There's now less than a month to go for the fifth annual cPanel Conference. Team cPanel assures us that this year's attendees will benefit from the technical sessions plus the educational and interactive sessions.
System administrators, developers, and integrators will learn more about Enkompass, integrating third-party applications and exploring documentation methodologies. Web hosting industry updates and relevant information will also be available and several of the leaders including VPS.Net, CloudLinux, Microsoft, CentOS, Softlayer, The Planet, and HostDime will be accessible at the exhibitors' row.
What about the networking events? One event is being kept under wraps: The cPanel/Softlayer Mystery Event. But fear not, cPanel never disappoints in that department. If you made HostingCon 2010 you know what we mean. And for added enjoyment, the after-hours Joystix Bash is back, featuring the latest gaming fun combined with old-school classics.
If you haven't signed on yet, cPanel recently launched its "Register to Win" Giveaway. Once you register, you are automatically entered for a chance to win a featured prize of the week, such as a free three-night stay at the Westin Galleria!
The TopHosts.com team will see you there, October 4-6. For more information about cPanel Conference 2010-Automation Bootcamp, visit www.cpanel.net/conference or contact a cPanel team member at conference@cpanel.net.
Overall, worldwide server revenues continue to rise. Research firm, IDC reported that in the second quarter this year (April to June) revenues climbed 11 percent and shipments increased 23.8 percent over last year's figures.
Relaying the excitement, Matt Eastwood, IDC's group vice president of Enterprise Platforms, says: "This is the fourth consecutive quarter of improving server market demand and the fastest quarterly server revenue growth IDC has reported in more than five years."
IDC's report indicates strong demand for x86-based HP ProLiant and IBM System X servers. HP's quarterly server revenue was $3.5 billion ahead of IBM's $3.2 billion. Dell had an excellent quarter that saw its server revenue increase 37 percent to land it in third spot overall in market share at 15.6% behind HP's 32.5% and IBM's 29.8%.
Sales and shipments of blade servers continue to make a huge impact as businesses capitalize on the space and power savings they offer. IDC said the blade market saw factory revenue grow 30.9% from last year to $1.5 billion, which accounts for 14% of the quarterly segment's server market revenue.
Jed Scaramella, research manager, enterprise servers at IDC explained: "Blade adoption continued to gain momentum in the second quarter of 2010, as blades accounted for its largest portion of total server revenue since the form-factor came to market. Vendors continue to build out their blade offerings through enhanced virtualization, management, and I/O capabilities; customers are leveraging these technologies as part of converged systems that are a building block to future internal cloud infrastructures."
This is one M&A story that won't go away: Dell has just increased its bid to $24.30 a share or roughly $1.6 billion for storage vendor 3PAR. This trumps HP's bid of $24 a share made on August 23rd.
Initially Dell's offer was to acquire all of the outstanding common stock of 3PAR for $18 per share in cash valuing the first bid at $1.15 billion.
3PAR, as of August 26th, has agreed to accept Dell's latest offer:
"3PAR and Dell have signed an amendment to their previously announced merger agreement reflecting the new offer price and a revised termination fee of $72 million, which is payable in the event that 3PAR receives and accepts another unsolicited acquisition proposal that its board determines to be superior to Dell’s increased offer."
Well, of course, Hewlett-Packard hasn't commented on this yet. They've been busy buying out a company in Denver that makes software to manage databases, Stratavia.
But many in the industry believe HP have the balance sheet to buy what they want. Dell would still end up with $72 million, however. There must be some other up and coming storage vendors in that price range.
The planned merger between The Planet and SoftLayer is still a topic of discussion, although it has cooled off a bit since the announcement was made at the beginning of August.
However, the amount of money surrounding this deal has been and is still subject to speculation.
Moody's Investor Services, as reported by Private Equity Hub, puts the enterprise value at
$500 million for the 70 percent equity stake in SoftLayer held by GI Partners. The remaining 30 percent is held by company management.
peHUB reported additional financial details as follows: "The buyers also increased the amount of equity they are investing to $250 million, up from the initial $195 million. The deal for SoftLayer also reduces a term loan from $190 million to $150 million and eliminates both a $20 million revolving credit loan and a $20 million delayed draw term loan."
While we won't comment on her ability to attract mates, this time around, Cameron Diaz' killer good looks is known to draw searchers to malicious websites.
Security firm McAfee, acquired by Intel on August 19th, publishes a list of the most dangerous Web celebrities each year based on searches that yield results leading to malicious sites. Diaz tops that list followed by Julia Roberts and Jessica Biel.
So if you plug Diaz' name in a search string, you have a one-in-ten chance of coming up with a site infected with or spreading malware, according to McAfee. If you search for "Cameron Diaz and screensavers" that doubles your risk. Basically, these site owners hope to lure you in to their sites in hope of stealing passwords and collecting private information they can profit from.
Dave Marcus, McAfee's director of security research and communication warns: "This year, the search results for celebrities are safer than they’ve been in previous years, but there are still dangers when searching online. Now they’re hiding malicious content in ‘tiny’ places like shortened URLs that can spread virally in social networking sites and Twitter, instead of on websites and downloads."
On the average, McAfee finds about 60,000 newly created pieces of malicious programming a day and the number keeps increasing each year. For more on the dangerous celebrity list, visit:
http://home.mcafee.com/AdviceCenter/Default.aspx?id=ad_sfs_mmdc
