Top 10 Things we Accomplished in 2010

It’s hard to believe that 2010 is just about over. I don’t know about you, but for me, this year just whizzed by really quickly. At the end of each year I like to look back and reflect on the what we were able to accomplish. I’m really proud of our team because we accomplished a lot this year. Here is a list of our Top 10 accomplishments of 2010.

1. Team Foundation Server 2010 Hosting
Our mission has always been to provide cutting edge hosting solutions for .NET developers. We offer great .NET web hosting but this year we took it further and expanded our hosting service. We launched TFS 2010 Hosting as a new hosted SaaS solution for source control and bug tracking.

2. ASP.NET 4 Hosting
We try to stay on top of new .NET technology. In keeping with our track record for being a fast mover, we started offering ASP.NET 4.0 hosting on our Windows 2008 hosting platform on the day that it was officially released. The launch included a .NET Framework selector, support for Visual Studio 2010, and support for web deploy and one-click publishing.

3. SQL Enhancements
We launched a bunch of SQL enhancements, and each could stand alone as their own item on this list — but combining them here allows me to stuff the list…

• SQL Profiling as a Service is available as a powerful new tool for troubleshooting SQL performance issues.
• SSL encrypted SQL connections are available for increased SQL security in both the US and UK datacenter locations.
• SQL Server 2008 R2, the latest in SQL technology, is available in both the US and UK datacenter locations.

4. MySQL – Redux and Re-Loaded
A few years ago we dropped offering MySQL. But the increasing popularity of a number of MySQL-only applications and the improvement in the ability to run PHP in a Windows environment has created renewed demand. So we brought back MySQL hosting and it’s better than ever.

5. Microsoft Web Application Gallery Integration with our Control Panel
We integrated Microsoft Web Application Gallery into our Control Panel for one-click installation of many popular applications on our Windows 2008 hosting platform. We have filtered the apps, tested them, and made them easier to install. You can now install apps like blogengine, Kentico CMS, mojoPortal, MonoX, nopCommerce, screwturn wiki and DotNetNuke. We’ve also added PHP apps such as WordPress, Drupal, phpBB, and Moodle. We’ll continue to evaluate and update the available apps.

6. Microsoft IIS Smooth Streaming
We launched Microsoft IIS Smooth Streaming on our Windows 2008 hosting platform, putting adaptive streaming of media over HTTP within reach of our customers.

7. Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 Control Panel Starter Kits
We released a Silverlight 4 control panel starter kit and a Windows Phone 7 control panel starter kit through this blog. The full source code is available and it can be extended and customized. The starter kits take advantage of our Control Panel API and are a powerful example of what is possible with our hosting platform. We appreciate feedback on the starter kits and would love to see what customers do with them.

8. Research Papers
We started to publish research papers this year.  We host a large number of ASP.NET web developers and through our surveys we can gain some interesting insights and observe trends. The research papers are a way to give back to the community. You can check out the papers and articles which focus on Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 as they were hot topics this year:

• March 2010: State of Silverlight: A Shared Windows Hosting Provider Perspective
• April 2010: Silverlight Surpasses Flash Use among Recent Shared ASP.NET Hosting Customer Web Sites
• June 2010: Profile of Silverlight Adopters and Implications for Windows Phone 7 Applications Development Strategies
• July 2010: Windows Phone 7 Application Category Interests of Global ASP.NET Developers
• November 2010: Profile of Mobile Application Developers and ASP.NET Web Developers and Implications on Windows Phone 7 Growth Strategies

9. IIS DBManager
We launched support for the IIS DBManager module and we extended it with  SQL backup and restore functionalities.

10. Free RapidSSL Certificate with SSL Add-on
We started offering FREE RapidSSL Certificates with the activation of the SSL add-on. Enabling SSL security for your site is now easier than ever.

Just had to get some honorable mentions onto the list….

11. Awards
We won a bunch of awards in 2010, including:

• DevProConnections 2010 Community Choice Gold Award – Best ASP.NET Hosting Service
• The Code Project 2010 Members Choice Award – Best ASP.NET Hosting
• Visual Studio Magazine 2010 Readers Choice Merit Award – Best ASP.NET Web Hosting

12. Free ASP.NET 4 beta Hosting
We ran a free ASP.NET 4 beta sandbox hosting program in our labs environment for the developer community for close to 1.5 years, until retiring it in April, 2010. We continued to update the sandbox with new .NET beta frameworks as they were released.

What I have listed in this post are the customer-facing accomplishments, which do not include all the work we’ve done behind the scenes to improve our hosting  service.

We are looking forward to 2011 and making it another year of innovation! Thanks for reading and have a happy new year!

Takeshi Eto
VP Marketing and Business Development