Contact:

Irwin Greenstein

Plesk, Inc.

703/815-5670

irwin@plesk.com

 

NEW PLESK COMMERCE ALLIANCE DRAWS ON INDUSTRY LEADERS TO STREAMLINE APPLICATION INTEGRATION FOR HOSTING PROVIDERS

 

Plesk Server Administrator Formally Supported by Register.com, GeoTrust, Miva, Urchin, EMUMAIL, Rodopi, NetStores, TopLine and Other Software Leaders

 

CHANTILLY, Virginia, June 24, 2002 — Plesk™, Inc., the market leader in automated Web hosting software, announced today the Plesk Commerce Alliance, a program that streamlines the integration of value-added applications and services for the Plesk Server Administrator™ (PSA), which is the number-one platform used by the hosting industry to automate the management of service plans for small and mid-size businesses (SMBs).

 

Formation of the Plesk Commerce Alliance arose from the increasing demand by the hosting industry for interaction between the several hundred thousand PSA customers and the army of application developers that enhance Web hosting through PSA integration.   The mission of the Plesk Commerce Alliance is to accelerate time-to-revenue for hosting providers through a clearing house of information that details the simple integration process between PSA and compatible, value-added applications and services such as those for billing, security, email, analytics, ecommerce and domain registration.   Click on www.plesk.com/html/partners/PCA/index.htm to access the Plesk Commerce Alliance home page.

 

“Our advanced technology, unsurpassed customer support and global presence has enabled Plesk to enjoy far-reaching support across all quarters of the hosting industry,” said George Pappas, president and CEO of Plesk.  “The Plesk Commerce Alliance takes our industry leadership further, by formalizing the relationships that have contributed to the success of our hosting provider customers through an inventory of applications that increase their profitability, differentiation and growth.”

 

The Plesk Commerce Alliance

The Plesk Commerce Alliance adheres to the guiding principle that the hosting industry is the cornerstone of a successful Internet economy in which hosting providers, their channel partners and their domain-owner customers can increase profitability through efficiency, differentiation and world-class technical support.  Benefits to software companies that join the Plesk Commerce Alliance include:

·      Joint marketing initiatives with Plesk and other Plesk Commerce Alliance members.

·      Access to Plesk’s global customer base.

·      Lead generation.

·      Tighter integration with PSA.

·      Pre-release products for evaluation.

·      Improved technical cooperation.

 

Industry software innovators who have joined the Plesk Commerce Alliance as Charter Members include:

 

·      AutomatedShops.com, Inc. provides ShopZone®, an established leader in cost- effective ecommerce software solutions for SMBs.  ShopZone is PSA 2.5-ready, and can be added to any Plesk hosting account today with no messy server installation or maintenance.  The ease-of-use and flexibility of ShopZone allows merchants to quickly build highly customized, cutting-edge, commerce-enabled sites that grow with their business.  ShopZone goes far beyond simple ecommerce add-ons to provide a complete solution with rapid offline development, Web-site preview, comprehensive online reporting and administration tools. (www.automatedshops.com) 

·      CyLynx, Inc. is a global provider of outsourced support for Web-hosting companies.  CyLynx offers Plesk users total 24x7 relief from their end-user support responsibilities via email, live chat, and phone.  Customer inquiries will be handled by CyLynx's expert support engineers, who are trained and experienced in Web hosting, customer support, and PSA. (www.cylynx.com)

·      EMUMAIL (pronounced "ee-mew-mail") provides feature-rich Webmail software solutions that simplify email management and administration.  The company’s Webmail software, which enables easy access to POP and IMAP email from any Web browser, is used by over seven million end users, running on servers at business enterprises of all sizes, ISPs, ASPs, and over 60 colleges and universities worldwide.  Products and services include EMU Webmail, an enterprise engine for all email applications; EMU MollyMail, http://www.mollymail.com, a subscription Webmail service for use with any existing POP or IMAP accounts; and SMTP.com, http://www.smtp.com, an offsite email relay service. (www.emumail.com)

·      Incognito Software, Inc. is a leading developer of sophisticated IP and DNS software.  Incognito's DNS Commander solutions provide multi-platform, scalable DNS servers that offer a more manageable and secure alternative to BIND.  Incognito's IP Commander solutions are designed for the self-installation of devices such as cable and DSL modems, providing auto-configuration capabilities to broadband service providers.  Incognito's award-winning IP and DNS management product line provides Fortune 1000 companies, hosts, and broadband service providers with powerful and secure infrastructure management solutions.  Incognito’s DNS Commander Hosting Edition is a fully automated DNS management system designed to integrate with existing networks to allow hosting companies' customers to manage their domains in real-time.  Combining a secure, high-performance DNS engine with powerful management capabilities ensures that DNS Commander Hosting Edition solves the most pressing customer service issues facing hosting companies today: delivering unique, best-of-breed hosting services while reducing customer turnover. (www.incognito.com)

