SherWeb

By browsing on the internet, I came across 2 short papers from McKinsey and Forrester that make predictions on the technology trends to watch in 2008. There is nothing too surprising here but rather a confirmation of what has been happening in the past few years.

Eight Business Trends to Watch from McKinsey

Top Consumer Technology Predictions for 2008 from Forrester Research

You can also take a look at this website who publishes a list of all the websites that have something to say about the new trends of 2008.

THE Digital Media & Internet Uber 2008 Prediction List
http://www.darrenherman.com/2007/12/16/the-digital-media-internet-uber-2008-prediction-list/

Enjoy and if you have more predictions do not hesitate to post a comment.

Thank you

SherWeb had a phenomenal year in 2007. We were one of the first (if not the first) hosting companies to offer a fully functional hosted exchange package running on Microsoft Exchange 2007 and hosted SharePoint running on version 3.0. Furthermore, SherWeb was selected by Hostreview.com for a “Fastest Growing” award, which is given to companies that are increasing extremely quickly in size and prestige. Lastly, we won the Web Host Magazine & Buyer’s Guide Editors’ Choice Award for Exchange Hosting. This last award is given to companies who provide services and products that are deemed to be above and beyond that of their peers. We are certainly proud of these achievements and we are more than grateful to all of our customers who are making this possible.

So what to expect from SherWeb in 2008? For starters, we intend on staying focused on our goal which is to provide high quality software-as-a-service (SaaS) products to our customers. So far, besides Web hosting, we have focused on messaging and collaboration software such as Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint because we firmly believe email (with collaboration capabilities) is the most critical business communication tool.

For the year to come, not only will we remain focused on continuing to improve our business-class e-mail offering, but it is also an objective to introduce new software products under the SaaS model. Therefore, on the business-class email side, you can expect Exchange 2007 SP1 soon and the launch of new optional services such as Encryption which will further empower your email experience. As for new products, you can anticipate from us among other things a new CRM offering and a new Web-conferencing/IM package. We want all of our products and services to work perfectly together so we make seamless integration a priority. Of course, we will continue to back all of our services with our world-class email, chat and phone technical support.
We will post updates on our Web site and this blog as they come along!

I came upon this interesting blog written by Bill Sweetman, General Manager at Tucows.com, who suggests an unusual but nonetheless insightful New Year Resolution. Coming from the Hosting industry myself I definitely second his idea.

This Year: Don’t “lose” your domain name!

Mr. Sweetman explains how Tucows.com deals everyday with anxious customers who forget to renew their internet identity commonly known as a Domain name.

SherWeb definitely understands this situation as it sees plenty of customers complaining that they have “lost “or got their domain name stolen. So before it happens to you, here is what Mr. Sweetman has to say to avoid this disaster.

Take 30 seconds, RIGHT NOW, to find out when your domain name is going to expire. (Do a WHOIS query at whois.tucows.com, then check to see what expiration/renewal date is listed.) Make note of this date.

Now, take another 30 seconds to write a reminder to yourself to renew the domain name a few weeks before it expires. Go ahead, I’ll wait while you do this. Use Outlook or whatever calendaring system you use. Just make sure you set a reminder!

Finally, when you get your reminder to renew your domain name, RENEW your darn domain name! In most cases this takes less than two minutes, and you can do it online via the company your registered the domain name with.

As you can see, all this is extremely easy to do and requires little or no time. Most importantly, it prevents you from feeling angry and frustrated when trying to retrieve your “lost” domain.

That being said, I would like to thank M. Sweetman for his blog and would like to wish you all a Happy New Year!

SherWeb is a proud partner of Barracuda Networks’ advanced anti-spam solution. For well over 2 years now, SherWeb has been offering this powerful anti-spam solution free of charge for all Hosted Exchange customers. The overall impression of the service is very positive; customers seem to love Barracuda’s spam filtering. Moreover, Barracuda delivers impressive results with more than 98% of all spam blocked.

It has become mission critical for organizations to implement a business class email solution at work but most importantly to arm itself against the increasing amount of spam sent to employees within the company. According to Barracuda’s annual spam report: 95 percent of all e-mail sent in 2007 was spam.

Please read this interesting article if you want to know more about the study and consider yourself lucky to be protected (for free) by one of the best spam filtering solution on the market.

Thank you for reading me

Rejoice! All you Blackberry and Facebook lovers out there constantly torn between answering a quick email on your phone or answering a quick wall post on Facebook, will now be able to do both at the same time.

In its press release published on October 24 2007, RIM announces the launch of its new Facebook for Blackberry application that enables fast, streamlined and optimized mobile access to the popular Facebook social utility using a BlackBerry smartphone. The application leverages the push-based BlackBerry system architecture and Facebook Platform to create an unparalleled mobile experience for Facebook users.

