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Please, Let It End
Cable & Wireless remains in an acquisition mode, even after agreeing to pay $3.40 per share and assume $49 million in debt to acquire managed service provider Digital Island. WhISPers Financial Markets Department reports Cable & Wireless sources are “sick” of the flurry of media attention surrounding the companys well-publicized search for a partner, a state and process that is more than likely to continue for a while.
That Stinks
Media and analyst interviews with Sprints Web hosting unit E-Solutions were forced to take a detour for a portion of a recent Networld+Interop event in Las Vegas. The bright-red Sprint E-Solutions E-Bus, converted into a conference room and parked for most of the time about 150 feet from the main entrance of the Las Vegas Convention Center, had to be rebooted at a nearby sewage station when a stopped up bathroom flooded the high-tech marvel. No word yet on the cause of the hardware failure that resulted in that stinky outage.
Feeling Blue Without You
Web hosters that have built their business on Cobalt Networks are stepping back from promoting their association with the company, the Ear hears. Cobalt, now owned by Sun Microsystems, is believed to have missed a product cycle by not releasing a software version of its server appliance product, and has therefore been branded as a low-end, entry-level solution by end users. Carriers charging big bucks for managed hosting are afraid some of this “entry level, aka cheap hosting plans” reputation is going to rub off on them and weaken their competitive stance, and are stepping back marketing support and possible further hardware acquisitions. Cobalt, meanwhile, will try to win back the lost love with a forthcoming software release of its server, which would compete with offerings from Ensim, Plesk and Sphera.