More and more companies are investing in email marketing than ever before, because:

• it is still a relatively new delivery mechanism
• it also remains the most measurable and 
• it is the most cost effective means of marketing directly to customers and prospects.

Even if the email marketing industry starts to maturing in terms of numbers of players, the market will continue to experience double digit growth in both volume and value terms, and more service innovations are in development. Marketers find it easy to justify any additional investment in email marketing because of the exact nature of its reporting capability. Email marketing is becoming an integral part of the broader marketing mix.

There is room for trial, error and improvement and no barriers to entry for small businesses. Sending 1,000 emails to a database for £20 is extremely cost effective especially compared to every other marketing format. In addition the sender knows exactly what has happened to each of those mails, as is the case with Suite26.

Without doubt the UK economy is slowing but email marketing is among the safe havens in companies because it is easy to calculate the end of effect of any expenditure or ROI. Applications like Suite26 are:

• measurable
• deliver meaningful reports on who you have mailed 
• show what specific action they took, down to whether or they purchased your products or services. 

It is a proven and effective method of driving demand and sales for a range of different products and services and judging by the feedback received for the recent launch of Suite26, Global Gold directors remain convinced that in 2009 email marketing will continue to deliver double-digit growth in a slowing UK economic climate because applications like Suite26 continue to offer exceptional value for money for small businesses in particular.

Despite all the predictions of a slowdown in the UK economy , management accountancy specialist, BDO, is still predicting that the technology, media and telecom sectors will largely steer clear of the downturn as businesses attempt to claw back spending by investing in IT.

Global Gold, international web hosting provider, holds with this view of the downturn as well. Spokesperson, Debra Hastings-Henry was quoted as saying, “We live in a media-driven society and we’re in danger of talking ourselves prematurely into a slowdown or worse, a recession. Each business needs to look at what it has to offer its customers and make the changes to its poroducts, processes and people that are necessary to survive and prosper, as there will be winners and losers when we come through any slowdown. Forward-thinking management will recognise early on that they need to invest in areas such as IT, having the right staff and quality web hosting  will have a greater and longer term impact on the health (and wealth) of their business, than cutbacks. Some will realise that in areas such as web hosting, cheap does not always relate to reliable or surviving a downturn. The trick is to ensure that you are one of the winners and that you don’t talk yourself prematurely or unnecessarily into hanging up your gloves. 

As part of Global Gold’s continual growth in the highly competitive Web Hosting sector, this Essex based web hosting and domains operator has recently acquired Tag4.com for an undisclosed sum. 

The acquisition of Tag4 is a clear statement of Global Gold’s intention to strengthen its web hosting capabilities. Since its inception the customer has placed great emphasis on the delivery of excellent customer service which is why it boasts an exceptional retention rate for its customers. 

Global Gold offers their clients highly reliable and sophisticated hosting solutions and the newly acquired customer base from Tag4 will have complete access to all of Global Gold’s services including its renowned:

-  TechSupport team

-  Linux and Windows-based Hosting

-  Virtual Private Servers (VPS) 

-  Citrix and Zen based Virtual Machines

In addition to this it also offers email services such as Barracuda Anti Spam and Email Marketing applications. 

The company continues to look for other interesting companies to work with.

Global Gold Network Limited was founded in 1999 and has its headquarters in Essex.  The company specialises in delivering cost-effective web hosting solutions for SMEs.  Since its inception it has built a wealth of experience, expertise and know-how in the following key areas:

• web hosting
• virtual private server hosting
• VM hosting
• managed hosting and dedicated servers.

Global Gold remains one of the few a profitable and independent web hosting businesses in the UK. Spokesperson, Debra Hastings-Henry, was recently quoted as saying:

“Our growth has been largely organic and based on the fact that we treat our customers the way we would like to be treated ourselves. As such “word of mouth recommendations” from thousands of satisfied customers has helped us to remain in our enviable position in an industry that likes to claim it is customer focused when in reality most web hosts are product focused.”

To date, Global Gold has a portfolio of over 8,500 customer accounts in the UK alone. 

There will be a third service pack for SQL Server 2005 released by Microsoft, just before the next software version of the server is due for release.

The release of SQL Server 2008 is scheduled to happen in the third quarter of this year - service pack 3 for SQL server 2005 is expected to come out after that.

