Technological evolution comes about through a combination of time, experience, and a dedication to continually optimize and innovate. Technological revolutions, on the other hand, generally only come to fruition when one or more great ideas are used in sync to create something that is more powerful as a single unit than the individual pieces that make it up.

Today SingleHop announced a technological revolution. We combined two exceptional products, LEAP and Tandem, with the bleeding-edge technology of our newest product, Cascade platform, to offer for the first time in the industry- a Cloud Reselling solution.

While cloud technology is prevalent throughout the hosting industry, the ability to seamlessly resell it has been, until now, sorely missing. As Zak our CEO mentioned earlier this week, the “adoption of cloud computing technologies by hosting providers has not yet hit a tipping point, because we feel hosting companies haven’t had the necessary components to easily bring a product to market”. And so, not content with the status quo we went combined the power of our top technologies with the Cascade cloud hosting platform to allow anyone to resell the cloud.

Our cloud reselling technology, Cascade platform, is extremely simple and intuitive technology. It allows you to “cloud” your server so ultimate scalability and redundancy can be achieved. Then with our powerful LEAP system you get to create, manage, and assign virtual machines to your customers through our powerful LEAP system. Finally, you can create your own custom control panel, marketing program, and even offer exceptional benefits such as free SSL’s to help bring in more customers and make you more money.

The cloud is here, its benefits are awesome, and with SingleHop, any hosting company can seamlessly sell the cloud.

If you are a hosting company and are interested in reselling the cloud, why not become a beta tester? Drop us a line by going to http://www.singlehop.com/cloud/?w=ht

This week Zak, our CEO, was invited to participate in the UN Global Compact Leaders Summit for 2010. The Leaders Summit is an event convened every three years by the UN’s secretary general for the purpose of bringing the world’s top business, philanthropic, and government minds to wrestle through the immense social and environmental issues facing our planet. To encourage serious discussion and not just elbow rubbing, the summit is organized with dozens of roundtable discussions among no more than 10 leaders, and just a few keynote speeches. At the end of the summit the UN will provide a publicly accessible report detailing the suggestions, solutions, and partnerships that this summt will produce.

SingleHop is honored to be able to participate in an event that we are convinced will have global implications in how businesses, government, and non-profit organizations address sustainability and other social issues such as poverty, education, and basic human rights. We are especially excited to be involved knee-deep in these issues because since its inception SingleHop has been infused with a strong sense of corporate responsibility. That’s right, the green theme and frog mascot are meant to be far more than just eye candy and cute. It is a daily reminder that our firm must be exceptionally conscious of how we affect the environment around us, its a public statement that doing well as a firm is intricately tied to doing good.

While we do not expect to save the world singlehandely this summit offers us a unique opportunity to use our extensive knowledge of technology and hosting services, as well as our extensive resources, for the benefit of society and the environment. Combine our efforts alongside those of the worlds largest and most powerful companies, governments, and non-profit groups and were talking change at a massive level!

So keep track of our Twitter (@SingleHop) for some of Zak’s updates from the conference, and if you would like to see it live some of the events will be streamed on the UN’s website: Live Leaders Summit 2010

Checkout our official press release HERE.

A short while ago, Zak Boca, our beloved President, CEO and head Pug groomer, floated the idea of launching a community forum so that our customers can interact with each other (and ourselves) in an open-to-the-public medium. SingleHop is a family, and we have always striven to make that clear: We’re more than just a faceless corporation that deals in the complex world of servers and datacenters, we’re people too, and we like to talk to other people—especially our customers. We wanted more than just a place for people to post tutorials, but we know that’s important, too.

In our office, not a single day passes where we don’t joke around and enjoy each other’s company as we work through the day. This is what makes us truly unique in the boring, bland corporate world and what gives our customers the five-star customer service they are used to. Indeed, our personality trickles into everything that we do, from our website design (what other company has green nerdy frogs all over their site?) to our e-mail and chat styles.

So, naturally, when Zak proposed a community forum, everyone got very excited. But we wanted more than just a forum where people can joke around and chat… we wanted to create a truly engaging message board where horseplay is acceptable, but serious business is done. The goal is to enable one customer to help another, to facilitate a meaningful symposium where SingleHop’s staff is not always the teacher, but sometimes the student as well. In the end, we want to get work done and have fun doing it.

