Provider of change management, user provisioning and access control software, Ensim Unify, is providing provisioning and management for Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS), accelerating the deployment for customers of over 150,000 seats.

Described as currently the largest single OCS installation in North America, in less than 90 days, Ensim’s OCS Manager solved all the major provisioning and management requirements that had delayed the deployment of over 150,000 seats of Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007.

Scott Young, vice president of marketing and product management at Ensim Corporation noted, ”Deployment of OCS 2007 often proves challenging for regulated organizations due to complex user entitlement policies. By deploying Ensim Unify, our customer was able to solve its OCS provisioning and management challenges in less than 90 days, while enforcing the security and compliance policies required for its users. The effectiveness and scalability of Ensim Unify speaks for itself in this case, given the size of the OCS deployment it enabled.”

A number of provisioning obstacles had stopped the customer from gaining the benefits of OCS. These obstacles included support for complex IT security and compliance policies, such as multiple provisioning workflows for different types of employees, multi-level help desk support, and minimizing the burden on IT caused by the manual update process. Ensim delivered a provisioning and management solution that integrated with the customer’s existing directory infrastructure and provisioning policies and supported different provisioning workflows, while automating the hundreds of daily manual updates. It also enabled delegated administration to support multi-level help desk operations, while offering full audit and reporting for these processes.

Ensim Unify Enterprise Edition is a complete, role-based access management solution that can be deployed just for OCS or across the entire unified communications (UC) infrastructure including email, VoIP, conferencing, collaboration, and instant messaging. Ensim’s OCS Manager enables businesses to realize the promise of unified communications without the pain of manual user provisioning and burdensome management. OCS Manager works with existing ID management solutions to allow organizations to take full advantage of all the new OCS 2007 features without imposing a burden on IT.

Key features of Ensim Unify Enterprise Edition OCS Manager include:

• Ability to Integrate with Complex Provisioning Policies
• Support for Multiple Provisioning Workflows
• Automated Maintenance of Daily Manual Updates
• Full Multi-level Help Desk Support
• Detailed System Activity and Transaction Logging

David J. Wippich, chairman and CEO at Ensim Corporation remarked, ”The ROI associated with deploying unified communications is significant, but many organizations are stuck at deployment or take on burdensome management tasks after deployment. Ensim Unify enables quick deployment, automation of maintenance tasks, and interoperability that leverages existing investments and policies that can be extended to UC apps like OCS.”

Founded in 1998, Ensim Corporation is the leading provider of user provisioning and access management software. Ensim products are used by service providers and enterprises worldwide to accelerate and enable deployment of integrated solutions, simplify and automate secure management of complex environments, and increase user and IT productivity. Ensim has over two million users under management and is Microsoft Gold Certified.

Shared, Reseller, Dedicated, VPS, Cloud, and Managed Web hosting solutions provider, Crucial Paradigm, has launched a new corporate website for its Australian division.

The web site has been overhauled, having been in development for nearly a year, marks a major improvement over the previous design. It now features an integrated corporate blog, customer forums, and interactive tutorials. The new site also offers more intuitive navigation and a greater depth of information about the company’s products and services.

Ijan Kruizinga, director of Crucial Paradigm remarked, ”Our Australian division is in a period of tremendous growth and change. By making our lower-end VPS solutions more competitive and feature-rich, and adding additional high-end solutions to our line of services, we are able to remain a market leader within Australia and serve a broader variety of customers throughout Asia.”

Crucial Paradigm also introduced changes to its Australia-based Virtual Private Servers, which now boast significantly increased monthly data transfer. Starting at $39 per month, entry-level Windows VPS now offer 20GB of monthly transfer, and starting at just $15 per month, entry-level Linux VPS plans now offer 10GB of monthly transfer. Although Crucial Paradigm increased data transfer by more than 50 percent and added other features, customer costs were not raised.

Crucial Paradigm has also added a new VPS plan in its 6-8 Core series. The plan offers 23GB of RAM and starts at $2,352.00 monthly on Linux and $2,655.00 monthly on Windows.

