
• Heritage Web Solutions
• Yellow Page Partners
• Chamber Partners
• HIT Web Design

In May 2010, the media reported on the shady business practice of HIT. The President of the BBB in Utah was interviewed and revealed that a complaint stems from every single state in the U.S. except South Dakota and Maine. Therefore a total of 48 states had some form of complaint against the company.

When interviewed, the company’s co-founder explained that the web design business is tricky. Since it is a consulting-based industry, contractual and fee agreements between the company and client vary based on the needs of the customer. Therefore, expectations are often misaligned and good relationships can easily turn bad.

At this point, it is unclear whether these many customer service complaints had an relation to the closing of the organization. As of Tuesday, the main phone line has been disconnected with a message from the operator stating, “”Thank you for calling. Our current hosting customer’s accounts are being serviced by Fibernet. They’re a reputable hosting company that’s been around since 1994. Please contact them for more information.”

The web design and hosting business is a cut-throat, tricky industry to be in. Unfortunately if the company does not provide excellent customer service, there is another startup that will. Although this may not be the cause of HIT’s downfall, it surely was a contributing factor. Just a few years ago the company was at the top. With 972 mishaps, this is the end result.

With the addition of static web hosting, Amazon Web Services now has the ability to host basic websites without the need for a virtual machine. In the past, customer were required to use Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) in conjunction with Simple Storage Services (S3). However, this is no longer necessary to host a non-dynamic website. Instead, websites can be directly mounted through S3.

A Split of Blog Hosting

The Chief Technology Officer of Amazon Web Services stated that the bulk of his personal blogs are hosted on S3 due to the reliability and scalability of the service. On the other hand, applications used to manage user comments, editing posts and serving blog searches are hosted on a low-powered virtual machine using EC2 technology.

Error Documentation

These static web pages are developed using HTML and therefore do not undergo server-side manipulation before being presented to the user. The S3 service will continue to allow users to use HTML error documentation as opposed to the automatically generated XML messages commonly seen on incorrect websites. In summary, this allows for the creation of 404 pages and other 400-level class errors.

Requirement for using this Service

Unfortunately, one of the largest requirements for use of this service is some technical knowledge. The primary users of this service will need to be knowledgeable of the Amazon Web Services console as well as the development kit in order to successfully mount their site onto the server. Other actions include setting access and permissions as well as modified specific parameters to ensure websites are correctly stored in the S3 buckets.

Luckily, each of these tasks can be easily learned for those that lack this technical knowledge. Simply reading through the manuals, tutorials or even asking customer support for help will allow for success.

Expansion of the Size

Another important action taken by Amazon Web Services is the expansion of the maximum size of any object in S3 from 5 gb to 5 tb. This is significant in that it allows for gigantic datasets to be hosted on the server.

Amazon Web Services took on the web hosting industry by storm when they first released their cloud hosting products. In only a short amount of time, they are re-revolutionizing the industry with a more efficient and powerful method of cloud hosting. This segment of Amazon continues to expand and amaze even those professionals in the industry.

Located in Vancouver, British Columbia, Bolt Web Hosting recently announced they will be offering unlimited shared web hosting monthly plans. These will immediately replace the shared hosting plans currently in place. The new unlimited plan will provide customers with as much disk space, bandwidth and data transfer as they need. The previous plan imposed limits on the amount of resources a single account could consume.

Automatic Migration

Current customers have automatically had their accounts changed to feature the new unlimited plan without any fees being incurred. For those who were previously billed at a little less than $4 per month for limited hosting are receiving the best deal because they are getting a significantly larger plan for the same amount each month.

Expansion Decisions

According to the CEO of Bolt Web Hosting, these plans for expansion were made months ago. The change was implemented due to market research that revealed customers favor unlimited shared hosting plans. Therefore, the company wanted to align their monthly plans with what customers want. Pretty simple idea right?

Additional Services

In addition to this change, the CEO also hinted at providing reseller, VPS and dedicated hosting plans. Although there is no official public launch date, there will be an announced within the next few months with customers being online with these new hosting opportunities by the end of 2011.

A High-Quality Product at a Low Price

Due to the extreme competition of the web hosting industry, Bolt Web Hosting has taken it upon themselves to give clients what they actually want and need. Since Bolt was formed in late 2010 by former web hosting customers, the company knows exactly what the masses want. They have taken their experience and skills to provide a high-quality, low-cost web hosting solution.

The founders feel they can offer an excellent web hosting product as a result of their extensive background in technology, web hosting and customer service. The founders also feel they can offer a service superior to most others in the hosting industry.

This company is off to an excellent start as they are offering a service that no other web hosting company is willing to do for the low price. However, it is likely these unlimited plans are going to change the game. Once a single web hosting provide makes a major change, the competition usually follows. Therefore, as the pioneers of the inexpensive unlimited hosting plan, they will have the jump on all other providers.

Considered to be the most important part of the internet industry today, shared web hosting has evolved over the years experiencing a number of changes since the late 1990’s. Some changes are highlighted below:

• The insurgence of shared web hosting industry with hosts like ValueWeb, Verio and Interland that led the industry in the late 1990’s.
• The emergence of free web hosts such as Bizland and other prior to the dotcom bubble burst.
• The creation of major platforms, OEM’s and resellers such as Alabanza, InQuent, viaVerio, Histopia and others.
• The emergence of hosts such as GoDaddy, HostGator, Endurance, Network Solutions, and Deluxe, the entrance of 1&1 and the conception of mega hosts present today.
• The arrival of new hosting providers like LunarPages, Dream Host, Bluehost and many more.

Although, these changes have been fundamental in their occurrence, yet, in 2011, some drastic changes are believed to occur changing the course of hosting landscape.

Firstly, Intuit, the most popular SMB software company performing heavy promotions for client websites and hosting for small business has caught everyone’s attention. The company has a huge market share in the SMB space and has connected Qucikbooks to not only ecommerce but also CRM. This move has turned the heads of professional companies providing them with services and consultancy in their direction. This third attempt of Intuit in providing shared hosting services has gained them popularity in the market.

Next, Telco has gained some impetus to its offerings and Verizon FIOS for Business has also been offering hosting services mainly provided by Intuit. Comcast Business Class and other such companies have also joined their league.

CMS based hosting has also witnessed speedy growth evident from the success of Acquia (Drupal Gardens) and Volusion (ecommerce) that have won the hearts and minds of web designing and developing organizations. Nevertheless, WordPress leads the competition in CMS based hosting.

Current modifications to the AWS offers are favorable. Also, OfficeLive for Small Businesses by Microsoft did not witness much success and many new resellers and platforms created on Amazon’s cloud are believed to emerge. Also, Google App Engine was chosen to host the Royal Wedding website through Accenture.

2011 is considered to change the shared hosting industry. 1 million new and emerging small businesses will change the hosting landscape depending on where they are hosted. The hosting industry is vulnerable to these upcoming options, yet, those with good client relationship and those serving niche markets might remain safe from this threat.