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The February 2011 “Email Security Report” was recently released by German email security firm eleven. The report highlights a temporary decline in spam toward the end of 2010 accompanied by the rise of virus outbreaks and botnet infrastructures. In the history of spamming, since 2003, there has never been such an extreme fluctuation in spam volumes as witnessed in December 2010 and January 2011.

On December 25^th, 2010, spam volumes were reported to decrease by 80 percent, remaining at that level until January 10^th, 2011. On this date, spam volume significantly rose six-fold reaching the levels prior to December 25^th. Simultaneously, the quantity of virus outbreaks rapidly increased indicating some type of collaboration.

The company states in the report these two events (spam and virus outbreaks) are related and the decrease is likely to be planned by the spamming community. Spammers took the time between these two dates to rebuild botnet infrastructures while replacing lost capacities. This defends these individuals from external factors. In turn, this task was accomplished by sending massive quantities of new virus, trying to infect as many computers and servers as possible.

Prior to the Christmas holiday, spamit.com was terminated while many botnets were eradicated. This is said to be a contributing factor to the major dip in spam. Other trends were reported including:

• The US is the leading source with 11 percent of the world’s spam
• Brazil produces 8 percent
• India and Russia share 7 percent
• Germany outputs 4 percent

In addition to the drastic increase of spamming and virus outbreaks following this break in nefarious activity, the report also stated that malware levels increased by 21.5 percent in the month of January. Therefore, these three malicious activities are unlikely to be coincidental. It is more logical that this was a planned event intended to rebuild and then release a significant amount of malevolent activity on the world.

This report is a vital aspect of the internet community. These statistics prove that there are many individuals or groups collaborating to wreak havoc on internet users. It seems with the shutdown of major components that are the source of spamming, viruses and malware, the attacks increase greatly as a result. It is unlikely spam, viruses and malware will ever completely be eradicated as there is always an expert out there looking to cause problems across the globe.

Tenzing Managed IT Services recently went live with the Tenzing Partner Program, a new support program allowing partners and resellers to provider their customers with SLA-backed managed hosting services. The best aspect of this program is there’s no capital investment or risk involved to the partner, they simply need to sell the Tenzing service.

The program is developed to provide the necessary support to Tenzing partners which will help them expand relationships with their direct customers as well as increase revenue through a compensation plan. This program offers a plethora of services to help support partners in the design and delivery of solutions. In turn this improves effectiveness and profits while reducing cost and opening new business channels.

Tenzing is claiming their new program is one of the most competitive and comprehensive in the industry to date. The company recognizes that partners are an integral part of their go-to-market business strategy; therefore, Tenzing is willing to invest in them as they grow.

The Tenzing Partner Program delivers two different partnership levels to meet the needs of affiliates: Premier and Referral. The Premier program focuses on the continued development of collaborative strategies with numerous shared performance gauges. This indicates Tenzing will work closely with partners to create effective marketing strategies while building awareness of the services.

The Premier Partner program is aimed at the following:

• Joint marketing between Tenzing and the affiliate
• Scheduled strategic reviews
• Developing new business
• Competitive compensation

The Referral program targets a number of different industry professionals. Partners can be ecommerce store owners and developers, consultants, web development shop owners, SI’s and other information technology professionals looking for ad hoc projects and leads. The Referral program is an excellent opportunity to join a growing company that will guide you toward profits.

Each of these programs is an excellent opportunity to generate additional revenue. The better you do, the better they do so Tenzing would like to help your business as much as possible so they can maximize their revenue.

The partner programs offered by Tenzing are revolutionary for the affiliate marketing industry. This is not the run of the mill Clickbank affiliate program. Tenzing is willing to dedicate resources to help your business grow and for you to increase conversions and generate leads. If you are in this industry or are looking to expand operations, consider working with Tenzing because everyone will win.

HostWay is one of the world’s largest web hosting and web-service providers who recently released a new website showcasing their cloud offerings. The site also details their new hosting plans for small businesses. The new website presents numerous changes including:

• New products
• Product categories
• Easy navigation
• New design scheme

The new website presents fresh products and services offered by HostWay. These products are grouped into specific categories for easy navigation so customers will be able to quickly identify features and make a purchasing decision. Finally, the new design scheme presents HostWay’s focus on a more mature and professional customer base that demands flexibility, reliability and value.

Hostway was founded in 1998 and has worked its way to being the world’s largest web hosting provider. With a presence in 14 countries and more than 700 employees, HostWay offers many services including, domain name registration, ecommerce solutions, shared hosting solutions and colocation hosting. The company serves 1.4 million websites consisting of 600,000 customers across the globe.

HostWay recently also recreated their portfolio of products with the most impressive being FlexCloud sites. FlexCloud sites offer scalable, flexible and reliable services for small businesses and ecommerce stores. Furthermore, FlexCloud Servers provide clients with a higher level of service with enterprise-grade solutions that utilize a global infrastructure mixed with cloud technology.