In the coming months, Crucial Paradigm Australia plans to expand its affiliate program and introduce a variety of Cloud Appliances based on SugarCRM, Zimbra Mail, Joomla, Drupal and others. Additional announcements will be made as details are available.

Crucial Paradigm was the first Web hosting company in Australia to offer Windows 2008 Virtual Private Servers. It currently manages more than 450 Dedicated Servers for customers in over 30 countries through its US and Australian operations.

Founded in 2003, Crucial Paradigm operates in multiple locations around the world. The privately-owned, debt-free company offers a wide range of hosting solutions from Basic Web Hosting to Reseller Hosting, Virtual Dedicated Servers, Dedicated Servers and High Traffic Clusters. The company prides itself on building custom Web hosting solutions based on each client’s individual requirements.

Interxion, a leading European operator of carrier-neutral data centres, today announced the completion of a 1,500 m² expansion of its Madrid Data Centre. Due to sustained demand from customers in the enterprise, Internet and public sectors, 60% of the high-specification, connectivity-rich space has already been sold.

The new data centre space has minimum N+1 power and cooling and 2N UPS, as well as the most advanced security, alarm and monitoring systems. It supports the latest high-density power configurations and has been designed using Interxion’s energy-efficient modular architecture, with free cooling and maximum-efficiency components and management as standard.

The opening of the new facility coincides with the implementation of a new Point of Presence in the data centre for Espanix, the leading Spanish Internet Exchange. Interxion’s Madrid customers will be able to reduce latency and transit costs significantly by peering directly across the Espanix exchange. In addition to Espanix, Interxion Madrid customers have direct access to more than 30 carriers and network service providers within the data centre.

“The completion of this project increases our capacity to satisfy increasing market demand and pass on economies of scale at a time when enterprises are rationalizing investments in expensive in-house data centre infrastructure and looking for best-in-class outsourced solutions,” said Robert Assink, Managing Director Interxion Spain.

The Planet, the global leader in IT hosting, today announced the appointment of CAPSTAR Commercial Real Estate Services to lease its fifth data center in the Dallas Metroplex. The first of four 12,000-square-foot pods has been completed, providing environmentally friendly white-floor space that is complete and ready for leasing. CAPSTAR principals Trey Smith and Chris Taylor will manage leasing for the facility, which is located on Plano Parkway in the 190 Business Center.

The new data center – the company’s eighth – uses the latest modular cooling technology from Turbine Air Systems (TAS), with high-efficiency, water-cooled chillers that eliminate the possibility of an interior water leak. Colocation, private racks and managed hosting services will be offered in the new facility. Space is also available for a business continuity center, which provides office space for customers requiring a disaster recovery base of operations during an outage.

“We’ve received significant interest from North Texas companies looking to expand or outsource their data center facilities,” said The Planet’s Vice President of Global Sales Tom Blair.  “Customers select The Planet based on the quality of our data centers and network, and this new space enables us to accommodate the rapid colocation market growth we’ve seen in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.”

“There is a shortage of large footprint colocation space in North Texas that offers robust power,” said CAPSTAR principal Trey Smith. “The facility provides colocation and IT infrastructure solutions for both local and national companies that are seeking to expand their core infrastructure or supplement their existing operations. The state-of-the-art facility and its central U.S. location will be attractive to many companies looking for colocation and turnkey data center solutions.”

Provider of premium wholesale data center space for corporate customers, Fortune Data Centers, has leased 100% of its 8 Megawatt critical load capacity, within six months of opening the doors of its Phase 1 development.

John Sheputis, CEO of Fortune Data Centers explained, ”Despite a tough economic climate, demand for data center space continues to be a bright spot. To have a facility of this size fully leased in such a short time period should confirm the market strength of Silicon Valley. And, we have a strong team with great vendors and business partners that helped make this happen.” The company is now beginning work on Phase 2 development at the San Jose facility, which is expected to add approximately 6 Megawatts of critical load capacity. When completed, Fortune San Jose will occupy over 140,000 square feet and support nearly 14 Megawatts of IT critical load.

