The Web hosting business is built on trust: many of your customers rely on you for their entire operations, so if your service is down or unreliable it can be debilitating. This demand for high performance and high availability means that providers must have a robust technology infrastructure that thrives under constant pressure. For Webfusion, it’s not just about building bullet-proof web services: it’s also about providing pioneering, innovative solutions during a time of sharp company expansion. As the company looked to the future it realized it needed a storage solution that was not only technologically superior, but was capable of scaling up quickly and efficiently to satisfy a growing and highly demanding customer base. Just as its customers place their trust in Webfusion, Webfusion placed its trust in its storage solution provider to deliver a scalable, flexible, high-performance storage infrastructure. BlueArc has delivered on all counts, and now Webfusion is about to increase its storage capacity for the third time in less than three years.

The Customer

Webfusion has been a pioneer in providing services for websites in Europe for more than
13 years and is now Europe’s leading provider of web hosting services, serving more than 2.5 million domain names and as many as 1.4 million host sites. The company has a wide cross section of solutions for customers, ranging from simple shared web hosting solutions to virtual private servers, dedicated servers, managed services and custom-built servers. Webfusion is part of Host Europe Group, which has more than seven hundred thousand customers and is the largest privately owned hosting company in Europe. Being part of a larger company with broader offerings has enabled Webfusion to focus on its core business of web hosting services, which has created both opportunities and challenges.

The Challenge

For Webfusion, one of the big challenges has been to manage growth, according to Macsen Galvin, head of product management. Not only is the company’s customer base increasing, the company has also expanded through acquisition as well. “I joined the company in 2007 and we were mostly using single servers for hosting and email in some of the brands,” Galvin recalls. “It was not very robust and, if one server went down, you could lose all of the customers on that box. There was no simple way to spread the load. We also had another platform that had been built earlier that was a clustered environment with shared storage, but we were finding as our usage grew the performance was degrading fast. We knew to continue growing we needed to have a longer-term solution and we started looking around for a partner to work with that offered a high-performance architecture.”

The Solution

The team at Webfusion began looking for solutions that met their technical requirements and soon settled on two potential vendors: BlueArc and EMC. The team chose BlueArc and one of the reasons was the belief that the BlueArc team was extremely open about all of the costs involved in the solution and what it could and could not do for Webfusion. At the beginning of 2008, Webfusion installed a cluster of two Titan 2100 network storage solutions supporting about 18 terabytes of storage. A little more than a year later, Webfusion upgraded with an additional cluster of two Titan 3200 network storage solutions. The company now has about 45 terabytes of storage, with five terabytes of SATA, 26 terabytes of fibre channel and 14 terabytes of SAS.

The BlueArc storage solution is delivering far improved performance over the earlier systems and is supporting replication for backups. It is also supporting virtualization. Galvin says Webfusion has about 15 to 20 virtual file servers running on the BlueArc storage solution which enables the company to run different configurations based on usage requirements., One of the goals for Galvin was to reduce management costs and overhead, and he is extremely pleased with the results. “The BlueArc gives us a central place to manage what we need to do and it gives us the opportunity to do development efforts on different platforms,” Galvin says. “It’s very easy to manage — you can easily create new servers and new file systems. It tends to look after itself, to be honest. Another big advantage we’ve seen with the BlueArc is in availability. With our previous system everything was in one chassis and in order to upgrade or replace a part we would have to take the system down for a number of hours. With the BlueArc it just failed over to the resilient mode and our customers didn’t notice it at all.”

As Webfusion’s business has grown and its demand for more stor¬age has also grown, the simplicity of scaling up with the BlueArc solution has been a major advantage. “The upgrade has been very easy,” Galvin says. “It’s simply putting boards in. We’ve had no downtime. You can add more disks at any time and you’re not going to see any scalability issues.” Flexibility has also been an important factor. “When we were in the evaluation phase, we discovered some issues with integration with Windows. Within two weeks BlueArc implemented changes in the firmware. They were quite responsive.”

The Results

The BlueArc solution has enabled Webfusion to focus on providing services to customers and not worrying about what can — or cannot — be supported by the underlying infrastructure. “Having the BlueArc solution in place has enabled us to keep the focus on where we need to be as a business,” added Galvin. “With the previous storage systems we had in place there were things we couldn’t do because we were constrained by the system. Since the BlueArc has been installed we’re not constrained by worrying about storage — we know it scales, we know the current load, we know how to scale the system. That has given us freedom and flexibility — we’re designing our business around ideas and not platforms. It has enabled us to focus on what’s best for the business, rather than wor¬rying about what the platform can take.” Another major benefit has been reliability. “We have confidence in the system,” Galvin says. “We’ve had no outages of any significant size — and we could not say that before, not with our individual servers or with our earlier cluster. So we’re seeing a two-fold improvement — in reliability and in focus. We don’t have to worry about what the platform can do.”

