N. American Ex Awards 2017

28 CORP AMERICA / North American Excellence 2017 , NAE17039 1&1 Internet, Inc. is driving the web hostingmarket forward thanks to its focus on providing innovative solutions designed tomeet its clients’ needs. We invited Hans Nijholt to share his insight into the market and how 1&1 is working to remain at the forefront of innovation. Web Hosting Provider of the Year 2017 & Award for Excellence in Server Solutions - USA Cloud Computing drives a company’s growth – the experts agree on that. The benefits of the cloud arrived at the SMB sector, nevertheless many users still choose in-house server solutions or hosted dedicated servers for their projects and data. However, the market has changed radically in recent years. A massive amount of companies is convinced that cloud computing brings their business forward. Accordingly, the potential for providers to pick up SMBs at this point and support them to relocate the IT infrastructure to the public cloud or to take the next step to the cloud is immense. Finally, a provider of cloud solutions can take customers any remaining doubts. An open and transparent communication, for example, creates confidence – this has a positive impact on the business relationships in the second step. However, hosting providers are facing the challenge of providing cloud solutions that perfectly fit the needs of their customer base. Within the SMB target group – and this includes also micro businesses and self-employed people like web designers and developers – you can see a very fragmented user landscape. It reaches from very experienced users to self- employed developers or web designers with a limited amount of time and resources as well as web agencies specialized on their core business – building and maintaining websites. In order to satisfy the needs of all of these customers, a webhosting provider has to offer a comprehensive portfolio with the perfect mixture of mass-suitable and individual products. In order to meet clients’ needs and adapt to market changes, 1&1 Cloud Server combines the performance of an enterprise product with the needs of SMBs. Small and medium businesses, developers and system integrators can use the cloud in a completely new way: easy setup, administration and flexible adjustment. In addition, they always have full cost control, because the use is calculated by the minute and billed monthly. Not only the cost control, but also the user-friendliness is a great advantage. Storage systems and connections such as firewalls, private networks, load balancers and backups can then be adjusted with just one click to the needs of different projects. Higher operational reliability and better performance are also guaranteed thanks to the latest technologies such as SSD storage. Further technical features are centralized firewall settings for virtual machines, load balancers, integrated backup, a KVM console for access via the desktop and Hot Add Resizing to increase resources without downtime. The demands customers have for company websites is always growing. To stay ahead of competitors, website-owners must offer visitors new features and updates on a regular basis. At the same time, the leeway for maintenance downtime and malfunctions is very limited. In addition, temporal load peaks such as those during Christmas business are causing this high pressure. For all these reasons, companies need an increasingly agile and flexible IT infrastructure. Traditional infrastructures are no longer sufficient under these conditions. According to this trend, experienced website professionals and agency staff often request a high performing infrastructure that provides all the benefits of a root server solution but is maintained by the hosting provider. For them this means that they can concentrate on their core business – building and maintaining websites without lot of time investment in the infrastructure maintenance. Therefore, managed cloud hosting solutions like the product offered by 1&1 are the perfect companion. The operating system, the stacks as well as all stack updates are constantly managed by 1&1 experts. With Managed Cloud Hosting 1&1 offers a flexible and easy-to- use Cloud solution without any administration effort for the cloud customers. Thereby the performance is customizable, demand-oriented and individual. The special benefit of this managed solution is its simplicity, the flexible handling of resources on demand as well as its customizable stack variations. 1&1 ensures an easy deployment and best performance by using purpose built images thanks to the implemented Docker container technology. Containers provide an isolated environment for the execution of processes, meaning they “wrap” applications for their use in the cloud. The special thing here is that several containers are sharing a “Shared Operating System”. Thanks to this system, containers can be managed quite easily and efficiently. Private users and freelancers in the web industry find a very useful solution by using a virtual server based on a high- performing cloud infrastructure. Their main requirements for a server solution is an infrastructure, that is simple and easy-to-use but at an attractive price – and ready to use within a very short timeframe. By using a 1&1 Virtual Server Cloud, customers benefit from the most high-quality components currently available in the market, and dedicated resources enabling them to use the booked performance whenever they want. 1&1 solely uses VMware’s virtualization technology for its servers—along with modern Intel Xeon processors and 100 percent SSD Storage Arrays, which are more reliable in protecting the system against downtime and significantly faster than traditional systems. Ultimately, at 1&1 all customers, whether a root server is needed