Dan Golding, vice president and research director, Tier 1 Research added, ”The colocation market is extremely strong, especially for high quality, highly redundant wholesale datacenter capacity. The Silicon Valley area, in particular, is one of the most under-supplied regions of the U.S., with datacenter demand exceeding supply for the past four years. This trend has been exacerbated by the credit crunch, which has made it tough to secure financing for large datacenter projects. The few large, high quality datacenter projects on the market are in great demand from both enterprises and Internet content providers – particularly if they are energy efficient, which makes them less expensive to operate.”

Mr. Sheputis continued, ”Our tenants are among some of the most respected companies in the world. They are experienced industry leaders in their core businesses and have many other data center holdings. They recognize that there are significant cost savings to be realized by partnering with a company that delivers highly energy-efficient data center space.”

Fortune’s Phase 1 data center delivers superior energy efficiency as measured by Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE). PUE is determined by dividing the total facility power by the IT equipment power – the lower the resulting ratio, the more efficient the data center. During independent testing through a Level 5 Commissioning Process, the data center achieved a PUE of 1.37 at full load, an energy-efficiency level far superior to the industry average data center PUE of 2.0, and better than the EPA’s 2011 target PUE of 1.45 for state-of-the-art enterprise-class data centers.

Mr. Sheputis concluded, ”We have participated in several PG and E efficiency programs and have been very happy with the results. We exceeded our PUE projections for Phase 1 and expect to deliver an even better PUE for Phase 2 by leveraging and advancing many of the efficiency measures used in the first phase. We are currently defining the technical program for Phase 2, and it will include state-of-the-art efficiency measures for service redundancy and energy density. We’re confident that increasing the facility’s capacity will not only lower tenant operating costs, but our expansion should result in lower power costs for our tenants.”

Fortune Data Centers was founded to create a class of industrial grade data centers for corporate clients seeking a cost-effective alternative to the prospect of in-house development and facility management. Fortune’s San Jose facility is designed to provide best in class reliability and total value for large scale deployments of mission critical applications. The property meets or exceeds the toughest industry standards for data centers – in all operational categories of availability, security, connectivity, and physical resilience. Fortune is a privately held company, founded in 2006.

The web hosting and added Fully Managed Linux Virtual Private Servers (VPS) have been added to CS New Media’s portfolio of services, on the heels of celebrating its 4-year anniversary.

Carl Shepherdson, owner of CS New Media explained, ”We’ve spent the last year developing a public VPS solution that will provide the value-add and service level that our clients need to run their businesses. As a fully managed service, our team manages every technical aspect of the VPS, ranging from initial setup and frequent software updates to daily off-site backups and 24/7 service monitoring. It’s an all-in-one solution.”

CS New Media continues to provide an array of Windows and Linux shared hosting and reseller hosting solutions. With the launch of Virtual Private Servers, the company has introduced six Fully Managed VPS configurations, starting at 17.95 pounds per month for 5GB of disk space and 150GB of monthly data transfer. The highest end configuration starts at 99.95 pounds and includes 40GB of disk space and 1200GB of monthly data transfer. CS New Media’s VPS solutions are geared toward Web developers and small businesses.

All VPS configurations include RAID-10 storage, guaranteed server resources, the Plesk control panel, 24/7 technical support, and 24/7 service monitoring. Configurations also include daily off-site automatic data backups, which helps minimize the threat of data loss.

CS New Media’s new website has been in development for nearly three months. The site now boasts improved navigation and a greater variety of information about the company’s services and technical infrastructure.

CS New Media provides affordable UK-based Shared and Reseller Windows and Linux Web hosting solutions. Serving home users, businesses and educational institutions, CS New Media’s hosting packages offer genuine 24 hour, dedicated support and access to the latest technologies, including ASP, ASP.net 2.0, PHP 4 and 5, MS-SQL 2008 and MySQL 4 + 5.

Web hosting and dedicated server provider, Hivelocity, has launched its much anticipated new website, after several revisions.

The new site features a cleaner look and more intuitive navigation as well as additional features.

In addition to the cosmetic improvements, the new site also includes an in-depth knowledge base and customer training center. Steve Eschweiler, General Manager of Hivelocity explained, ”Our goal is to empower our customers with as much information and as many tools as possible to simplify and streamline their hosting experience.”

