Novara News

Host.ie launches initiative

Host.ie, a division of the wholly owned Irish IT company Novara, has announced a major development in the Irish web hosting market. The company announced today that they have completed an investment in excess of Eur150,000 in the infrastructure which underpins Host.ie's services. This will allow Host.ie to significantly reduce prices at the same time as improving services in their web hosting operation.

The announcement coincided with a recent visit to the Company by An Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Mary Harney.

Host.ie chief executive, Mr. Eoin Costello, stated that;

"This announcement is the culmination of a year and half of hard work by our development team at Novara. In that time our staff numbers has grown from 2 to 8, thanks in part to aid from the Dublin City Enterprise Board. This growth in staff numbers has been mostly in our technical department. This underlines our commitment to developing our own systems from the ground up. The net result is that we are able to give our clients unbeatable service.

This new investment will put Host.ie in a position where it can challenge UK and US companies in terms of features, reliability and price. It is a credit to our team that, despite difficult market conditions, a small Irish IT company has been able to develop systems that can compete with the best available on the international market.

It is estimated that over Eur7 million is being lost to the Irish IT sector through Irish companies and individuals using foreign providers for domain registration and web hosting services. This is costing the Irish IT sector hundreds of lost jobs.

One of the reasons for this drain has been a lack of providers locally with sufficient critical mass to challenge the market incumbents who have traditionally offered high priced services with a fraction of the features offered by international competitors. This has now changed with the launch of Host.ie's new services. Our new offerings can compete with the best internationally in terms of price, features and reliability."

Tánaiste Mary Harney visited the company to be briefed on their new operation and was impressed by what she witnessed.

She said "Novara is an example of a small but ambitious home grown company that is demonstrating an ability to compete with major international players in the IT Sector. They are also providing important competition in a market of growing significance for Irish companies. Eoin Costello and his team are to be congratulated for the effort and commitment that has brought the company to this position. Novara's success proves that the spirit of entrepreneurship is very much alive in Ireland despite a difficult global environment for IT business".

As part of the investment Host.ie recently completed terms on 20 HP Proliant servers and 10 Dell servers supplied by the Serve Centric Data Centre. Funding was provided to Host.ie by the Enterprise Support Unit at Bank of Ireland and the Dublin Business Innovation Centre. This hardware investment complements the 10 HP Proliant servers that Host.ie already own.

Host.ie have completed terms on taking extensive facilities at the Serve Centric Data Centre(built by Worldport). Host.ie now have a network in Serve Centric which is completely resilient and meshed from the point of the perimeter of the network right up to the individual server level.

Host.ie also announced the launch of their in-house developed Novara Customer Management system. The Novara Customer Management System will give clients of Host.ie unrivalled control over their services. Everything from changing nameservers/DNS entries, getting copy invoices and statements, changing contact details will all be available online with any changes made by clients reflected immediately in the customer management system.

The new services will be rolled out to clients of Host.ie over the coming weeks.

For further information about Host.ie and Novara please contact Eoin Costelwlo: eoin@novara.ie Phone: 1850 668272

Links: www.host.ie

www.novara.ie

Further information about Serve Centric please see their website www.servecentric.com

More about Novara IT

Novara was incorporated on November 14th,2000 and,according to Whoisireland.com statistics, has grown rapidly to become Ireland's fifth largest provider of domain registration and hosting services. The company now have 8 full time staff.

Host.ie sponsor and run the School & University Internet Awards, a national educational website competition (see www.suia.org for more information)

The company have developed innovative procedures for the registration of .ie domains, which has enabled the company to command a 20% market share of the .ie domain market. In recognition of this achievement the Irish Domain Registry awarded the company the Irish Internet Champion 2002 award.

The company's head quarters are located at 3 North Earl Street, less than 10 metres from the Millennium Spire.

Novara is a member of the ISP Association of Ireland, the Dublin Chamber of Commerce and the Irish Internet Association.