Hosting service provider Verio was the most reliable hosting company site in July 2008, closely followed by European telecommunications company Tiscali, beating out Aplus which fell from its top position last month, landing at 17, according to research and security firm Netcraft.
Verio had ranked number nine in June. A long-time technological innovating company, at the end of June, Verio added Wendy Pearson as senior director of marketing and communications to spearhead its marketing initiatives. Hoping to breathe new life into the brand, Pearson explained Verio’s more focused marketing strategy to theWHIR at HostingCon 2008.
In second place, Italy-based Tiscali operates its main site from Apache running on a Linux operating system. Tiscali markets its offerings mostly in Italy, the UK, Germany, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands. Tiscali announced Thursday it has partnered with data center operator Equinix, helping to strengthen its presence in the French and German markets.
Their core business is providing internet access, with two million ADSL subscribers in the UK and Italy. Tiscali had the most reliable hosting company site in February this year.
Out of July’s top ten hosting companies, six run Linux on their main sites, including Verio and Tiscali. New York Internet uses FreeBSD and Go Daddy uses Windows Server 2003.
Netcraft’s ranking system is based on the number of failed requests. With performance measurements are made at 15-minute intervals from separate points on the globe, Netcraft measures the response times and averages the results each day. The percentage of failed requests, according to Netcraft, is more important to customers than outages on hosting companies’ own sites because it gives a pointer to reliability of routing.