Within the next 3 months, Hivelocity intends to launch phase 2 of its new customer portal called SPEED. Based on early reports, SPEED is said to revolutionize how web hosts enable their customers and resellers.

According to the company, ”Phase 2 of Speed is going to set the new standard for client portals. Our customers are going to flip out when they see it.” Updates on enhanced speed will be released as the expected launch date of January 1st approaches.

Since its inception in 2001, Hivelocity has earned a reputation for being one of the best values in the dedicated hosting sector. Hivelocity uses SuperMicro hardware and boasts a 99.98% uptime track record over the last 3 years stats by Webhostingstuff.

Web hosting firm, UK2, has been voted 2nd place in the Top 25 most popular web hosting companies on Web Host Directory UK.

The award which is based on the number of votes a company receives and the amount of times their profile has been viewed each month was won by UK2 in June, July and now August 2009.

Martin Baker, Managing Director at UK2 remarked, ”At UK2 we are constantly thinking of ways to add value to our customers. This is why we regularly launch innovative products, unbeatable offers and invest in UK based support for our customers. It is very rewarding to see that customers are responding positively to our efforts, and I am very pleased that we have been voted one of the most popular web hosting companies for three months in a row.”

Web Host Directory established in 1997 is a brand of Serchen Interactive and a market leader in the hosting industry providing free resources and information for customers researching web hosts online.

UK2 is one of the biggest and most innovative web hosting companies in the UK with a comprehensive range of domain name registration, web hosting, e-commerce, reseller, dedicated server and cloud hosting solutions. UK2 specializes in making it easy, cheap, and quick for any consumer, small or large business to have the online presence they need.

UK2 is also a part of the UK-2 Group, a large web hosting organization made up of over 10 web hosting companies such as VI.net, VPS.net, Midphase.com and more. The group operates its services out of several state of the art, multi million pound data centers and is committed to providing reliable, secure and great value products and services underpinned with excellent support.

Open-Xchange will extend its collaboration software with Rack-Soft’s Unified Communications software to provide end users with telephone, fax, presence, instant messaging integrated with e-mail, contacts, calendar and task information.

Both Open-Xchange and Rack-Soft provide software for on-premise implementations, as well as SaaS (software as a service). Both are long-time partners of SaaS platform software provider, Parallels, and have all worked together to simplify SaaS deployments. Currently, Rack-Soft’s 4PSA VoipNow supports Parallels software and Open-Xchange supports the Application Packaging Standard developed by Parallels.

In addition, the two companies agreed to resell their products. Rafael Laguna, CEO of Open-Xchange remarked, ”This agreement extends our e-mail and groupware solution to a one-stop communication center that really boosts user’s productivity. Our on-premise customers and SaaS partners now have the option to add VoIP services, advanced call center functionality, or enterprise telephony to their Open-Xchange deployment.”

Bogdan Carstoiu, CEO of Rack-Soft added, ”With this partnership, we aim to provide 4PSA VoipNow users the ability to use e-mail, groupware and unified communications in an integrated environment. There are many areas we target for improving user experience: voicemails and faxes will be tagged in the user’s mailbox, voice conferences can be scheduled from the calendar, contacts can be called with a mouse click, and many more.”

Jack Zubarev, president of the Service Provider Division at Parallels noted, ”We are partnering with Open-Xchange and Rack-Soft to deliver innovative technologies via SaaS, which help end users control costs and improve efficiency. With features built into Parallels software, service providers can introduce value-added services like Open-Xchange and 4PSA VoipNow to achieve higher average revenue-per-user while managing their operations more efficiently.”

Open-Xchange Hosting Edition is the only groupware specifically designed to meet the needs of SaaS providers. With over 10 million users, Open-Xchange is now the world’s leading technology supplier of groupware for SaaS providers. Open-Xchange customers include 1 and 1 Internet (U.S., Germany), Network Solutions (U.S.), JMF (Japan), OVH (France), Hostpoint (Switzerland) and many others. Rack-Soft’s Unified Communications solution provides users with the advantages of a high-end PBX integrated with business applications.

