The registry fee for .COM and .NET domain names will increase from $7.34 to $7.85 and $4.65 to $5.11 respectively on 15 January 2012 VeriSign, the registry for both TLDs, announced. The increases are a smidgen under the maximum possible under the registry agreement with ICANN – seven per cent for .COM and ten per cent for .NET. The last increase was on 1 July 2010 when the registry fee for .COM domains increased from $6.86 to $7.34 and for .NET domains increased from $4.23 to $4.65. In justifying the increases, VeriSign said in a statement that: “Continued strong global Internet usage growth, along with increasingly powerful distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks leveled against all parts of the Internet’s critical infrastructure, have dramatically increased the demands on Internet infrastructure providers such as Verisign. In the last five years, the volume of Domain Name System (DNS) queries on Verisign’s global Internet infrastructure has more than doubled, increasing to an average daily query load of 57 billion in the first quarter of 2011. Future growth is expected to occur at an even faster pace. Verisign’s infrastructure has maintained 100 percent operational security, accuracy and stability for more than a decade due to continued innovation and investment in the infrastructure.” To avoid the increases, registrants are able to register their .COM and .NET domains before 15 January. To register your .COM and .NET domain names, check out America Registry here .

Web Hosting – DENVER – FORTRUST, Colorado’s leading high-availability data center services provider and colocation facility, announced that it has approved the design for an approximate 33,000 square foot expansion project which will bring its raised-floor colocation capacity to more than 80,000 square feet within its 224,000 sq. ft

An image outlining the makeup of the NetApp partner ecosystem (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Cloud computing company PeakColo ( www.peakcolo.com ) announced on Friday that it has joined the Partner Program for Service Providers operated by storage solutions vendor NetApp ( www.netapp.com ), giving it access to tools and best practices from the company, along with a more direct relationship with that company’s sales and engineering departments. PeakColo says it delivers its infrastructure as a service cloud computing offerings to customers based, in part, on NetApp storage technologies

iWeb Achieves Its Highest-ever Ranking Among Canadian Tech Companies Friday, April 15, 2011, 4:46:49 AM Montreal, QC, April 13th, 2011 – iWeb (TSX-V: IWB), Global provider of Internet hosting services and IT infrastructure, has been ranked 120 th in the 2011 Branham300, the annual listing of the top 300 Canadian Technology companies, thanks to revenues of US$29 million in 2010, iWeb’s overall ranking has been steadily improving since the Company’s first inclusion on the ranking, 241st in 2006. iWeb’s ascension in the Branham 300 ranking; 2006 – 241st 2007 – 206th 2008 – 195th 2009 – 162nd 2010 – 124th * 2011 – 120th *a procedural anomaly prevented iWeb’s results from being properly displayed in the 2010 ranking “We are thrilled to be recognized as one of Canada’s top IT companies since 2006; iWeb’s 26% growth in 2010 compares well to the 4% average growth rate for companies appearing on the 2011 Branham300.” said Eric Chouinard, President and CEO of iWeb. He added that “Based on this year’s ranking, the Canadian ICT industry comes across as healthy, which is a promising indicator of future growth for iWeb.

Discrepancies between which cloud services end users want and which are offered by the channel have been highlighted in white papers from the Cloud Industry Forum (CIF). The not-for-profit organisation recently commissioned research house Vanson Bourne to conduct surveys examining end-user and channel attitudes towards cloud

Facebook’s Open Compute servers and the hot aisle doors, photographed by Alan Brandt (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) –- Social media giant Facebook ( www.facebook.com ) announced on Thursday it has launched the Open Compute Project, an initiative to share the custom-engineered technology in its first dedicated data center in Prineville, Oregon. This advanced technology delivered a 38 percent increase in energy efficiency at 24 percent lower cost for Facebook. Now, the social media firm will share the specifications and best practices behind this data center technology to companies across the industry.

A Dell Desktop Virtualization promotional video featuring Cortney Isunza, Dell Desktop Virtualization solutions product manager (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) –- Technology giant Dell ( www.dell.com ) announced on Thursday it is entering the cloud hosting market with a series of new cloud services, technologies, and data centers. Dell plans to invest a whopping $1 billion throughout the year to deliver “leading solutions, services and cloud-based delivery options” to launch and sell cloud services, starting with email archiving and a hosted virtual desktop software.