Memset, Dedicated Hosting

Memset A Winner At All Major IT Awards In 2011

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 12:05:51 +0000

- Topped off with a UK IT Industry Award Last Week -

Guildford, Surrey – 18 November 2011 - Award-winning British SME, Memset® has scored a hat trick of industry awards in 2011, adding Best Small IT Supplier at the UK IT Industry Awards 2011 to their throng, held at a ceremony in London last week.

The UK IT Industry Awards, presented by the BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, in association with Computing magazine, represent the benchmark for excellence for the entire IT profession, showcasing best practice and innovation.

Collecting the award for Memset was MD Kate Craig-Wood who said “We’re very honoured to be awarded Best Small IT Supplier by the BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT and Computing, in what is known as the ‘Oscars of the IT Industry’. The Memset team have worked tirelessly in the pursuit of excellence and we’re delighted that our small business has shone out amongst much larger enterprise heavyweights at these awards.”

The judges said they were impressed with Memset's innovative use of Open Source technology and that they were sticking to their goal to: To be the best IT host in Britain through integrity, openness, fairness, hard work and being smarter than the competition.

Contributing to Memset’s hat-trick of awards in 2011 was their award of ‘Best Managed Service’ at the 13th annual ISPA awards. ISPA awards are the leading internet services specific awards.

Finally, Memset’s sixth consecutive year as being voted the UK’s ‘Best Web Host’ at this year’s PC Pro Awards has topped off an impressive year of award wins for the small British business.

The PC Pro Awards are arguably the most respected awards in the consumer/small business technology space. The judges said: “A reliable web host is every bit as critical as a dependable ISP to an online business, and there's no doubting Memset's credentials. In excess of 99% of Memset's customers said they would recommend the company again - the highest score for any company in any category of this year's awards.”

Memset wins Best Web Host for SIXTH consecutive year at PC Pro Awards 2011

Mon, 03 Oct 2011 08:51:02 +0000

Memset, the UK's leading virtual machine cloud provider, has been awarded the PC Pro Excellence Awards 2011 for Best Web Host. This is the sixth consecutive year that Memset has scooped this prestigious award at the PC Pro Reliability and Service Awards held last week.

These awards are the most comprehensive guide to customer support and product reliability in the UK and Europe and are compiled from the UK’s largest independent survey of IT customer satisfaction. This year, more than 11,000 people voted in the survey, with each of the 19 awards decided by reader votes alone.

PC Pro said: “A reliable web host is every bit as critical as a dependable ISP to an online business, and there's no doubting Memset's credentials. In excess of 99% of Memset's customers said they would use the company again - the highest score for any company in any category of this year's awards.”

Kate Craig-Wood, founder of Memset said: “The PC Pro Awards continue to be one of the most respected accolades to win in the IT industry as they are awarded purely by public vote. There is no better testament to our service. We are delighted to have won this award for an amazing sixth time and are grateful to our customers for their continued support.”

“Our continued success in the PC Pro awards is down to the Memset crew, for their unwavering dedication and hard work over the last 6+ years,” concluded Craig-Wood.

Alasdair Davies, who took the time to vote for Memset in the awards said: “Memset are by far the best host I've used. Phones are answered in less than 10 seconds and email support replied to in less than 10 minutes."

Memset were also a finalist in the category of Business Product of the Year with their Miniserver technology.

British SME Joins G-Cloud

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 12:39:05 +0000

- Memset® Signed Up To G-Cloud IaaS Foundation Delivery Partner Activities -

Award-winning British SME, Memset® has today announced they have been officially signed up to the IaaS/PaaS part of the G-Cloud Foundation Delivery Partner activities.

The announcement comes just days after the Westminster eForum event where Ministry of Justice official and previous G-Cloud project leader Martin Bellamy confirmed the project was definitely going ahead: "Anyone who thought the G-Cloud had gone a bit quiet, or that it's died — well, no it's not, it's alive and kicking. The vision remains intact, and there is increasing promise of delivery."

One of the visions of G-Cloud is for 25% of contracts to be awarded to SMEs. Memset®, a family-owned, 100% British business which has lead the UK’s virtual machine market in terms of price and quality since 2002 with their Miniserver VM® technology, is delighted to become G-Cloud foundation delivery partner.

