Besides broadband connectivity, 1-Net provides hosting and managed services, and broadbandenabled an industrial complex - the first in Singapore - that brings e-business service providers together to enjoy the facilities of a wired-up business center at an affordable cost.

In early 2001, 1-Net saw an opportunity in the hosting services market.

"At one end of the spectrum are those businesses that either do not have Web sites or, at most, basic 'ebrochure'-type sites parked with increasingly untenable providers of free hosting services," says Luke Lee, Business Development Manager. At the other are those large enterprises that have the financial, manpower and technical resources to build and operate their own data centers.

Somewhere between the two ends are those who typically co-locate or co-share Web servers at hosting companies or Internet Data Centers, an arrangement that still requires the enterprises to own hardware and have the technical resources to manage the servers and sites. It was in this segment and the 'nil or free site' niche that, according to Lee, "1-Net saw enormous potential for a hosting service that would not require customers to actually own hardware and yet allow them to have access to dedicated hardware and other resources that are virtually their own."

For the vehicle to enable and deliver this virtual hosting service, 1-Net met SWsoft, which was then readying for market HSPcomplete, its end-to-end solution for hosting service providers. Incorporating virtualization, resource management and clustering features, HSPcomplete allows service providers to offer their customers a full suite of services, from shared Web hosting for small- and medium-sized businesses to cluster configurations for large enterprises. Its key feature: allowing hosting service providers such as 1-Net to have hundreds of customers with their own full-featured virtual private servers sharing a single physical server - without the need for additional manpower resources.

1-Net signed up for HSPcomplete in April, becoming SWsoft's first customer of the solution. For the hardware platform on which to deliver the virtual hosting service, SWsoft recommended Dell. The choice was an easy one to make, recalls Alex Gontcharov, Deputy Director, Business Development, SWsoft.

"First of all, Dell provides very innovative products that use cuttingedge technologies. What we found attractive were the monitoring tools, the Dell Open Manage server management software, and the ease of upgrading. Dell's Intel based servers also have very innovative designs; the built-in redundancy features allow us to actually upgrade the servers without having to remove them from the rack."

Other factors that went into SWsoft's decision to recommend Dell hardware were the affordable pricing that Dell could offer through its 'no middlemen' direct sales model, the speed of delivery, Dell's reputation for delivering products of a very high quality, and the availability of a leasing program that reduced upfront expenditure.

"We planned to initially target the service at small- and medium-size enterprises, with price plans at affordable levels. Hardware-wise, we wanted a well known and reliable brand, the latest technologies, and pricing that would allow us to offer sensible prices to our customers. Dell made sense," says Lee.

The total solution deployed at 1-Net comprises HSPcomplete running on ASPLinux and a cluster of Dell Poweredge servers: one Intel based 8-processor Dell PowerEdge 8450 data center server and three Dell PowerEdge 1550 ultra rack-dense general-purpose servers. A 250GB external RAID storage sub-system - also from Dell - completes the ensemble.

1-Net launched its virtual hosting service in August under the Virtual@1-Net brand. The basic plan costs just S$15 a month, and gives subscribers their own virtual Web server on 1-Net's broadband network, Web mail, FTP server, Microsoft Front Page 2000/XP extensions and a pre-installed database.

"Customers also have their own administrative or root access rights. Each of them can log in to their own server, deploy their preferred software, and manage the server the way you want. It's effectively their own server, just that it's not physically there. If they need more disk or memory space, an upgrade to a higher subscription plan can be easily performed," says Lee.

The breakthrough hosting is also ideal for resellers who are providing Web design services as it enables them to have total control of the Web hosting facility without investing in any capital assets. "In fact, since we launched the service, we've had numerous enquiries from would-be resellers, some from as physically far away as the U.S. and Canada," Lee continues.

Customers can apply for Virtual@1-Net at http://virtual.1-net.com.sg there's hardly any paperwork. Once the customers chooses a subscription plan, pays for it, and payment is accepted, HSPcomplete automatically creates a virtual server within the Dell cluster and provides software included in the plan to the server - all within minutes. From there on, customers can load in their Web content and applications, etc.

"It's that simple and that fast. Our customers get a cost-effective, flexible and scalable hosting environment in double-quick time. For us, it certainly makes more sense than buying multiple servers, each of which needs to be configured and can only serve tens of customers in the traditional hosting schema. We've not had to allocate additional technical manpower resources," says Lee.