Daily Archives: March 10, 2011

5 posts

iWeb in Discussions Regarding Acquisition Proposal

iWeb Group Inc. announced that it has received from a private equity fund (the “Fund”) a non-binding proposal to acquire, together with financial partners, all of the outstanding common shares of iWeb at a price of $1.50 in cash per share, and has agreed to grant exclusivity to the Fund until May 3, 2011. The transaction contemplated by the non-binding proposal, if completed, will lead to iWeb’s privatization.

The Fund has until May 3, 2011 to present a definitive agreement at $1.50 per share to complete the transaction.

The founders of iWeb, Éric Chouinard and Martin Leclair, and Investissements Webdépart Inc., an entity controlled by Messrs. Chouinard and Leclair, who hold in the aggregate approximately 54.2% of the outstanding common shares of iWeb, have entered into a lock-up agreement with the Fund whereby they have agreed to vote their shares in favour of the transaction contemplated by the non-binding proposal. As part of the transaction, the founders would reinvest a portion of the proceeds received by them in securities of iWeb. The lock-up agreement expires on June 2, 2011.

The purchase price of $1.50 in cash per share contemplated by the non-binding proposal would value iWeb’s equity at approximately $47 million. The proposed purchase price represents a premium of 25% over the closing price of $1.20 per share on March 3, 2011 and a premium of 31.6% over the 20-day volume weighted average trading price of $1.14 per share on the TSX Venture Exchange for the period ended on March 3, 2011.

The non-binding proposal is subject to due diligence, execution of definitive legal documentation and other customary conditions. There is no assurance that the negotiations with the Fund will result in a binding offer being made for iWeb’s common shares. See “Forward-looking Information” below.

iWeb has agreed to pay to the Fund an amount of $3 million in the event that the Fund and its financial partners are ready to enter into a definitive agreement with respect to the transaction at a price of $1.50 in cash per share within the exclusivity period, and iWeb does not enter into such definitive agreement prior to the end of the exclusivity period. In addition, in those circumstances, the Fund and its financial partners will have the right to match any alternate transaction having a price higher than $1.50 per share that is proposed within six months from the expiration of the exclusivity period.

iWeb intends to make no further announcements or comments with respect to the foregoing unless the circumstances so warrant.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

About iWeb

iWeb provides Internet hosting services and IT infrastructure to nearly 24,000 customers in 150 countries. With its four data centers, iWeb’s total capacity has reached 34,000 dedicated servers, over 1,100 co-location cabinets and 77 Gigabits per second (Gbps) of Internet connectivity, from 9 separate providers.

One of Canada’s 100 fastest growing companies according to PROFIT Magazine, iWeb now generates more than 60% of its revenues from abroad. Founded in 1996 in Montreal, iWeb shares are traded on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol “IWB”.

http://www.iweb.com

DreamHost Adds Jetpack to WordPress One Click Installer

DreamHost, announces the integration of the new plugin, Jetpack, into its One-Click WordPress Installer. Jetpack launches self-hosted WordPress sites into the stratosphere by allowing them access to features that are typically reserved for blogs hosted on WordPress.com.

Jetpack was developed by Automattic and is a collection of eight popular plugins (e.g. WordPress.com Stats, Twitter Widget, and Sharedaddy). For example, Sharedaddy enables a WordPress blog to share its posts with other services including Facebook®, Twitter™, reddit™, Digg™, and StumbleUpon™. Jetpack could be considered a plugin expansion pack that will continue to grow as more plugins are added in the future.

Matt Mullenweg, founder of Automattic and a co-founder of WordPress, mentioned, “DreamHost usually has the latest and greatest stuff, and we’re excited to have them as a launch partner for Jetpack. I think this will make the WordPress experience on DreamHost even smoother.”

DreamHost maintains a close relationship with WordPress, and as a proud partner, DreamHost will be one of the first hosting companies to offer Jetpack integration at the time of its launch. By rolling Jetpack into its One-Click WordPress Installer, DreamHost further simplifies the plugin process enabling newly-created WordPress sites a quick way to take advantage of the powerful features offered on WordPress.com.

DreamHost will also make the standalone Jetpack plugin available to their customers via upload so that they can update their existing WordPress sites. In order for the user to take advantage of the features provided by WordPress.com, he will need to connect to his WordPress.com account. If the user does not already have an account with WordPress.com, then he can easily create one as part of the installation of Jetpack.

About DreamHost
DreamHost is a global full-service web hosting company that offers shared servers, virtual private servers, dedicated servers, and domain name registration. DreamHost is a carbon-neutral hosting company and a proud member of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Green Power Partnership program. Please visit http://www.dreamhost.com for more information.

A2 Hosting Partners With CloudFlare To Offer Free CDN

Linux Hosting provider www.A2Hosting.com has partnered with www.CloudFlare.com to offer their content delivery network (CDN) solution to their Web Hosting customers. CloudFlare’s service helps websites load an average of 30% faster. While most hosting companies charge their customers to use a CDN, A2 Hosting offers this service for free. A2 Hosting customers can opt into CDN Hosting (http://www.a2hosting.com/services/cdn-hosting) with 1-click within the award winning cPanel control panel.

CloudFlare optimizes the delivery of web pages by storing duplicates of a site’s static content (i.e. CSS, Javascript and images) on their servers located worldwide. Once an A2 Hosting customer activates their CDN account in cPanel, their content is automatically served through CloudFlare’s global network. Content is served from the CloudFlare server located closest to each visitor. The closer the CDN server is located to a website visitor, the faster the content is delivered.