The next step is for their Miniserver VM® virtual server and Memstore™ cloud storage services to go through accreditation with CESG’s new pan government accreditor. Some of the commercial aspects also need to be finalised, but the aspiration is to be able to provide IaaS to government via the G-Cloud framework as early as January 2012.

Memset® have held IS27001 certification for many years and have been building on security in preparation for government work. They believe that they will be able to cater to most of the government’s requirements (up to Impact Level 2) using their existing facilities and systems, and intend to do so at the same market-leading, transparent pricing available to private sector clients. For the PaaS element they intend to offer servers with their managed service level agreement, where Memset® maintains the operating system as well as the common infrastructure software.

Memset®’s managing director, Kate Craig-Wood, who was technical co-lead on phase two of the G-Cloud project said: “SMEs are going to be a vital part of the G-Cloud ecosystem and as part of the detailed architecture for the G-Cloud that we proposed (here) we envisaged ways to facilitate their entry. Speaking as one of the SME’s on Intellect UK’s main board I’m also especially pleased that government appear to be trying to make good on their 25% promise.”

“To be a part of G-Cloud from its outset is an honour and we look forward to contributing to what G-Cloud is all about - a collection of cloud infrastructures, services and applications that the government hasn’t paid anyone up-front to build, but instead is consumed on a pay as you go basis,” said Craig-Wood.

Memset® is fully committed to the project. As part of their roadmap for G-Cloud they are currently developing their Miniserver VM® platform to allow management via an easy-to-use control panel as well as the more usual API approach, as well as looking to make an investment in more secure facility to be able to host more sensitive government data (Impact Level 3).

The G-Cloud strategy claims that it could save the government £3.2bn of its annual £16bn ICT budget, however Craig-Wood believes that the government should actually be aiming for a 70-80% savings on their ICT spend from the G-Cloud, “if done properly, G-Cloud has the potential to be hugely disruptive and could be saving the government £12bn per year by 2020,” concluded Craig-Wood.

UK Hosting Now A Viable Option To US Solutions; Hitched.co.uk Moves Its Hosting Back To The UK

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 08:52:27 +0000

- Hitched.co.uk Moves Its Hosting Back To The UK -

Surrey, United Kingdom, 7 September 2011 - Hitched.co.uk, the UK's most popular wedding website, has today announced that it is moving its website hosting back to the UK after having hosted it in the US for the past 12 years.

Hitched.co.uk, which every month is visited by about 300,000 unique visitors producing a total of more than six million page views, has become the UK’s leading wedding resource website covering everything to do with getting married, from the engagement through to the honeymoon.

Dean Yardley, managing director of hitched.co.uk, said: “When we evaluated where to host the site many years ago, the UK was just not a viable option, despite the business being based in Surrey. When we reviewed the options for hosting recently we discovered that it was now more cost-effective to switch back to UK suppliers. Memset has an appealing mix of skill and service alongside an attitude to work hand-in-hand with customers.”

However, as the UK industry has become more competitive, which has seen costs levelling on par with US counterparts, and with British providers making significant technological inroads into virtual and dedicated hosting solutions, the UK market is experiencing somewhat of a comeback.

Furthermore, businesses are becoming more savvy over their data, many are aware that their data needs to be stored within UK borders to adhere with British data protection laws.

Kate Craig-Wood, managing director of Memset, who managed to lure hitched.co.uk back to British shores said: “We offer a lot more flexibility through our service - a much more personalised service. Its great to see that we can stack up to the US proposition and can compete not only on price but through advances in technical capabilities and superior customer service.”

To enable hitched.co.uk to continue to run its website in the UK, its entire infrastructure including a mixture of dedicated and virtual machines all on their own private VLAN is now hosted by Memset in its UK data centre.

“Our confidence in Memset is critical to our business, if we can’t provide our service, there’s a real risk that our customers will go elsewhere, or be unable to access the vital elements to a successful wedding day” said Yardley.

He also added: “The flexibility Memset provides means we can concentrate on growing the business, and that’s worth a lot to us and its one of the principal reasons that we’ve moved our hosting to Memset.”

-ends-

Cloud Provider, Memset, Shortlisted For Several Leading Business Awards

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 09:18:25 +0000

Guildford-based Memset has received recognition for its phenomenal achievements once again by being shortlisted for a number of national business awards. A double finalist in the UK IT Industry Awards, Memset’s IaaS cloud solutions have been shortlisted as ‘Infrastructure Innovation of the Year’ and the business overall is in the running for ‘Small IT Supplier of the Year’.