·      Miva Corp. provides the leading ecommerce platform for channels that target SMBs.  Over 1,000 hosting companies including DellHost™, Interland, Online Marketing, Hostway, CIHost, and XO Communications bundle the Miva platform of scripting, storefront applications and marketing services with their web hosting to deliver complete e-commerce solutions to SMBs.  No other ecommerce platform company offers the ease of browser-based point and click, deep-down customizability and the reach to deliver integrated marketing services. (www.miva.com)

·      NetStores, a world leader in ecommerce Application Service Providing and Point of Sale ecommerce solutions, has provided ecommerce services to Web professionals and businesses worldwide since 1995.  The NetStores ecommerce solution provides everything needed to establish ecommerce on Web sites – quickly and efficiently.  NetStores ebusiness solutions for merchants and easy tools for Web designers simplify adding the NetStores ecommerce solution to their existing Website.  NetStores’ ecommerce solution, now Pay Pal compatible, provides shopping cart, search engine, back-office, multi-currency, and secure ordering to any hosted Website.  Web designers, builders, and merchants can quickly build a complete ecommerce solution with no additional software, integrate their current Website with the NetStores solution, and instantly create an ecommerce-enabled ordering solution for their Website.  From a few, hundreds, to thousands of items can be quickly added to any Web page anywhere.  NetStores partnerships with major software publishers provide free Website design application ecommerce tools for any Web design program, including: Adobe® GoLive®, Macromedia Dreamweaver, Microsoft® FrontPage® and NetObjects Fusion.

 (www.netstores.com)

·      Topline Ventures, Inc.’s SiteBuilder Service is based on the industry’s number-one site-creation platform from Trellix Corporation.  Trellix is the leading choice among the world’s largest hosting companies and now Topline has made it affordable for SMB hosting operations.  SiteBuilder makes it easy for the company’s customers to create and maintain their own Web sites from any browser then publish them back to their servers.  Topline is always invisible to the end-customer’s customers, and SiteBuilder is fully private labeled.  The SiteBuilder Service is fully integrated with Plesk’s PSA.  (www.toplineventures.com) 

·      Urchin Software Corporation is a leading Internet software development firm based in San Diego, California.  The company’s flagship product, Urchin 4, is a Web-traffic reporting system that delivers information on a wide range of visitation parameters in a manner that is coherent and meaningful to anyone with a Website.  Urchin is in use by many of the top corporate and government organizations on the Internet, such as NTT/Verio, SBC, Opsware, Cable & Wireless, EarthLink, NASA, Honda, the NHL, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense, and thousands of others. (www.urchin.com)

 

Charter Members of the Plesk Commerce Alliance will subsequently be joined by other industry leaders that provide innovative, value-added solutions to the hosting industry.  The ongoing growth of the Plesk Commerce Alliance will continue to advance PSA as the dominant Web hosting automation platform.

 

Plesk Server Administrator

 

PSA substantially reduces the support requirements for Web hosting providers and enterprise users.  PSA liberates technical support staff from the tedium of manual tasks and instead allows them to focus on more important, value-added services that increase customer acquisition and retention.  PSA  has been architected to provide a full range of Web hosting automation benefits throughout the reseller channel and to the ultimate enterprise user.

 

About Plesk, Inc.

 

Plesk, Inc. develops, markets and supports software that simplifies and automates the full range of server configuration and management tasks required for Web hosting.  Using point-and-click user interfaces presented through standard Web browsers, Plesk Server Administrator enables non-technical customers and Web hosting companies to manage  their own domains, and Web hosting companies and their service resellers to deliver better and faster customer support at lower cost.  In less than two years, Plesk software has earned the enthusiastic praise and loyalty of hundreds of Web hosting companies and thousands of their customers.  HostingTech Magazine in November 2001 wrote “In the load test, there was no discernable difference in performance during heavy CPU usage times.  Speed and simplicity are why Plesk has perhaps the best selling of all the control panels.”  For more information about Plesk, visit www.plesk.com or call (888) 209-8900.

 

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“Plesk” and “Plesk Server Administrator” are trademarks of Plesk, Inc.  All other product, service and company names are the trademarks or registered t trademarks of their respective holders.