With 4PSA VoipNow, service providers can deploy next-generation hosted PBX services for a low monthly fee. The SaaS service allows companies of all sizes to reduce telephony costs by easily interconnecting their offices around the world and to increase productivity by implementing voice, video and instant messaging.

Rack-Soft develops innovative software for servers and Data Centers based on the 4Grid framework. The proprietary 4Grid technology offers the foundation for the next generation, cloud ready service delivery platforms that allow providers to deploy redundant, scalable and easy to manage SaaS infrastructures. Rack-Soft business philosophy is based on an ISO 9001 quality management system certified by TÜV CERT.

Open-Xchange is the innovator of scalable and integrated open source e-mail and collaboration solutions for enterprises, academic institutions, and government authorities. The company provides on-premise versions called Open-Xchange Server Edition and Open-Xchange Appliance Edition, along with Open-Xchange Hosting Edition, which enables web hosting companies to provide an easy-to-use and feature-rich application delivered as Software as a Service (SaaS). The Open-Xchange Hosting Edition is architected to integrate into a hosting provider’s existing infrastructure, such as authentication, provisioning, billing, and e-mail storage and does not require that these systems be replaced. Open-Xchange AG is a privately-held company headquartered in Nuremberg, Germany with offices in Olpe, Germany and Tarrytown, N.Y.

Operator of carrier-neutral data centers, Interxion, along with Europe’s largest full-service digital agency, LBi, have formed a partnership in which Interxion will host part of LBi’s mission-critical data center infrastructure.

John Russell, Managed Services Partner, LBi explained, ”Our aim is to provide leading-edge, cost-effective managed services to support our clients’ digital strategies now and in the future. To do this we need a data center partner like Interxion. Colocating with Interxion gives us plenty of space to grow and all the power we need to implement the latest server technology, all in a very convenient central location. They also offer us excellent connectivity and all the security, availability and back-up one would expect from a leading operator.”

The new alliance is hoped to enable the LBi agency to expand its managed services offering to clients. The new space, in Interxion’s London City facility, will enable LBi to deploy high-density power configurations to support its ongoing virtualization programme and also provide direct access to the London Internet Exchange (LINX).

LBi offers clients end-to-end digital service, which includes hosting, maintenance and support. The company focuses on innovative ways to help clients get more from their technology, and the specification of their data center infrastructure is critical to achieving this. LBi managed services clients include leading brands such as ABN AMRO, BT, Disney, Sony and Starbucks.

With a 13 MVA redundant grid supply, Interxion’s City of London facility supports the latest high-density power configurations, enabling LBi to deploy the latest blade server technology to drive its server virtualization programme. To guarantee maximum availability, the facility also provides 2N UPS power and N+1 cooling. Customers can also access up to 28 carriers and ISPs, including the LINX Internet exchange. As well as giving exceptional choice and flexibility, this allows network costs to be managed down through private peering agreements.

Greg McCullough, Managing Director, Interxion UK added, ”LBi are widely regarded as pioneers who lead the field in the world of creative digital media, and we are delighted to provide a base for their customer content and services. Forward-thinking digital enterprises like LBi are constantly consolidating, modernizing and reassessing their mission-critical infrastructure, and it is our business to support their efforts with state-of-the-art facilities.”

Interxion is a leading European operator of carrier-neutral data centers. Headquartered in Schiphol-Rijk, The Netherlands, Interxion serves its customers from 24 carrier-neutral data centers located in 13 cities across 11 European countries. Interxion serves network and carrier-based, hosting and enterprise customers who require professionally managed and strictly controlled physical environments within which to operate mission-critical applications and computer systems. Interxion’s data centers offer cost-effective and fast access to multiple local and global communication networks.

LBi is a global digital marketing and technology agency, blending insight, creativity and expertise to solve business problems. The largest genuinely full service agency of its kind in Europe, LBi provides the full range of digital capabilities, including digital strategy, branded content, service design, media, CRM, technology, managed hosting and support services. The Company employs over 1,500 professionals located primarily in the major European, American and Asian business centers; such as Amsterdam, Atlanta, Berlin, Brussels, London, Milan, Mumbai, New York, Paris and Stockholm. LBi is listed on Nasdaq OMX in Stockholm and NYSE Euronext in Amsterdam