There are several news reports today like these at the BBC , MSNBC and ZDNet about problems plaguing  Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) web hosting services that have brought down or have caused problems at scores of web sites, including  Foursquare , Quora , Reddit and Hootsuite , among others. Amazon said at its web services   service health dashboard that the problem began around 0141 PDT at its EC2 site in Northern Virginia when “latency and error rates with EBS [ Elastic Block Store ] volumes and connectivity issues reaching EC2 instances in the US-EAST-1 region ” occurred. The problem then apparently cascaded into  Amazon’s relational database service in Northern Virginia as well as with Amazon’s Web Service (AWS) Elastic Beanstalk, which is a way for developers to quickly deploy and manage applications in the AWS cloud

Once upon a time, cloud hosting technology was reserved for large companies and corporations.

 Tuesday, 5th April 2011, 17:10:41 Ecommerce boom has ‘heightened the importance’ of reliable web hosting Reliable web hosting now has heightened importance because of the increase in online spending over the last few years. That is according to Chris Ball, writing on globalgold.co.uk, who said that companies “cannot afford to take chances” with their websites and must have a reliable web host. He added that taking shortcuts could lead to customers being put off from purchasing at a particular website

JumpBox, used by over 25,000 entities in forty different countries, has announced a promotion aimed at users who want to have free web hosting for one year. As reported on PR Web, used in conjunction with the Amazon Web Services Free Usage Tier, this promotion combines the reliability of the AWS technology infrastructure platform with JumpBox’s best-in-class Open Source server software. “’By taking advantage of the AWS Free Usage Tier and developing a streamlined graphical launch interface for streamlining the traditional launch process, JumpBox is helping businesses and developers get started using AWS,’ says Chief Operating Officer and JumpBox Co-founder Sean Tierney.” Read the Full Story at PR Web View Article

Phoenix, AZ (PRWEB) February 15, 2011 JumpBox, Inc. today announced a promotion that enables any individual to leverage JumpBox’s application packaging technology to host his or her blog, web site or wiki free for one year on Amazon Web Services (AWS). This promotion may be used in conjunction with the AWS Free Usage Tier to combine the reliability of the AWS technology infrastructure platform with best-in-class Open Source server software

NEW YORK & ANDOVER, Ma.—(BUSINESS WIRE)— Time Warner Cable Inc. (NYSE:TWC) and NaviSite, Inc. (NASDAQ:NAVI ) today announced that they have entered into an agreement under which Time Warner Cable will acquire NaviSite, a premier provider of enterprise-class hosting, managed application, messaging and cloud services, for $5.50 per share in cash, or a total equity value of approximately $230 million.

A video still showing the CloudArray 2.0 control panel (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) – Cloud storage data protection provider TwinStrata (www.twinstrata.com) announced on Monday that it has achieved Bronze Partner Program status with Web hosting provider PEER 1 Hosting (www.peer1.com). A week ago PEER 1 announced that it has begun construction on its 50,000 square foot green data center in Portsmouth, Utah