Facebook for BlackBerry Smartphones, which will be available as a free download, makes it faster, easier and more convenient for users to stay wirelessly connected with their Facebook friends and colleagues. The application allows users to:

• Receive notifications and messages automatically – Leveraging the BlackBerry platform’s push-based architecture, notifications and messages are automatically sent to the user; the user can also set a unique alert (vibration and/or ringtone) for Facebook related content
• Quickly access essential features – Convenient onscreen icons let users quickly change their Status, upload a photo, add a friend, poke someone, write on a Wall, or send a message. Users can also quickly scroll through messages and notifications as they do with email messages
• Invite friends to join Facebook and accept new friend requests
• Quickly snap and post pictures along with a caption and tags – The photo upload feature is also integrated with the BlackBerry smartphone camera and photo management applications on the smartphone
• View the Status of friends
• Read, compose and reply to messages even while offline – If the user is out of wireless coverage, messages are queued until the user returns to an area of coverage

Facebook users will be able to download the application at www.facebook.com from their PC or BlackBerry smartphone beginning later today.

Now the only thing that’s left to do for all you Blackberry fans, is to make sure to purchase a Hosted Blackberry account from SherWeb

For more details and to read the full press release please click here

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The online advertising market is heating up and Microsoft has decided to make a bold move by taking part in the social networking frenzy. On Wednesday, October 25th 2007, Microsoft has secured a deal to buy 1.6 percent of the ever growing social networking site Facebook for $240 million. This move helps increase the total value of the young site to an estimated $15 billion and at the same time strengthens a new model of online advertising.

To quote Ellen Lee and Ryan Kim, chronicle staff writers from the San Francisco Chronicle:

“Marketers are expected to spend about $1.2 billion worldwide on social-networking advertising this year, according to a research report by eMarketer. That could grow to $3.6 billion by 2011. Microsoft is betting big that Facebook‘s rise is just in the early stages. Facebook remains second behind MySpace, but Facebook‘s audience has grown from 13.3 million people last year to more than 30.6 million users in September, according to comScore, which measures Internet use.”

As a fan of Facebook, I myself just can’t wait to see what will happen with all this!
Please, if you have time, take a few minutes to read the article that inspired my blog

Thank you for reading me!

I came upon this article that was posted on the JkOnTheRun.com website that describes and discusses the benefits of Hosted Exchange. According to the author, “I have been using a hosted Exchange Server service for over a year now to run my one man business and it is one of the best moves I have ever made.” Please take a look at this interesting article here and see what others have to say about Hosted Exchange.

Managing your business class emails is giving you a headache?

You heard about hosted exchange but you are not sure what it means or if it’s really a viable solution?

You came upon SherWeb and you are completely astonished with the aggressive offering?

You are not sure wether SherWeb is a reliable, experienced, secure and well established Hosted Exchange company?

Here is a little something that may ease your mind. Take a look at this Microsoft Hosted Exchange Partner Directory list where you will clearly see that SherWeb is one of the top Gold certified Hosted Exchange providers out there. Choosing Sherweb for your Hosted Exchange solution should not be a hard choice to make. Let us show you how we can make the managing of your business class email painless and effortless. Contact us if you have any questions and it will be our pleasure to answer you promptly

Thank you for reading me

SherWeb was recently published on the WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW website. The article gives a good overview on how Windows Sharepoint Sevices can be useful in today’s business environment.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank www.thewhir.com to have included SherWeb in their research.

SherWeb offers a free 100 MB Sharepoint account to all its Hosted Exchange customers. Hosted Sharepoint can also be purchased as a seperate service. Hosted Sharepoint incorporates essential collaboration and communication technologies into a single Web–based environment that integrates easily with desktop applications, such as Microsoft Office. Please for more information please refer to SherWeb’s Hosted Sharepoint section and read this very interesting article written by the www.thewhir.com.

Thank for taking the time to read me!

Today in San Francisco, Bill Gates and Jeff Raikes kick off the worldwide Unified Communications Launch.

With the launch of this suite of products, Microsoft hopes to increase its presence in the market for enterprise communications software that goes well beyond e-mail.

Here’s an overview of the products to be unveiled:
Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, Office Communicator 2007, and Microsoft Live Meeting, are part of Microsoft’s unified communications suite and are designed to help companies add voice, video, and instant messaging to their communications networks with minimal disruption.

What does this all mean to SherWeb? We are very anxious to be able to offer more than just business class email to our customers and to push the Hosted Exchange experience to another level. Improved live communications is crucial in today’s business world! Being able to seamlessly integrate voice mail, videos and instant messaging together and accessing it at one place in outlook, will certainly improve your everyday work experience. This is all very exciting and is a big step for better collaboration and communication at work.

For more information please check out the new Microsoft Unified Communications website

Thank you for taking the time to read me!