So, without further adieu, I am proud to introduce and announce the SingleHop Community. A place where you can chat with other SingleHop customers, interact with SingleHop employees and vote on the iPhone vs. HTC Desire, go ahead, tell us what your favorite Server Operating System is, and make sure to let everyone know what you use your SingleHop server for… We’re curious!

One of the basic questions you need to answer when working on a startup is where the project will live—what infrastructure will you use to serve your application and store your project data?

Until 2007, the most common solution was to buy a server (or a server cluster, depending on the size of the project) with enough capacity to handle the anticipated web traffic and data. This got the job done, but the solution created several new challenges of its own:

-Budgeting for high-priced equipment and backup systems
-Diverting funds and manpower for server maintenance and upgrades
-Resolving conflicts between applications and the server hardware and operating system

Fortunately, there’s now an alternative which can eliminate the problems associated with owned servers, reduce implementation time, and dramatically cut startup costs: cloud computing. If you’re not familiar with the concept, here’s an analogy I like to use to explain the difference between owning your own hardware and cloud computing:

Owning hardware = Owning a car
When you own a car, you have to make your monthly payment no matter how many (or few) miles you drive. On top of that, you have to pay for gas, oil changes, wiper blades, car washes, parts and service, and everything else you need to keep the car running. The same goes for owning a server—you’re on the hook for absolutely everything, from hardware and upgrades to electricity.

Cloud computing = Taking a taxi
On the other hand, when you take advantage of cloud computing, it’s like taking a taxi—all you pay for is the mileage, which in this case is the amount of storage space used and data transmitted.

When you’re running a website, especially when you’re in the startup phase, you don’t have time or money to waste on expensive equipment and maintenance. You just want to get where you’re going as quickly as possible, which means you want a taxi—the cloud computing solution. And, if you suddenly need to take a lot of friends along for the ride, just get as many taxi’s as you need without having to go through the hassle of buying enough cars to fit everyone.

Cloud computing has many applications, including mail management , sales management, and customer relationship management. Here, I’m going to talk a little more about one specific application: cloud hosting.

Pushing your hosting environment to the “clouds” eliminates the need to spend money on hardware and hardware support. It can also speed up your implementation, because you won’t have to spend time configuring your servers or adjusting your applications. The benefits don’t stop at implementation, though—once your project is up and running, cloud hosting offers another set of advantages:

Scalability: Cloud hosting lets you avoid the delays and expense involved in migrating applications which have outgrown their servers’ capacity. The resources available in the cloud—processing power, storage capacity, or memory—can be expanded at any time.

Resource distribution: With cloud hosting, you don’t need to worry about hardware failures—the cloud will still serve your project even if one (or more than one) of your nodes goes down for maintenance.

Accessibility: As long as you have Internet access, the web interface allows you to manage your site from anywhere on the planet.

That’s a quick overview of cloud hosting, but keep in mind that cloud computing can be used for almost everything, from the smallest projects to the biggest. No matter what you need, the taxi is always waiting, and you’ll never have to pay for anything but the mileage.

If you feel constantly strapped to your computer because you are afraid of your server unexpectedly coming offline, fear no more.

In the event your dedicated server were to experience downtime, our QuickReaction Monitoring service immediately alerts our on-site data center technicians. Once they receive the alert, our technicians move your server to their top priority and automatically begin troubleshooting your server to ensure uninterrupted service. No matter what time of the day or night, an on-site data technician will be there to make sure your server does not experience long periods of downtime.

So how quick is our QuickReaction monitoring? Every minute HTTP / HTTPS, FTP / SFTP, DNS and a ping test is done on the server and every two minutes the hardware, SMTP/POP/IMAP and MySQL / MS SQL is checked. This monitoring is done continuously on the server to ensure as little downtime as possible. This service is highly recommended to all clients, whether they have their own technical support or they use SingleHop’s.

If you wish to add Quick Reaction Monitoring, you can add it alone or add it with our Take 2 package for a better discount. Contact your account executive or manager for further information!

What exactly is cloud computing?

Search Cloud Computing on any major search engine and you will find a seemingly infinite number of definitions.  I decided to write on this subject because like many others I find this extremely confusing.  How can a buzzword such as this have so many different and complex definitions?  After researching the topic with colleagues, I came up with a clear and concise definition of what Cloud Computing is or should be.

