Ex-colleague: “Parallels has released a new product. It’s superb!”
Me: “What’s it called?”
Ex-colleague: “PCS6…”
 
And this is how I first came to hear about PCS6 aka Parallels Cloud Server 6. This conversation occurred about a week before PCS6’s official launch on November 6, 2012. For the remainder of our chat, my ex-colleague went on to extol the benefits of the software. Truth be told, he really had me interested in this new direction that Parallels seemed to be headed in.
 
Parallels Cloud Server, for people who are new to the concept, combines the features of Parallels Server Bare Metal, Virtuozzo and Cloud technologies. Read the rest of this entry »

Get a first-hand experience of high quality support. Bobcares, the most trusted name in quality technical support now offers 2 weeks free trial for our Helpdesk, Livechat and Phone support plans. This offer is valid for all our three support centers in United States, Germany and India.
 
For as low as $1.82/min, Bobcares offers phone support from our offices in United States (24×7) and Germany(12×7). Our team gives you Level 1 and pre-sales support using your customized response routines. To keep your customers feel comfortable, you can choose which office should attend your calls, and you can get a dedicated number for your company. Read the rest of this entry »

This new year, resolve to give a big boost to your business. Partner with the best in the game, and jump start your growth in 2013. Bobcares, the most trusted name in Outsourced Technical Support now offers New Year special bundled plans for HelpDesk, LiveChat and Phone support.
 
Use the coupon code HCQ113A and get a discount on your bundled packages comprising our popular HelpDesk, LiveChat and Phone support plans.
 
For as low as $1.82/min, Bobcares offers phone support from our offices in United States (24×7) and Germany(12×7). Our team gives you Level 1 and pre-sales support using your customized response routines. To keep your customers feel comfortable, you can choose which office should attend your calls, and you can get a dedicated number for your company. Read the rest of this entry »

There is no perfect control panel; or is there? While doing feature comparisons of control panels for our new server farm, I came to the surprising conclusion that we indeed had one perfect control panel: Hsphere.

Though new licenses for are no longer available, Hsphere in its conception, implementation, and evolution presents a good role model and golden standard for web hosts to evaluate their control panel options. Here are my reasons on why Hsphere was a perfect control panel.

Read the rest of this entry »

Software testing is not about hunting bugs but delivering great software. However, a vast majority of project managers still consider bug count as the most important measure of a tester’s effectiveness. In my career, I’ve come across a host of metrics which can be used to measure the effectiveness of a tester in delivering the perfect software.

A well designed tester’s Key Performance Indicators should show performance in terms of goals for different functional areas, overall performance as a team, and customer’s feedbacks. Here I am presenting a few of the KPIs we follow in our team, which resulted in an improvement in customer satisfaction index.
Read the rest of this entry »

“Google has listed your server as a malware source! Its been hacked into, and is being used to spread malware!”

 
I’m sure this is a message that you never hope to get in your mailbox. But, how confident are you about your server security? Verizon’s Data Breach Investigations Report for 2012 states that there is a 31% increase in server hacking attempts, and 20% increase in malware attacks in comparison to 2011 statistics.

 
One of the most important mitigation steps proposed by Gartner technology research group is the use of firewall. The report shows the necessity to employ firewall as a security layer for our servers. Firewalls come in two broad categories: Hardware and Software. Making this choice is primarily a factor of what your requirements are and what your budget is.

 
Here I am presenting a quick overview on these two kinds of firewalls so that you can make an informed choice. 
Read the rest of this entry »

Isnt shared hosting dead already? In hosting conferences and forums this is a question we’ve heard all too often. But despite all the dire predictions in the past one decade, shared hosting is still alive and flourishing.

 
Every web host on earth has a shared hosting plan, and all website owners starts hosting with a shared space. It is a market that just cannot be ignored, and it is still the most competitive market.

 
What does it take to succeed in this market? There are companies which keep growing year after year, and there are companies which stop growing after they get about 10 servers. Here is a quick overview on what the winners do right, and thus ensure their brand keeps attracting new customers.

Read the rest of this entry »

Virtualization is no longer a niche market. It is now a pre-requisite for success in webhosting industry. Gartner’s server virtualization report of 2011 mentions a virtualization market penetration of 40% for x86 server work loads. A study by Tier1Research on Mass-Market Hosting for Winter 2011 showed that 60% of webhosts provide VPS solutions.These findings tally with the technology adoption trend we see here in Bobcares as well.

For someone entering the VPS hosting business, it is important to choose the right virtualization technology based on your market segment requirement, and cost considerations.

Read the rest of this entry »

WordPress powers 48 of the top 100 blogs online. More than that, WordPress actually powers 19% of the web as a whole.

Such a strong community of users and developers means that the platform is sure to evolve even further and provide us with lots of features that are yet to be developed.

Unfortunately, this creates some dangers as well. The cases where a blog owner loses complete access to their site are not uncommon.

WordPress as a whole (a website management platform) is very well designed. It doesn’t have any preposterous security issues that beginning programmers could exploit. The problems, however, arise when you try to tweak your settings of WordPress by adding new plugins or themes.

This doesn’t mean that you should settle for the default installation, not use any plugins, and only blog using the default theme. You need to be careful when installing new stuff on your blog, as well as when setting up your blog for the first time.

Read the rest of this entry »

Cloud hosting is a very flexible option that allows you to adjust your hosting plan quickly and easily in response to your changing needs. The technology behind cloud hosting allows us to have a cheap, reliable and scalable architecture. The processing power of the Cloud is unlimited because we can add servers and resources to the Cloud as often as necessary. If you expect reliability, scalability and redundancy for your website and applications, a Cloud Hosting plan can be a perfect choice.

Read the rest of this entry »