The Conclusion

When Webfusion began its search for a new storage provider, it wasn’t just seeking the vendor with the best technology solution, it was also looking for a company that could be a long-term partner to support Webfusion’s growth as a business. Galvin is pleased with the results. “BlueArc supported us when we moved our data centre from London to Leeds and we were able to make the move with no downtime. They are very good at saying what things are do-able. From our point of view we have an open relationship and if we tell them we’re thinking about doing something they work with us so we can accomplish our goals. That was one of the reasons we wanted to go with them in the first place — in addition to the technical aspects, we wanted a good quality two-way relation¬ship. By buying at the entry levels we had plenty of expansion capability and, because we have piece of mind, we keep purchasing. We know we will get good service and we will get the things we need from BlueArc.”

Small businesses that do not have security measures in place could find themselves falling victim to an online threat. For instance: a customer database could be stolen and used by spammers, important information could be deleted from their systems, or software could be damaged.

So, what can a business do to ensure it is protected?

1. Firstly, get the basics covered. This means installing security and anti-virus software onto computers, keeping applications up-to-date and taking regular backups of important data.

1. Ensure hosting is secure. A company’s website and other online services, such as email, intranets or order processing systems can be vulnerable to attacks from hackers or viruses.

1. Consider a shared hosting package. Web hosts usually restrict what can be installed and work hard to ensure all the systems are protected and up-to-date to make sure one customer’s mistake will not affect others using that server.

1. Flexibility in web hosting enables small companies to run their business how they want to, rather than based upon the restrictions of their hosting provider. However also be aware that flexibility, such as the ability to install any software, also brings with it increased security implications.

1. Block unwanted traffic completely. This can be done through a firewall, which can be either a piece of software installed onto a computer, or a separate piece of physical hardware. Both perform similar jobs: they filter out malicious internet traffic, before it can cause damage to the server.

1. Consider a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Certification, which provides security by proving identity and scrambles information sent across the internet, so nobody else can see it. An SSL will give peace of mind that important data on a website is safe and secure, which is particularly important for customers making an online purchase and entering private information.

It is also important to consider the potential threats that employees can bring into the business. Many companies allow members of staff to access instant messaging services and social networking sites, such as Facebook or Twitter, while at work. These increasingly popular websites can often find themselves the target of malicious code, viruses and key-loggers. Although many employers will want to keep employees happy by allowing them to access such websites and services, it is also important to ensure they are aware of the security risks involved and the need to be vigilant of any potential threats. Failing that, it might be worth reviewing which sites staff have access to.

About 123-reg

123-reg is the UK´s biggest domain  registrar, registering every fifth .co.uk domain. It leads the market in both domain name registration (2.5 million domains) and web hosting solutions. With extensive experience of the industry, the company is able to offer high quality, technically advanced yet cost-effective products to a wide range of customers. 123-reg was voted most popular domain name provider by Domain Directory for five consecutive months during 2009. In April 2010 123-reg UK was voted fourth most popular web host by Web Host Directory and ranked ninth in The Best 10 Web Hosting awards.

www.123-reg.co.uk is part of the UK’s leading web hosting group and Sunday Times Deloitte Buyout Track 100 (2010) company, Webfusion. The group also consists of www.webfusion.co.uk, www.corporate.webfusion.co.uk. www.donhost.co.uk and www.supanames.co.uk, each making every step of setting up online as easy as 1, 2, 3.

Follow 123-reg on Twitter – http://twitter.com/123Reg

The prize was awarded randomly as part of a customer survey that was conducted by Webfusion. Everyone who completed the survey and entered their contact details was automatically placed into a prize draw.

Mr Spero, the lucky winner, is using the laptop to benefit his promotional branding business Promo Branding, which he has been running using Webfusion’s hosting products and services for three years. He says, “The laptop is a fantastic prize: it’s a higher spec than our current system and so the business will benefit through an instant IT upgrade.”

“The laptop is very welcome, but it’s Webfusion’s service record I value more. For a smaller business like mine, friendly, professional service, quick response times and reliable hosting is imperative. Webfusion ticks all these boxes and makes sure my time is never wasted.”

Thomas Vollrath, chief executive of Webfusion says, “Our survey was created to allow us to understand more about the needs and wants of our customers. It’s great to see a small business benefiting from the prize draw.”