What the service pack would include is uncertain as Microsoft did not disclose this information, but they did say in a Tuesday blog post that it will have cumulative updates to the software included in it plus some additional fixes to bugs.

The Incremental Servicing Model that Microsoft introduced last year, in July, will not be changed by the release of service pack 3. The model introduced a regular update process for SQL Server 2005. It works by Microsoft issuing a cumulative update for SQL Server 2005 every two months that includes all critical fixes that had been discovered during that time.

Microsoft will continue using the model since customers enjoy its predictability, said Francois Ajenstat, the director of marketing for SQL Server at Microsoft. Many users say there’s a need for a third service pack, he said.

The Government of Australia has defended moves to give bosses in Australia new powers to monitor their workers’ email and internet traffic.

Attorney-General Robert McClelland is seeking advice on introducing new internet surveillance laws for businesses involved in critical infrastructure such as financial networks and water, electricity and transport.

This would mean companies would not have to request the consent of staff before monitoring their internet usage to detect potential security threats.

Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard said that the new powers would help protect against new terrorist strikes yesterday.

“We want to make sure that they are safe from terrorist attack,” she told the Nine Network.

“Part of doing that is making sure we’ve got the right powers to ensure that we can tell if there’s something unusual going on in the system.

“So it’s a national security move, not a move about an unseemly interest in people’s private emails.”

The Opposition seemed parted on the proposal.

Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson said the idea seemed to have merit but he would need to take further advice before supporting it.

“I think all of us would be concerned about the privacy implications of this,” Dr Nelson said.

“What I will be looking for is a full briefing from the Government and the relevant security agencies so we can actually have a look at what is being proposed, what the consequences might be for everyday Australians.”

However shadow Attorney-General George Brandis took a tougher stance, saying private companies should not be given the responsibility or power to monitor staff emails and internet traffic to detect security threats.

“We would be most concerned if, as appears implicit in Mr McClelland’s remarks, the effect of any such proposed changes was to impose on companies and employers a supervisory obligation which currently does not exist,” he said.

The Government has promised to consult widely before introducing the new laws in Parliament.

Although FTP is incredibly useful and simple to use it is not without its critics.

File contents and passwords and are sent in plain text format, which therefore could be intercepted by eavesdroppers or ‘sniffers’ as they are technically known. There are now protocol enhancements that get round this, for instance by using SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) or TLS (Transport Layer Security).

Whilst files are being moved around, multiple TCP/IP connections are used by the server. One connection is used for controlling the connection, and one for every download, upload, or directory listing. The firewalls in between your computer and the FTP server may need additional logic or configuration changes to manage these connections.

It is possible for a hacker to abuse the FTP protocol’s built-in proxy features. They could tell a server to send data to a particular port of a third computer.

The File Transfer Protocol has a high latency due to the volume of commands needed to initiate a transfer.
When the files arrive at the destination computer there is no integrity check on the whole file itself. So when a file transfer is interrupted, the receiver cannot know if the received file is whole or not. The result is a file on the destination side that is perhaps not the same size as the original file on the sender side.

IPv6 is an upgrade to the existing IPv4 internet technology and promises to allow vastly more IP addresses to be used on the internet. Each public facing computer, server or computer device on the Internet needs to have a unique number assigned to it when it logs on. This is known as the IP (Internet Protocol) address. Without it a computer would not be able to communicate with other computers on the internet.

U.S. federal government officials are under pressure to meet a June 30 deadline but they commented that they are confident they will meet it in time to support IPv6 on their backbone networks.

The IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) saw the need for this upgrade back in 1995 and invented the IPv6 specification to combat the very real risk of running out of IP addresses due to the popular uptake of the Internet.

In 2005 the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) gave a requirement that all U.S. federal agencies must be capable of passing IPv6 packets on their backbone networks by June 30, 2008.

Working under similar deadline to migrate to IPv6 is the Department of Defense, who have been under-going a five-year transition to IPv6 since 2003. By September 2008, the department has promised to have all of its core networks able to process IPv6 traffic.

“We will meet the OMB mandate,” says Kris Strance, who is the leader of IPv6 transition for the Defense Department and works in the Office of the Secretary of Defense CIO. “The OMB mandate only requires that you pass IPv6 packets across the network. It does not require the infrastructure, for example the DNS servers, the security devices and such, to be IPv6 capable.”