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The commercial launch of our cloud hosting last week has been widely covered in the media.

“A new scalable cloud-based service designed to offer highly flexible and easy-to-use web hosting and on-demand burst computing capabilities … offering small to medium sized businesses an interface which even non-IT professionals will be able to use.” wrote Phil Muncaster of V3.co.uk and Computing.

Kevin White of Computer Business Review wrote a detailed article, mentioning our “nice, easy to use interface” which targets “organizations wanting to use cloud services that are simple to use”.

We were also covered in depth by David Hamilton for Web Host Industry Review, Jennifer Scott for IT Pro, Antonio Piraino for Tier1Research and Dan Ilett for Greenbang.

Finally, The Frugal Tech Show on 6 August featured a 30 minute interview with Richard Davies, ElasticHosts CEO, interviewed Ken Hess of DaniWeb and ServerWatch and Jason Perlow of ZDNet. Follow this link to hear a recording of that interview.

User-friendly interface makes cloud hosting simple

August 4, 2009, London: ElasticHosts, the UK based cloud provider, today announced the launch of its cloud server solutions, which provide ultra-flexible and easy-to-use server capacity for scalable web hosting and on-demand burst computing. Customers benefit from a user-friendly interface that can be managed from any desktop and allows them to create virtual servers instantly and resize their capacity immediately.

ElasticHosts’ cloud servers allow customers the cost-efficiency of buying exactly the capacity they need today, with the peace of mind that they can immediately scale up. Capacity is billed on-demand by the hour, unlike traditional hosting contracts which tie customers to fixed capacity for up to two years. The servers run any PC operating system, are fully configurable and designed to accommodate all forms of web hosting. ElasticHosts offers a 100% SLA with 100x credits for downtime, and offers two independent data centres in Europe, using PEER 1’s high performance 10 Gbps SuperNetwork™ infrastructure to support mission critical hosting needs where business continuity is vital.

Richard Davies, CEO of ElasticHosts, said: “To date, businesses looking for the cost savings and scalability of cloud hosting have had to tackle complex user interfaces and have been limited to a handful of server sizes offered by different vendors. We have designed ElasticHosts so that it can be used by almost anyone and it allows users to configure their servers specifically to suit their requirements.”

“I have used many other cloud and virtual server solutions in the past.” said Andrew Fear of Trana eCommerce Ltd, an ElasticHosts customer. “I was beginning to get frustrated with these providers and had been looking for alternatives for a while. Then I found ElasticHosts and I realized that I would be able to add a lot of flexibility for no extra cost. I now have quite a few servers with ElasticHosts. We can buy exactly the capacity that we need today and then scale it when we need more, which is a huge benefit and saves a lot of money. The best thing about ElasticHosts for me though, is being able to talk technical to someone who can talk technical back — a rare thing these days!”

To mark its launch, ElasticHosts is offering a free four-day trial to allow businesses to experience the power and simplicity of cloud hosting for themselves. Full details are available at www.elastichosts.com.

About ElasticHosts

ElasticHosts provides ultra-flexible and easy-to-use server capacity for scalable web hosting and on-demand burst computing such as batch processing, development & test, backup & disaster recovery and cloud bursting. ElasticHosts offers competitive pricing for both subscription and burst use, outstanding performance for any PC operating system, fully flexible sizing, two independent UK data centres with fast direct links to the UK/EU internet, and a 100% SLA with 100x credits for downtime. For more information, visit www.elastichosts.com or e-mail sales@elastichosts.com.

Contact:

Champion Communications: +44 (0) 20 7268 3076, elastichosts@championcomms.com.

Our roll-out partnership with Peer1 has attracted considerable media interest, including articles in Data Center Dynamics, Tier1Research, V3, Total Telecom, European Communications and Computer Business Review.

We look forward to launching our new availability zone with Peer1 by the end of July, which will make ElasticHosts the first cloud infrastructure provider to offer dual redundant availability zones in Europe.

