iWeb Communities: Blog

It might look like we are over-publicizing this offer; but it’s an exceptional, never-seen offer, unlikely to be offered ever again by iWeb, or any other web hosting company. So here it is again: The promotion to get a free dedicated server ends in just 8 hours, at the time of publication of this post. The Intel Core 2 Duo servers are sold out, but we still have 2.6Ghz P4 servers if you want this deal.

There were a couple of (positive) comments on the first blog post whether existing customers could benefit from this offer. The offer applies to new as well as existing iWeb customers. Which means that if you want to expand your current infrastructure, this is the time to do it.

View the promotion.

This morning iWeb sent out a press release with the results for the first quarter of the 2009 fiscal year. Our growth, which is defined in revenue (or income) remains strong and consistent; our numbers have almost doubled compared to the first quarter of 2008; 92% growth, to be exact. 

As Martin and Eric, iWeb’s 2 co-founders, explain in the press release, this is the result of hard work, and the current economic situation means that we have to work hard to earn every new customer – but it also means that people are expecting more value for their hosting dollar, which is pretty much a good thing.

The press release also included talk about the re-engineering of our customer service department, which has started delivering results – the restructuring should be complete in September. As Eric explained during iWeb’s first ever conference call with Financial analysts, “supporting 20 000 customers is very different than supporting 5 000 customers”.  Indeed it is; it’s not just a question of simply adding more people – that would be too easy…

The press release also mentions that iWeb lost 1.2 M$, but only theoretically. Huh?

Here is how that works out: last year iWeb completed a financing deal with Investment Banking Giant Goldman Sachs, which included 10M$ USD in debt, due in 5 years. At the time, that meant more or less 10,6 Million in Canadian dollars. Because the exchange rate has changed in the last quarter (October, November and December), that 10 Million USD is now closer to 12 Million is CAD$ – except that the debt is only due in 5 years. So in reality nothing has changed, really, except the theoretical cost of repaying our debt, if the exchange rate does not change in the next 5 years. Accounting rules say that we have to declare this difference right away, which is the reason for our loss.

Without the theoretical loss, iWeb’s numbers are pretty much at break even (11 K$ profit, in fact), and EBITDA doubled to 1.6 M$.

MONTREAL, QUEBEC – February 27, 2009 - iWeb (TSX-V: IWB), a global provider of Internet hosting services and IT infrastructure, today released its financial results for the quarter ended December 31, 2008. The complete interim financial statements and management report of the Company are available on the websites www.sedar.com and investors.iweb.com.

• Revenue increased 92% to $6.1 million for the quarter ended December 31, 2008, compared to revenues of $3.2 million for the same period in 2007
• Adjusted EBITDA grew to $1.6 million, or 26% of revenues
• New annual recurring revenues of $2.8 million generated during the first quarter.
• Operating income at break-even
• Net loss of $1.2 million, after taking into account the unrealized, theoretical exchange lost on the long-term debt denominated in U.S. dollars

This news release contains certain forward-looking statements. These statements relate to future events or iWeb’s future economic performance and reflect the current assumptions and expectations of management. Certain unknown factors may affect the events, economic performance and results of operations. iWeb undertakes no obligation, and does not intend to, update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as may be required under applicable law.

For more information

The iWeb Tech News Highlights covers web hosting, web development, web design and general technology news and is published at 8.00am EST. For Feb. 27th, here are the highlights:

• Google has launched the Apps Status Dashboard, which is a visual representation of the Google Apps availability history. This follows the outage Tuesday morning
• Nokia is considering entering the laptop industry
• A series of iPhone-related news: NYT asks why iPhone/iPod touch users are willing to pay for content. AirPhones is a new app which allows you to stream music wirelessly from iTunes to an iPhone, which sounds like a software version of Apple’s Airport Express. Wired tells how the iPhone is not successful in Japan: consumers can now get it for free there.
• For database admins and web developers, a blog post on how FriendFeed uses MySQL to store schema-less data. 

The iWeb Tech News Highlights covers web hosting, web development, web design and general technology news and is published at 8.00am EST. For Feb. 26th, here are the highlights:

• An interview of id Software’s John Carmack, who talks about the new in-browser game Quake 3. John Carmack discusses the future of PC games, how in-browser games development differ from regular titles, and business models,
• Marvell plans $100 pluggable computers, called wall-warts. It has Linux, a 1.2Ghz cpu, 512Mb of RAM and a USB port, etc. and could be used a home server, a light office server, a media server (music streaming)
• Microsoft sues TomTom, the in-car navigation maker company, over IP claims, with three involving the Linux kernel.