In the future, the company will continue to be dedicated to innovation and product alignment with customer needs. With the recent emergence and advancement in cloud technology, the company is keeping stride with customer necessity and the competition. This technology should allow them to grad an additional large chunk of the internet market.

The FlexCloud Sites and Servers are going to be scalable and on-demand for customers anywhere at any time. Add reliability, performance and the flexibility of a public cloud and you have a winner. Furthermore, this technology offers resource availability and optimal allocation while customizing all solutions to that specific business. These excellent features will be paired with state of the art data centers.

HostWay has not only greatly improved their website, but they have added next generation products that will be utilized by customers for many years to come. The addition of flexibility, performance, reliability and expansion will result in many more clients choosing HostWay as their primary provider. In the future other web hosting providers will add this technology to keep pace with HostWay’ fantastic technological advancements.

On October 29^th, 2010 at the Microsoft Professional Developer’s Conference, Microsoft unveiled a presentation denoting how developers now have the ability to create rich device experiences in the cloud. This event was broadcast live across the web to more than 20,000 developers simultaneously at 200 Personal Developer Conferences across the globe.

The Keynote Address

The keynote address from CEO Steve Ballmer and Server and Tools Business President Bob Muglia showcased how Microsoft is continuing to advance their platforms of the PC, mobile devices and cloud computing. With the recent releases of Windows 7, Windows Azure, Windows Phone 7 and Internet Explorer 9, they were able to focus on these platforms specifically. The plans for Microsoft are to combine the Web, phone and the cloud.

Building Momentum

Since Windows Azure became commercially available this year, Microsoft has seen an explosion of 20,000 applications. In combination with the RenderMan application, Microsoft presented how they can utilize Windows Azure to improve computer cycle efficiency through scaling. In turn, this will further develop project performance and decrease costs.

Other Conference Highlights

Microsoft also highlighted that over 70 partners that represent more than two-thirds of all active web traffic are utilizing Internet Explorer 9 and HTML 5. Internet Explorer 9 first launched in September 2010 and there have already been an amazing 10 million downloads.

Microsoft also informed the crowd that numerous companies will be utilizing Window Phone 7. Additionally, the Windows Phone marketplace is slated to launch more than 1,000 games and applications that fully utilize the power of the phone. The marketplace opens September 7th for user’s to upload and download applications.

Windows Azure

Windows Azure is one of the latest developments from Microsoft that helps developers build new types of business applications, commercial offerings and web applications. The software package provides many vital services that allow them to focus on applications, not the infrastructure, operating system and tools. The functions offered by Windows Azure are known as “Platform as a Service” (PaaS).

These fantastic releases from Microsoft are sure to revolutionize the software industry once again. Windows phones in the past have been mediocre at best. However, it appears as if executive management is looking to put much more backing into Windows Phone 7 to make it a front-runner in the mobile handheld device industry. Either way, Microsoft will continue to prosper with these innovative and performance enhancing products.

SmarterTools, Inc. recently announced their release of SmarterMail 7.x Mail Server. The release of their most recent software contains a new design interface in addition to other add-ons that grant the use quicker access and to communication, synchronization tools and collaboration.

SmarterMail allows users to find and utilize a plethora of built-in features to improve productivity. Also, this software was developed with the goal of a more stable environment and increased performance of the mail server. These enhancements allow system administrators to easily mange the mail server.

The new features found in SmarterMail 7.x Mail Server include:

• A synchronization center
• File storage
• Better searching
• New webmail interface
• Linking tasks
• Follow-up flagging
• Mailbox migration
• Enhanced contacts

The synchronization center helps users with other applications and software that can be synchronized with the mail server. Upon access, users will be able to view different protocols and a list of the current connections. Another new feature is file storage. Files that are too large to be transferred via email will be uploaded to the server and shared through a public link.

Improve searching of messages, appointments, contacts, tasks and notes is another addition. A new indexing engine allows for faster, more accurate searches. The new interface is aesthetically pleasing and reduces the number of clicks to get to certain areas of the software. Several UI enhancements and less JavaScript make for quicker page-loading times.

SmarterMail 7.x also has a feature that links messages to tasks. Each task displays start and due dates on the calendar and are available in the special tasks screen. Follow-up flagging is important in all email programs. Emails with a red follow-up flag can easily be accessed from the special-view follow up selection.

Another helpful feature is mailbox migration. This allows new users to import contacts, emails, tasks and calendars from another email provider. This tool makes it easy to transfer these features. Finally an enhanced contact view givers users the most recent messages, attachments and appoints for each contact.

SmarterMail 7.x is a fairly innovative piece of software. It takes the normal email functions found in an application version, enhances them and adds them to the web. This software has many advantages with numerous features and will be a great addition to any business. With constant upgrades and patches, the software will improve productivity and further help businesses.