The UK IT Industry awards, run jointly by Computing Magazine and BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT. The winners will be announced at a lavish gala evening event at the Battersea Park Events Arena on 10 November 2011.

David Clarke, Chief Executive Officer, BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, said: “Congratulations to the finalists; the competition to reach this stage of our prestigious Awards is tough. Our Awards are central to our mission to recognise the innovation and professionalism of those working in IT and I’m delighted that every year we have such a variety of high quality entries. They are an excellent reflection of the impact IT has on so many aspects of our information society and the potential IT has to transform business, society and our lives.”

Memset MD, Kate Craig-Wood, said, “Being shortlisted for such prestigious national awards is a real sign of our expanding presence within the industry and marks a period of phenomenal growth for us.”

Memset have also been named as a finalist for ‘Family Business of the Year’ as part of the Fast Growth Business Awards 2011, sponsored by T-Mobile. The awards recognise the achievements of promising and fast-growing businesses in the UK and cover 13 different categories? including the newly launched ‘Family business of the year’ award.

Entrants must be UK-based, have fewer than 500 employees, been trading for at least two years by 31 December 2010, and have generated more £1 million in their past 12 months’ trading. Memset find out if they are the winners at an awards ceremony at the London Marriot, Grosvenor Square, on October 4.

Finally, topping off a swag of award nominations, Memset is a double finalist in the 2011 PC Pro Awards. The IT host is hoping to retain its title as ‘Best Web Host’ for the sixth consecutive year, as well as pick up the award for ‘Business Product of the Year’ for their Miniserver VM® technology. The awards, which take place every year, showcase the best providers of IT equipment, and are the industry's most prestigious, as they are voted for by users and not a judging panel.

Winners of the PC Pro Awards are announced at a black tie gala dinner taking place on Thursday 29th September 2011.

Memset® Take On Amazon S3 With Memstore™ Cloud Storage

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 17:01:24 +0000

Today Memset® are announcing their new cloud storage solution, Memstore™. The Internet-based storage solution easily scales up and down to any size and is designed to be accessible to any business user, regardless of technical expertise, who are looking for a flexible, scalable and safe way to store their data in the cloud on a pay-as-you-use basis.

Memstore™, which uses open source software (OSS) OpenStack combined with Memset®’s award-winning in-house systems, has been built with a number additional security and ease-of-use features, making Memstore™ more feature-rich and accessible than most other providers. Features including:

On-disk encryption
Secure by default (https)
SFTP & FTP interface (in addition to industry-standard API)
Integrated content delivery network
Can serve any public container over HTTP using own domain name
Easy to use control panel for management and light file transfer

"Cloud is clearly becoming the way intelligent businesses buy their infrastructure, but many are put off by having to interface with complex APIs. We are offering the best of both worlds; easy-to-use Web interfaces and protocols as well industry-standard cloud APIs, at industrial scale and commodity pricing.”, said Kate Craig-Wood, MD of Memset.

Users only pay for what they use, whether that be 1GByte or 1000TBytes, and there are zero license fees or hidden costs. Memstore™ uses a simple web services interface that can be used to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the Internet. Further, thanks to high-levels of replication and redundancy within the system and Memset's ISO27001 certified security procedures, customers can be assured that their data is safe.

“Memstore offers 99.999999% or 'eight 9s' object durability over a given year, with a minimum of three copies of all data. This puts Memstore between Amazon S3*'s standard tier, with eleven '9s', and their reduced redundancy tier with four '9s'. The price will also be between those tiers, lower than S3's standard one. Once our two new data centres come online, bringing our total to four UK locations, we will provide even higher resilience, matching or exceeding S3.", continued Craig-Wood.

"We are providing our standard 99.995% availability guarantee with Memstore. Additionally, we are exclusively a UK company so British users have no issue with data protection or the Patriot act.”

By using OSS OpenStack combined with Memset®'s expertise in getting the best from commodity hardware, the service is also one of the cheapest available while still maintaining enterprise levels of availability, security and redundancy.

Memstore™ can be purchased as a fixed package, £4.95/month for 50GB which will likely appeal to SOHO or SME users, or on a usual cloud pay- as-you-use basis for £0.07p/GByte/month or less.