The iWeb Tech News Highlights covers web hosting, web development, web design and general technology news and is published at 8.00am EST. For Feb. 25th, here are the highlights:

• Safari 4 has been released in public beta yesterday. It has a new javascript Engine called Nitro, it’s the fastest browser on the market (3.5 times faster than Firefox 3), and has new graphic UIs, with CoverFlows for the Web. The browser will show you graphically your most visited websites in 3D, as well as history and bookmarks
• The team at 280North has announced a new product, Atlas, aimed at web developers, javascripts programmers, and front-end UI engineers. It has a code editor, but more importantly, a sophisticated user interface editor for next-generation web apps
• Usability Analysis of Apple’s website: Why is it so good
• After the guide published by Gizmodo on how to put Mac OS X on the Dell Mini 9, LaptopMag reveals that 1/3 of those netbooks are sold with Linux, making it the most hacker-friendly netbook ever. Another articles states how netbooks will kill Microsoft

iWeb is now mirroring Sourceforge’s software repositories.

SourceForge is a well-known and well-established player in the open source and FOSS communities, and hosts popular projects such as GTK+, popular p2p clients, FileZilla and many web development software such as phpMyAdmin. Sourceforge hosts more than 180,000 projects, and has more than 1.9 million registered users.

For sys-admins, clients, and also software developers in North-Eastern America, it means you will be able to see iWeb as the download provider. The bandwidth and infrastructure needed for this is provided by iWeb, so you can view it as iWeb’s contribution to the developer community. We currently have half of the 8TB of data and code from SourceForge, and will get the final updates at the end of the year.

Happy Coding!

See other software mirrored by iWeb

MONTREAL, Feb. 24 – iWeb Group Inc. (TSX-V: IWB), iWeb, a global provider of Internet hosting service and IT infrastructure, will release results for its first quarter of fiscal 2009 on Friday, February 27th 2009 before the markets open. Management will host a conference call and question-and-answer session to discuss earnings at 10:30 A.M. (EST).

President and CEO Eric Chouinard, Executive Vice President Marc Guindon and CFO Philip Tousignant will be present to discuss iWeb’s financial results for the first quarter ended December 31, 2008, and then take questions from securities analysts.

To access the conference call by telephone, dial 1-800-595-8550. Please connect approximately 15 minutes prior to the beginning of the call. The conference call will be archived for replay until Friday, March 6, 2009, at midnight. To access the archived conference call, dial 416-640-1917 or toll-free 1-877-289-8525 and enter the reservation number: 21299079 followed by the number sign.

About iWeb Group Inc.

iWeb is a worldwide provider of Internet hosting services and IT Infrastructure, with three secure data centers in Montreal. Since 2004, the company’s compounded annual growth rate has been above 75%, making it one of Canada’s 100 fastest growing companies according to PROFIT Magazine.

Founded in 1996 in Montreal, iWeb now generates more than 60% of its revenues from abroad; and employs over 150 full-time employees providing Dedicated Server Hosting, Co-location and Web Hosting services to more than 19,000 customers in 150 countries. iWeb’s shares are listed on the TSX Venture Exchange (TSX-V : IWB), for more information please consult the Company’s website: investors.iweb.com

For further information:

Philip Tousignant
Chief Financial Officer
iWeb Group Inc.
(514) 286-4242 ext. 149
ptousignant@iweb.com

Bernard Dahl
Director, Communications and Public Relations
iWeb Group Inc.
(514) 286-4242 ext. 115
bdahl@iweb.com

The iWeb Tech News Highlights covers web hosting, web development, web design and general technology news and is published at 8.00am EST. For Feb. 24th, here are the highlights:

• If you are contemplating opening getting revenues from blogs, here’s a new list of the 25 most valuable blogs. Gakwer Media tops the list, with an estimated value of $170 million. 
• GMail was down for several hours Tuesday morning
• A blog post arguing how instant deployment matters. With new rapid development frameworks, better practices, agile development and new technologies, development time has reduced, but deployment hasn’t reduced in the same rate
• It’s the End of Second Life
• the New Zealand disconnection plan has been delayed after outcry from consumers and citizens, both in New Zealand and on an international level

iWeb Technologies has a customer base of more than 19.000 customers, in more than 160 countries worldwide.

You will find on the Internet all sorts of stories, reviews, customers cases, happy or unhappy, fans or criticizers, clients who are doing business business with iWeb more than 10 years or temporary clients. However, amongst all stories, here’s one I like a lot.

Read on Emile Girard’s blogue, a young web entrepreneur from QC, Canada, how we collaborated with him to get his fanatique.ca website online. Following rumours about the hockey teams Canadiens, the fanatique server was badly hit and was at the maximum of its capacity. Jean-Luc SansCartier, from iWeb, then anticipated, seeing the technical problems, and then advised measures on getting better performance.

Why is this small story interesting?

1. Emile G. is a direct reporter, someone who is hosting his websites at iWeb (and not rumours from an anonymous person on an Internet forum etc.)
2. It shows we are ready to anticipate customers’ requests and have proactive request
3. There is a human contact, and engagement between each customer and the iWeb team