A2 Hosting customers taking advantage of CloudFlare’s service will also experience enhanced website security. CloudFlare utilizes information from Project Honey Pot, third party sources and its own community to identify malicious threats and stop attacks before they even reach a website. Website owners can adjust the security level on a site-by-site basis. CloudFlare notifies human website visitors if their computer is infected by malware or a virus. That visitor may enter a site once they have removed the issue from their machine and enter a CAPTCHA.

Marketing Manager Brad Litwin commented on the partnership: “When we tested CloudFlare, we were thoroughly impressed by its features, especially CloudFlare’s clearly evident capability to increase a site’s performance. We are very excited to offer this CDN to our customers, for free no less, and allow them to opt into CloudFlare’s network with a single click.

“We are pleased to have partnered with A2 Hosting,” says Matthew Prince, CEO of CloudFlare. “A2 Hosting is focused on helping websites grow, and CloudFlare is proud to be part of the toolkit that allows sites to do that.”
About CloudFlare

CloudFlare (www.CloudFlare.com, @cloudflare) brings the performance and security tools previously reserved for the Internet giants to the rest of the web. Powering thousands of websites, CloudFlare’s free service accelerates their performance, protects against attacks, and gets smarter as its community expands. Headquartered in San Francisco, California, CloudFlare was the winner of the 2009 Harvard Business School Business Plan Competition, winner of the Most Innovative Company at TechCrunch Disrupt September 2010 and founded by the engineering team behind Project Honey Pot.

About A2 Hosting

A2 Hosting (www.A2Hosting.com) is a Linux based web hosting company located in Ann Arbor, MI. A2 Hosting provides their customers with 24/7/365 real support. Their range of services include affordable, developer friendly website hosting for personal homepages up to full service solutions for businesses of all sizes. A2 Hosting supports a wide range of internet technologies including PHP, MySQL, Perl, Python, Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL and many more.

Datapipe Powers Data Centers with 100 Percent Renewable Energy

Datapipe, announced today that all of its U.S. based data centers are now powered by 100 percent renewable energy. This makes Datapipe the only IT Company in NJ and one of thirteen nationwide to be a member of the EPA’s Green Power Leadership Club.

As part of the company’s sustainability strategy, Datapipe’s California data center, located in San Jose, has fully converted to running operations on renewably sourced electricity. Datapipe converted its other U.S.-based data centers to renewable power in 2010.

“Converting our San Jose facility to 100 percent green energy is a part of our overall commitment to being a global leader in sustainable IT,” said Robb Allen, CEO.

According to the U.S. EPA, Datapipe’s green power purchase of nearly 56 million kWh is equivalent to avoiding the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions of more than 7,000 passenger vehicles per year or the CO2 emissions from the electricity use of nearly 6,000 average American homes annually.

“As an EPA Green Power Partner, Datapipe is committing to 100 percent green power for electricity use in its U.S operations.” said Susan Wickwire, Acting Director of the Climate Protection Partnerships Division. “We applaud their leadership to use renewable energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

Power consumption is a key consideration for Datapipe. The company has made it a priority to take conservation measures into account at each of its data centers. For example, Datapipe utilizes a 99% efficient Universal Power Source Energy Saver System and has installed a Econo Cooling Configuration, which optimizes the efficiency of Computer Room Air Conditioning (CRAC) units, resulting in a 55 percent power savings. Datapipe has also invested in ultrasonic humidifiers, which yield 90% energy savings over traditional humidifying systems.

In addition to supporting clean energy, Datapipe supports several internal green initiatives. These include recycling and waste reduction programs, mass transit incentives and sustainable services, such as paperless billing.

About EPA’s Green Power Partnership

The Green Power Partnership is a voluntary program that encourages organizations to buy green power as a way to reduce the environmental impacts associated with electricity use. The Partnership currently has more than 1,300 Partner organizations voluntarily purchasing billions of kilowatt-hours of green power annually. Partners include a wide variety of leading organizations such as Fortune 500® companies, small and medium sized businesses, local, state, and federal governments, and colleges and universities. For additional information, please visit http://www.epa.gov/greenpower.

ServInt Leases New Data Center Capacity

ServInt, a pioneering provider of managed hosting for enterprises worldwide, today announced it has leased more than one-half a megawatt of data center capacity at CoreSite Realty Corp.’s expanded facility in Reston, Va., which is now under construction.

CoreSite is a national provider of powerful, network-rich data centers.

Grubb & Ellis Associate Vice President David Horowitz and Senior Vice President William Moser, both in the Company’s National Data Center Practice, represented ServInt in this leasing transaction.

The new ServInt data center is expected to open in the second quarter of this year. It will complement ServInt’s existing Washington, DC data center facility as well as the ServInt data center in Los Angeles.

“This significant expansion of our data center resources will help us ensure ample capacity for ongoing and future growth,” said ServInt CTO Matthew Loschert. “We selected CoreSite’s Reston facility for our expansion because it provides best-of-breed connectivity, energy efficiency, power redundancy and environmental sustainability. We consider it to be the best-positioned data center in Northern Virginia.”

CoreSite Senior Vice President of Strategy and Marketing David Dunn said, “It is gratifying to expand the data center resources of an important customer like ServInt in an established CoreSite market. ServInt’s growth is a testament to their ability to anticipate customer needs and invest wisely in the necessary resources. We believe our facility is well suited to meet the demanding hosting requirements of ServInt’s wide range of customers.”

Grubb & Ellis’ Horowitz added, “Working with a large, national developer creates efficiencies for companies with a presence in multiple markets. For that reason, it was ServInt’s preference and our recommendation to work with CoreSite in this transaction. We’re excited we were able to help expand this relationship, and we look forward to working together in the future as ServInt continues to grow.”

www.servint.net