For business users that need to comply with data retention regulations or strict data security policies, Memstore offers a private cloud infrastructure at no additional incremental cost.

For more information on Memstore, please see: http://memset.com/cloud/storage/

* "Amazon" and "Amazon S3" are trade marks of Amazon Web Services LLC.

Memset Finalist For Best Web Host & Business Product of the Year At The 2011 PC Pro Awards

Fri, 26 Aug 2011 10:08:23 +0000

Memset, the UK's leading cloud provider, is delighted to announce that it has been shortlisted for two awards at the 2011 PC Pro Awards. The IT host is hoping to retain its title as ‘Best Web Host’ for the sixth consecutive year, as well as pick up the award for ‘Business Product of the Year’ for their Miniserver VM® technology.

Memset will be battling it out against 1&1, Fast2host, Heart Internet, and Zen Internet for the ‘Best Web Host’ award this year. The awards, which take place every year, showcase the best providers of IT equipment, and are the industry's most prestigious, as they are voted for by users and not a judging panel.

In each category, PC Pro asks its readers to rate the reliability of the products they have bought, customer support, and how satisfied they are – in particular, if they would buy from that company again. All the feedback is then collated to produce a numeric rating, and the company with the highest rating wins.

"The Memset team work hard to consistently offer a first class service to our customers. Having them nominate us for the sixth consecutive year as Best Web Host is testament to our high quality service and customer-centric team", said Kate Craig-Wood, founder and MD of Memset. “The competition is stiff, but hopefully we are in with a good chance of winning both of these titles.”

Memset is also hoping to have their Miniserver VM® technology recognised as Business Product of the Year at the awards too. Memset were first to market with this innovative technology back in 2002. Leading developments to their technology over the past year have seen Memset launch private cloud VMs at the same incremental cost as their public cloud service as well adding the capability to cluster Miniserver VM®s and physically dedicated servers on the same vLAN. This in turn enables load balancing on a cloud front end with a traditional dedicated server backend, ideal for database-intensive applications.

Memset find out if they have been lucky enough to win both categories at a black tie gala dinner taking place on Thursday 29th September 2011.

For more details on the Awards, visit the PC Pro website at http://awards.pcpro.co.uk/home.html

Memset Joins The Cloud Industry Forum

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 10:17:04 +0000

-UK-based IT hosting company becomes the latest organisation to join CIF and to support its Code of Practice-

Memset today announced it has formally joined the Cloud Industry Forum (CIF), an industry body established to promote trust, security and transparency within the sector.

Memset is an award-winning IT hosting company providing managed hosting and cloud computing Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solutions for businesses.

Kate Craig-Wood, managing director of Memset commented: “Cloud computing presents end users with the opportunity to do more with less, however there is still work to be done in driving trust in cloud based services. We fully support CIF’s messaging, which is to assist business users in identifying and investing in secure, reliable services, and our company values go hand-in-hand with this aim. CIF educates the end user on how to identify the most suitable and cost-effective services for them and we in turn endeavour to provide our customers with low-cost, high-quality services. We pioneered virtual machine technology in the UK, launching our Miniserver VM® virtual servers in 2002, and have continued to develop it since. This month we are also launching our cloud storage product, Memstore™, completing our cloud portfolio, so we believe the time is right to commit to support the good work of CIF.”

Andy Burton, chairman of the Cloud Industry Forum commented: “Memset is one of Britain’s leading suppliers of dedicated physical and virtual servers so we are delighted to have yet another focused service provider on board. Memset promotes three key qualities that we encourage vendors to provide to their customers; transparency, support and high quality services at a low cost, which coincides with our Code of Practice’s three guidelines; accountability, transparency and capability. We have every confidence that this will be a successful relationship for both parties and we look forward to working with Kate and her team as we pursue our ambition of bringing business consumers and suppliers of Cloud and Hosted Services closer together in a trusted, sustainable and rewarding ecosystem.”

Memset Scoops ‘Best Managed Service’ At The ISPA Awards

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 11:07:18 +0000

Memset, award-winning provider of managed hosting and cloud computing Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solutions for businesses last night scooped the award for ‘Best Managed Service’ at the 13th annual ISPA awards.

The awards, which recognise excellence within the ISP industry introduced a number of new categories this year, one of which was for the company that provides the Best Managed Service.