Too many providers focus on what their cloud service is made up of and not on what their cloud service does or provides.  A true or pure cloud service should be one that provides instant scalability, redundancy, flexibility, and is easily and expediently delivered.  For a provider to offer a true cloud service to their clients, it requires more than a “cloud hosting” moniker.

Many providers offering “cloud hosting” are doing nothing more than simply re-naming their current dedicated server offerings.  To offer a true cloud service requires much more than this.  It requires distributing or clustering your website across multiple cloud servers.  It means that multiple dedicated servers handle the processing of data.  One major benefit to this is the ability to instantly scale.  For example, if an article on your website was featured on the news and your traffic grew exponentially, true cloud computing would allow for the increase in traffic to instantly match with an increase in cloud servers.

What does this mean for you?  It means that gone are the days of struggling to get a server provisioned as quickly as possible to match an increase in traffic.  True cloud computing will allow you to instantly scale your servers to match your needs.

SingleHop will soon be making an important announcement regarding a cloud hosting program. In doing so, we plan to closely integrate our existing services and cloud computing services.  To be alerted when Cascade Cloud Hosting is available from SingleHop, please fill out the contact form on the SingleHop website.

Kyle Kinder
Account Executive
SingleHop, Inc. – Chicago
Follow me on Twitter: SingleHopKyle
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Office: 1-866-817-2811 x[106]
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Like summer songs, technologies have their own life-cycles. Jay-Z’s ‘Young forever’, and Black Eyed Pea’s ‘I Gotta Feeling’ seem bound to dominate 2010′s pop music summer charts. However, once fall and winter begin to swoop in newer and maybe even catchier songs will begin to take their place.

Cloud computing is one of those technologies that is seemingly defying a clear-cut life cycle. Depending on who you ask, firms have been optimizing their hosted solutions with cloud computing principles for years. Yet its hard to ignore the fact that this popular demand, usage, and benefits provided by this technology are just begining to go mainstream. And as we know mainstream means that not just corporate giants can take part in the revolution, but small to medium sized companies can also quantifiably see direct operational and financial benefits to the technology.

Cloud computing is expected to have a positive impact on SMEs, or Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises. SMEs stand to gain increased revenue because they are able to focus more on business needs and not on the resources required to run servers and employ IT specialists. Because of the set up and minimal monthly costs associated with cloud computing, small businesses are competing against larger businesses on an increasingly level playing field. Small businesses can now afford access to the servers, storage and software they need to effectively compete. Long gone are the days when small businesses could not massively deploy online software, or services due to limited budgets. The constraints and costs of scalability and world-class redundancy have been eliminated with the best cloud hosting platforms in the industry.

As the term “cloud computing” becomes common vernacular and permeates throughout the media, businesses of all size are utilizing the cloud to instill peace of mind. Along with this peace of mind comes the ability to focus more on business relations, customer relations and ultimately increasing profits. Smaller businesses will be more apt to make the transition to cloud computing because they rely on less staff and less resources. Large businesses and corporations will likely take longer to jump on the cloud computing bandwagon because of the need to downsize and outsource formally operated in-house solutions.

In the next few months SingleHop will be releasing their Cascade cloud hosting platform and businesses of all sizes, including current dedicated server customers, will be able to enjoy all the exceptional benefits that cloud computing offers. For more information feel free to contact us- as SingleHop likes to say “it pays to RSVP”. Go here to do so: http://www.singlehop.com/cloud/cascade.php

I often get questions from clients asking what all is included in general managed services and how can it help me? The quick answer is that general managed services gives you 2 hours of technical support for your dedicated server from our team, anytime it is required. Yes that inlcudes 24/7/365. Expert support, all the time, anytime.

When you purchase management you can contact our support team via ticket or phone for questions or suggestions about trouble shooting, upgrading, software installation (for those applications supported) and numerous other features. This is highly recommended to those clients who do not have their own technical support staff or need additional support with basic web hosting services or control panel troubleshooting.

General managed services can be combined in our Take 2 management option for a discounted package rate of only $49 per month. This can include the general managed services and one other managed service, such as our QuickReaction Monitoring. This package is highly recommended to our clients to give them the basic coverage they need to make sure the server stays online with as few issues and downtime as possible. One of our most loyal clients, Tomasz Klekot from Tomksoft states, “SingleHop technical support offers complete care solution for my server. They make sure that my server is working stable and at full performance. This gives me peace of mind 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.”