About Webfusion

Webfusion Ltd is one of the UK’s leading web hosting groups with 1.4 million hosted websites and 2.5 million registered domains.

Ranked 28th in 2010’s Sunday Times Deloitte Buyout Track 100, Webfusion offers cost-effective, feature-rich hosting packages for a diverse customer-base – from web developers, designers and hobbyists to businesses with complex e-commerce operations. Winner of 2009’s SYB Award for Best Small Business Web Hosting Provider, Webfusion’s customers benefit from market-leading security and service including: 24×7 technical support, robust Firewall server protection, one click installation, access to FTP accounts and a state-of-the-art data centre. In April 2010 Webfusion was voted fourth in the Top 10 Hosting Providers in the UK.

123-Reg, one of the UK’s leading registrars, is urging companies to think laterally about domain names for their online businesses, as the rise in competing for an online presence reaches an all time high.

The warning comes as the result of recent statistics from online company formation group, Companies Made Simple which shows the sharp rise in online businesses in the past 12 months. In the past year they alone have formed over 150,000 businesses online. The steep rise the UK is seeing in online businesses is perhaps no surprise considering that in the last ten years internet usage around the world has increased dramatically. For example, China had just over two million internet users in 1998 compared with almost 300 million in 2008. Similarly in 1998 there were eight million internet users in Germany and over 60 million ten years later.

However as the internet becomes increasingly populated, businesses are being placed under increasing pressures. Thomas Vollrath, chief executive of 123-Reg explains, “The British economy has seen a significant surge in start-up businesses in the past year, many of which are either solely e-commerce based operations or have a significant need for a web presence.

“I’m sure everyone would agree that the growth of online British businesses should be actively encouraged – an online presence creates great opportunities for organisations to reach and communicate with new audiences. However, as an increasing number of businesses set up online, the internet becomes at risk of domain-overcrowding which presents tremendous threats to businesses. This threat is particularly prevalent for small start-ups that have limited cash flow and now face bigger hurdles than ever before in ensuring they stay ahead of the competition.

“One of the most increasing pressures businesses face in competing for an online presence comes from business owners which are buying more domains and using them for different purposes, such as marketing campaigns for certain products or services to direct to the main site.

“For example, we recently launched a pre-registration for .co domain names which aren’t due to register until 20 July, yet we have already seen thousands of pre-registrations. This high uptake of the new .co domain should act as a warning to businesseses that if they fail to protect their brand by registering under a number of donmain names, they are at risk of competitors hijacking their established brand by registering the name instead.

So what are the options for businesses?

Thomas concludes, “For businesses that are looking to register a domain name and find the name is already taken, there are a number of options available. If the name is a trademark, the trademark owner can pursue it via domain name resolution services which are offered by the domain name registries. However be careful; this could cost hundreds if not thousands of pounds to get back and can take months. Sometimes it can be quicker and cheaper to make a nominal offer to the current owner rather than take legal action.

“If the domain name is not a trademark, a store owner can consider purchasing the domain from the current owner. By using a WHOIS service, details of the domain registrant is shown and the store owner can then contact them with the information provided.

“Finally, think laterally. Not every company needs to end in a .co.uk or .com extension. There is a huge variety of domains available that can enhance a business or play on its brand presence.  We have seen some wonderful, creative ideas from extensions such as .me, .in and .be. Those who need a domain name for a business have the opportunity to be as creative and ingenious as they can allow themselves.”

About 123-reg

123-reg is one of the UK´s top registrars, registering every fifth .co.uk domain. It leads the market in both domain name registration (2.5 million domains) and web hosting solutions. With extensive experience of the industry, the company is able to offer high quality, technically advanced yet cost-effective products to a wide range of customers. 123-reg was voted most popular domain name provider by Domain Directory for five consecutive months during 2009. In April 2010 123-reg UK was voted fourth most popular web host by Web Host Directory and ranked ninth in The Best 10 Web Hosting awards.

www.123-reg.co.uk is part of the UK’s leading web hosting group and Sunday Times Deloitte Buyout Track 100 (2010) company, Webfusion. The group also consists of www.webfusion.co.uk, www.corporate.webfusion.co.uk. www.donhost.co.uk and www.supanames.co.uk, each making every step of setting up online as easy as 1, 2, 3.

Follow 123-reg on Twitter – http://twitter.com/123Reg

About Companies Made Simple

Companies Made Simple offers company formation and company registration services. Having formed over 150,000 companies, the group is the leadning online company formation agent in the UK.

Further information can be found on http://www.companiesmadesimple.com/

Follow Companies Made Simple on Twitter – http://twitter.com/madesimplegroup