Mobile network peering and dedicated team optimises results

Southampton, UK, 24 February 2010: PEER 1 Hosting the global online business hosting provider has today announced the launch of a dedicated smart-phone app hosting service, taking advantage of its peering relationships with mobile network operators. The company, which provides dedicated hosting solutions through ServerBeach, has assigned a specialist “Host My App” team tasked with supporting fast growth innovators who are developing smart-phone apps, to enable the potential explosion in popularity that successful apps attract.

In addition to peering with mobile operators, including Vodafone and O2, which ensures that apps are downloaded quickly to end users and operate at optimum speeds, the Host My App team offers flexible and scalable month-to-month contracts. These elements, coupled with the ability to offer robust hosted test development environments, have been packaged to create a bespoke hosting solution specifically to meet the needs of smart-phone app developers.

PEER 1 Hosting already supports a number of successful smart-phone apps including Red Laser from Occipital and Urban Spoon. The company, which recently provided 150 servers in 48 hours for EA Games whilst on a month-to-month contract, has shaped its offering as a result of working with these brands.

Geri Searson, Head of Host My App at PEER 1 Hosting said: “Choosing the right hosting partner is a vital component in the success in smart phone app development. The peer reviews can make or break an app and performance plays a key part in the customer experience. We recognise that a small percentage of apps launched get into the top ten, so it is vital that contracts are flexible and primed for success, without costing the earth.”

Jeffrey Powers, Co-Founder of Occipital, the company behind No.1 barcode scanner app, RedLaser said: “Choosing the right hosting partner has been a critical part of our success. RedLaser has over one million users and has been among the top 20 paid iPhone apps for six months, three months of which was spent in the top 5. The ServerBeach team has been highly responsive and their technology offerings have allowed us to scale to match the growing demand, all while giving us the granular control we need to optimise our search API.”

PEER 1 Hosting’s UK Host My App team can be contacted on hostmyapp@peer1.com and via the telephone line 0800 840 7490

PEER 1 Hosting currently has over 500 customers in EMEA and revenue in excess of £3 million making it one of Europe’s largest IT hosting providers. The company offers managed hosting through PEER 1 Hosting and dedicated hosting through, ServerBeach, which is billed as ‘by geeks, for geeks’.

LONDON, UK. 24  February 2010: A survey conducted by data management and storage vendor NetApp has revealed that overwhelmingly virtualisation (70%) is the top priority for IT investment in 2010, and that awareness of cloud computing is on the rise. The majority of IT professionals (74%) now claim to have partial understanding of cloud storage, placing the technology firmly on the IT and business agenda.

The survey of more than 100 professionals revealed cost savings (22%) and a pay-as-you-go model (23%) as the most appealing benefits of cloud storage, as well as perceived security (29%) and integration (22%) issues as the biggest barriers to adoption.

“What this tells us is that cloud is here and top of mind for businesses,” said Dave Allen, UK MD, NetApp. “Just as virtualisation has gone full circle from an abstract concept to a technology that more than 70% of IT professionals plan to implement this year, we will see cloud follow the same pattern over 2010. The basic knowledge foundations have been laid, the next step is for businesses to overcome barriers and understand exactly how cloud could work for specific data and applications.

“As server and storage virtualisation gains speed and momentum over 2010, we can expect to see more businesses also virtualise the network and move further towards a unified computing model. From a unified core, IT professionals will find it to easier to launch both internal and external clouds that deliver a lower cost of ownership and save the business money.

“At NetApp, our goal is to continue to build strong alliances with technology leaders to deliver customers fully unified solutions from the start,” he said.
In January, NetApp launched a Secure Multi-tenancy Design Architecture for the cloud as well as an open design architecture to help customers quickly build unified, virtualised infrastructures.

LONDON, 24th February, 2010 – Telmap, the original pioneers in mobile location solutions, today announces that the iPhone version of its mobile location companion has exceeded 100,000 downloads.

Telmap provides a white label, hosted and managed mobile search, mapping and navigation solutions to mobile operators, working closely with them on making the solution compatible with a wide range of devices. The operator-branded iPhone version has been launched in several EMEA markets and in the US in the last quarter.

Launching operator-branded, iPhone compatible versions has been a strategic move for mobile operators. Reaching over 100,000 downloads so quickly presents a great achievement and serves as a testimony to operators’ strong position and unique relationship with subscribers, even in the app. store environment. Moreover, this end users’ vote of confidence demonstrates that the trusted operator-end user relationship proves to be even more important when it comes to mission-critical functions such as search, mapping and navigation.

“The 100,000 downloads mark is an important one, proving that operators can and do leverage their very important assets of trusted, long term billing relationships, strong brand and marketing power, significant point of sale presence, and excellent customer care to continue and be the most important partner for their end-user’s mobile and digital lifestyle. Therefore, Telmap will continue to partner with operators on delivering location-enabled mobile interactions to their subscribers”, said Oren Nissim, Telmap CEO.