The Managed Service Award was open to communications service providers that are engaged in managing networks or services on behalf of operators or service providers.

The judges who saw Memset as stand out winners said: “In this category’s inaugural year the judges decided that Memset were worthy winners for their excellence in reliability and for being continually on top of their game.”

Kate Craig-Wood, MD of Memset who attended the event and collected the award on behalf of Memset said: "We're delighted to win the award for Best Managed Service. Thanks to our approach of using in-house software development with open source technology and clustered commodity hardware we are able to deliver enterprise-quality managed services at a fraction of the usual costs. Winning this award is a welcome, impartial confirmation of the quality, value-for-money and reliability of our services from one of the most respected bodies in the industry."

Memset was founded in 2002 and currently hosts one of the largest virtual machine deployments in Britain. As Memset own their own platform based on Xen, they have a unique advantage in not paying license fees, hence Memset is both Britain's cheapest provider, and cheaper than the leading global provider, Amazon EC2.

For details of the winners see below and for more information and photos go to www.ispaawards.org.uk.

Local youth charities to benefit as Memset launches new Community Fund

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 18:04:55 +0000

Local youth charities to benefit as Memset launches new Community Fund

Local community and voluntary charities that help support young people are set to benefit from a new grant fund established by Guildford based technology company, Memset. The ‘Memset Community Fund’ has been launched in partnership with the Community Foundation for Surrey.

Memset specialises in business web hosting and cloud computing and is based at the Surrey Research Park. Its new fund has been set up to specifically help young people and will prioritise support for projects which involve technology and are based within a ten mile radius of the company’s Guildford office. Memset has a history of supporting local initiatives such as the Lion’s annual Guildford Fireworks display and this new fund will enable staff to have a more active involvement in local community projects.

Managing Director, Kate Craig-Wood explains, “This exciting new project has been driven by our staff who all live within the Surrey area and are keen to share the success of the business with others in the local community. The fund fits nicely with Memset’s aim to promote technology in the community and will be managed by a staff panel would will decide which projects to support without input from the directors.”

Memset’s Fund will be managed by local giving experts, the Community Foundation for Surrey. The Foundation works both with donors who want to give something back to their local communities and the voluntary groups providing vital services for local people. Companies, individuals and families can establish a fund with the foundation, which supports a growing programme of grant-making to communities. Since establishing five years ago the Foundation has awarded £2 million in grants to over 700 organisations.

Executive Director from the Community Foundation, Wendy Varcoe, says “This new Fund is fantastic news for local youth projects, and will make a big impact on those they support. It is great to see local businesses support their immediate communities in this way and we would like to thank the team at Memset for their generous donation which will make a considerable impact in the local community.”

To find out whether your community group could benefit from a grant from the Memset Community Fund call the Community Foundation for Surrey on 01483 409230 or visit www.communityfoundationsurrey.org.uk.

Ends

For further information contact:

Fran Everist, Community Foundation for Surrey, 01483 409227/ 0771 301 9656, fran@surreycommunityfoundation.org.uk.

Katie Olver, Memset PR, 020 8614 6816, kolver@momentousuk.com.

Editor’s Notes:

Memset is an award-winning IT hosting company based in Guildford, Surrey. We provide managed hosting and cloud computing solutions for businesses (Infrastructure-as-a-Service). Our services range from individual Miniserver VM® virtual servers to enterprise-class dedicated server clusters with multi-site fail-over, all without long-term contracts or up-front costs. Our customers range from small start-ups to large corporates (eg. Debenhams, Hilton Hotels and Hanson), and are spread across all industry sectors. A large segment of our customers are IT companies using us as their infrastructure platform for providing web-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).

Recently awarded an ISPA award for ‘Best Managed Service’, Memset has also been voted as the UK’s Best Web Host for five consecutive years at the PC Pro Awards.

For more information on Memset, please visit: http://www.memset.com

Community Foundation for Surrey is a charitable trust established to inspire local giving for local needs. The Community Foundation works both with donors who want to give something back to their local communities and the voluntary groups providing vital services for local people. Companies, individuals and families can establish a fund with the foundation, which supports a growing programme of grant-making to communities. The Community Foundation for Surrey is part of a national network of over 50 community foundations, one of the fastest growing philanthropic movements in the UK.