If you’re interested in adding Take 2 (semi-management) or general managed services, please contact your account executive or manager for further assistance. We understand that not all customers need this, but we do know that all customers can benefit powerfully from this.

Thanks for reading!

Tandem, SingleHop’s server reseller program, has made a big splash in the hosting world. With a wide array of options and a deep set of benefits Tandem was created with the singular focus of addressing all the major “pain points” of being a reseller. Yes, we did sit down and think of exactly what are the most difficult and yet most important aspects of reselling dedicated servers and came up with a targeted solution for each of these.

Resellers told us that they always suffered from lack of control, so we offered them a special version of our LEAP system where they could manage their resold servers more effectively. We also went a step further and provided each reseller with their own 100% white-labeled end-user control panel. And, to ensure that our moto of “control is only true when its everywhere and anytime” was met, we even offer a 100% white labeled mobile offering for the end-user.

Resellers told us that they were tired of watered down discounts, tricky discount scales, and most of all- erratic inventory offerings. So, starting with just three servers all Tandem customers can begin receiving discounts on their servers. Even more exciting, discounts apply retroactively to all their servers as they increase their overall servercount. Finally, we offered all Tandem clients access to our VirtualWarehouse system which offers them live inventory feed information of the servers that are available to them.

Resellers told us they, for obvious reasons, have limited resources for marketing and promotions. To alleviate this pain point we offer all Tandem resellers marketing assistance in the way of free banner ad design, and marketing materials. They can also offer their end-users a long list of benefits such as yahoo and facebook ad credits, free 3 month server authentication service through SiteLock, and customized video demo tutorials from the leader in that realm, Demowolf.

Finally, resellers have been clamoring for a billing system that they can use with their reseller business. This one was slightly harder to crack, but certainly not impossible. Starting today, all Tandem resellers can have access to 6 months of the leading billing system in the industry, CannyBill! Designed from the ground up to adapt to a plethora of programs and ticketing systems, CannyBill is uniquely and carefully built to help all sorts of online businesses, server resellers being one of the most important, to succeed.

We are certainly not done yet, Tandem was recently launched and our heads are already filled with literally hundreds of ways to improve the system. Ways to make it smarter, faster, better, and more “pain point” alleviating. Until then, though, Tandem is by far the very best server reseller system in the industry. If you have any reservations, just try it. Its free! Go to http://Tandem.SingleHop.com to get started

One major factor when it comes to picking a dedicated server is price versus scalability. This is especially true for those about to launch a site for the first time. The decision on whether to pay as little as possible until the site gets on its feet and can pay for the server or to pay a little more and have ability to scale your server as the site grows is a difficult one.

The first option is the cheap server, something like our ATOM 330 machine is a great example. The Atom is SingleHop’s entry level dual core and it comes with 2GB of RAM. Typically it used as an upgrade from shared or VPS hosting solution or as an internal server that would not receive a lot of traffic. It is also very popular with the type of client who has spent some time developing his site or application and is ready to start hosting it somewhere, but does not have any traffic or revenue from that venture coming in, yet. The ATOM server is attractive because of its price. That said, there is no real upgrade path, the server is already maxed out at 2GB of RAM and does not support any other processors or RAID. This should always be a main consideration for a site about to launch a major ad campaign in that its scalability is severely limited.

So that brings us to the second option, a machine that is still cost effective, but does allow for upgrade, and as such, room to grow without the hassle of moving to a new server. Something like our Xeon E3110 is a great example of this. The E3110 is a mid range dual core server that comes with 4GB of RAM. This is some pretty decent horsepower for a site just coming to fruition, so for a typical site that builds traffic over time, this is a great machine. The best part is that as that growth happens and the site needs more resources, the E3110 machine gives you a couple of important options. The first is that it support more RAM, another 4GB can be added in just a couple of minutes to give a site a quick performance boost. The second is that the motherboard in this machine is very flexible and support a number of the processors that we offer, including two of our quad core models, so again, in the span of a couple minutes, a significant performance boost can be added with no need to for a time consuming migration.

The pricing difference between my two examples is small, $40 per month, but that can make a break a new site. All in all, each situation is unique and will require thought and effort to come up with the best solution. That said, myself and all of the other Account Executives here at SingleHop are here to help!