ElasticHosts first EMEA partner in accelerated cloud innovation delivery through PEER 1

Southampton, UK — June 25, 2009 — PEER 1 Network Enterprises, Inc. (TSX:PIX), a global online IT business hosting provider, has today launched its CloudXcelerator(TM) program at Structure 09 in San Francisco. The program will enable selected PEER 1 partners to hothouse innovative cloud applications on PEER 1’s IT hosting infrastructure.

UK-based ElasticHosts is the first partner to join the EMEA CloudXcelerator program, enabling it to speed up roll-out of its cloud infrastructure products, which provide ultimately flexible server capacity in the UK for scalable web hosting and on-demand burst computing. ElasticHosts’ new capacity with PEER 1 will make the company the first cloud infrastructure provider to offer dual redundant availability zones in Europe.

“Being fast to scale and demonstrating reliability and security at competitive prices are mission-critical to our cloud computing proposition,” said Richard Davies, founder and CEO at ElasticHosts. “Partnering with PEER 1 through its CloudXcelerator program will give us rapid access to managed hardware and network to help us realise our growth plans and stay ahead of the market. PEER 1 is one of the most progressive hosting providers we’ve come across, and we’re excited about the opportunity to exploit their strengths to deliver even more of our own.”

The CloudXcelerator program allows qualifying partners to develop, test and run cloud applications on PEER 1’s high performance 10GB SuperNetwork(TM) infrastructure, helping them to bring cloud innovations to fruition faster, more reliably and more cost-effectively. Program partners also receive added benefits through discounted hosting, discounted storage, co-marketing funds, publicity and lead generation and exposure on PEER 1’s website and to its 3,000 customers across EMEA.

“Innovation is right at the heart of PEER 1. We know what it takes to deliver innovative services and what businesses need to allow their vision to become reality,” said Dominic Monkhouse, UK MD at PEER 1. “Cloud technology and cloud-based IT service providers are a hotbed of innovation in the industry right now and we are in a unique position to apply the strength of our SuperNetwork(TM) and global infrastructure to maximising their development. The CloudXcelerator program offers a win-win for CloudXcelerator program partners, like ElasticHosts. They get the comfort and reliability of a robust, global infrastructure and PEER 1 succeeds through helping our partners to focus on their customers and bring the latest cloud innovations to market.”

Dominic Monkhouse, will introduce a panel discussion on `the use of commodity hardware within the cloud’ at Structure 09, in San Francisco at 10:15am PST. The panel features Abraham Sultan, VP of engineering at Apprenda, North American CloudXcelerator Program partner and creators of SaaSGrid, a powerful Cloud Application Server for rapidly building and commercialising Software as a Service (SaaS) applications, alongside Robert Miggins, VP of business development at PEER 1 with Bernard Golden of CIO magazine as moderator.

For further information or to apply for the PEER 1 CloudXcelerator program, visit www.peer1hosting.co.uk/cloud.

About ElasticHosts

ElasticHosts is the second European cloud infrastructure provider and the world’s first public cloud based upon KVM, the native Linux virtualization platform. The company provides flexible server capacity in the UK for scalable web hosting and on-demand burst computing such as batch processing, dev/test, disaster recovery and cloud bursting. ElasticHosts offers competitive pricing for both subscription and burst use, fast direct links to the UK/EU internet, data storage within EU jurisdiction, dual redundant availability zones and outstanding performance for any PC operating system with fully flexible sizing. For more information, visit www.elastichosts.com or e-mail sales@elastichosts.com.

About PEER 1

PEER 1 believes in the limitless opportunity of the Internet, and the business growth potential it provides for its more than 10,000 customers. As a global online IT hosting provider, PEER 1 offers a reliable high performance Internet network supporting scalable managed hosting, dedicated hosting through the ServerBeach brand, and colocation solutions. Backed by its 100 percent uptime guarantee and 24x7x365 FirstCall Support(TM), PEER 1 ensures customers’ online presence is always fast, always available. Since 1999, PEER 1 has grown to include 16 state-of-the-art data centres and points-of-presence throughout North America and Europe. The company’s headquarters are in Vancouver, Canada, with European operations headquartered in Southampton, UK. PEER 1 shares are traded on the TSX under the symbol PIX. For more information visit: www.peer1.com or www.peer1hosting.co.uk.

For UK media enquiries please contact Champion Communications: +44 (0) 207 665 4063, peer1@championcomms.com.

For North American media enquiries please contact Abigail Faylor, Weber Shandwick: +1-425-452-5497, afaylor@webershandwick.com.

For investor enquiries please contact Thomas McMillan, Equicom Group: +1-403-536-5903, tmcmillan@equicomgroup.com.

Structure 09, on June 25th 2009 in San Francisco, is a premier event for cloud computing and internet infrastructure. With the economic challenges facing companies today, there’s never been a better time to figure out how the cloud paradigm can help you find new competitive advantages. Whether you’re in a corporation looking to learn about best infrastructure practices or an entrepreneur looking for your next venture, Structure 09 is a must-attend event that can provide you with the best ideas, contacts and thinkers.

We will be at Structure 09, and encourage all of our US readers to register and attend this great event!

During June, we have released a wave of new features to our users. Here’s a quick summary:

• Improved add server wizard: Our new add server wizard is always available on the right-hand side of your management console, and makes it simple to add new servers or drives using our pre-installed system images, ready to self-install or with custom configurations.

• Pre-installed Windows servers. We now offer pre-installed system images for Windows Web Server 2008 to get you started as quickly as possible.

• Private network VLANs: Customers with several servers can now interconnect these on a private network, separate from the public internet. This enables your servers to communicate entirely privately and securely, and will commonly be used to implement multi-tier architectures such as database servers behind front-end web servers. Network traffic on private network VLANs is not billed.

• Drive duplication: Our new copy button makes it easy to duplicate any drive. You can use this for backups or to clone extra servers for a system which you have fully configured.

• Updated pre-installed Linux servers: We have updated our Linux pre-installed system images to Debian 5.0 and Ubuntu 9.04. Of course, you can still install from our wide range of install CDs (or upload your own) for ultimate control over your configuration.

• Bulk info API calls: We have extended our API with bulk info calls which return information all drives, servers or resources in a customer’s account. This removes the previous need to poll each object individually.

See for yourself with our free trial.

Starting at OGF25, the Open Grid Forum has launched the Open Cloud Computing Interface (OCCI) working group to create a standard API for cloud infrastructure services.

ElasticHosts strongly supports the creation of open and royalty-free standards for cloud computing, which we believe will be essential for the success of this key technology.

We are a vocal participant in OCCI, and have publicly committed that we will license on a royalty-free basis any intellectual property we own which is necessary to implement the Open Cloud Computing Interface.

Ubuntu 9.04 “Jaunty Jackalope” was released to download today with a major focus on virtualization and cloud support.

We are pleased to annouce that ElasticHosts API tools are now included in Ubuntu in the elastichosts-utils package.

Ubuntu users can now install our tools with a simple

apt-get install elastichosts-utils

Ubuntu 9.04 also includes the OpenNebula virtual infrastructure engine, which interfaces to ElasticHosts for extra “cloudbursting” capacity.

Speaking at CloudCamp London today, our CEO, Richard Davies, will share our vision of “How cloud will change your company”, as previously presented at Powered by Cloud in February.

Using the example of a life insurer which uses a hosting cloud, SaaS CRM and an infrastructure cloud, we describe the benefits which they reap.

We believe that:

• Cloud will make your business more flexible, scalable and cost effective
• Internal IT must refocus on innovation where it really matters to the business
• Agile competitors are already using cloud to punch above their weight

CEOs, CIOs and CTOs must act now to understand this fundamental shift in IT, and to make sure that their business emerges strengthened through leading their industry into cloud, rather than weakened by faster smaller competitors.

The Open Grid Forum is the leading open community for distributed computing. At OGF25 this week, OGF has created a working group for cloud infrastructure API standardization.

We believe that a standard cloud infrastructure API can benefit the cloud community, both by making code more reusable and by providing a great design, with a great experience for developers. This presentation expands on our vision:

OpenNebula have experience of interfacing with ElasticHosts and with Amazon EC2. Their presentation similarly stresses how a well designed API like ours makes development much easier.