Last week, Carlos Caneja and Jess Coburn, representing Applied Innovations, attended HostingCon 2007 in Chicago, IL at the Chicago Navy Pier.  HostingCon 2007, the 3rd HostingCon event, brought together almost 100 vendors exhibiting products geared towards hosting and Internet and more than 1200 webhosters and 100s of informational and training sessions.

For Applied Innovations, attendance at HostingCon is considered almost mandatory as this we have attended every HostingCon to date.  For AppliedI, HostingCon represents an opportunity to meet in person with the vendors we rely on to power our business as well as to learn about new and exciting technologies and of course make new vendor and peer relationships.  In the end, attending HostingCon is just an example of our commitment to providing best in class Windows Hosting.  It’s through attending events like HostingCon and then bringing this information back, implementing these new ideas and also providing this information to you, our e-business partners, that we continue to establish ourselves as a leader in web hosting.

Some of the vendors we met with.

At this year’s HostingCon we met with the likes of Microsoft, SWsoft, WebHostAutomation, ScanAlert, Smartertools and others. Some of the vendors we met with and some of the information discussed is shown below

The SmarterGuys from SmarterTools

The guys from SmarterTools were Tim Uzzanti (Number 2 from the left) and Jeff Hardy. With SmarterTools we discussed the anti-spam improvements and collaboration improvements made within SmarterMail and also discussed the upcoming new features that will make it even more effective against SPAM as well bring new features to make organizations able to share information in an easier and more powerful manner.  We also discussed the new changes being made to SmarterTicket and enhances expected in SmarterStats. It’s clear they’re very busy making great software even greater.  Today SmarterMail powers almost all of our mail servers and SmarterStats is the web analytics application of choice.

The guys from Microsoft

In the first picture is Tito Leverette and in the second picture is Brett Hill. Tito is a Microsoft Hosting Technologist/Evangelist and he’s pretty much our point man at Microsoft for any technical questions we may have.

Brett Hill has been instrumental in our launch of IIS7 hosting and has helped us begin to craft what will become the next generation of Windows Hosting here at Applied Innovations.

WebHostAutomation the guys that power Helm

 Pictured here in the HELM4 booth is Chris Danks from WebHostAutomation. Their CEO Mark Hall and CTO Adam Saunders were also on site but available when we were snapping photos.

Today, HELM powers our windows shared hosting, asp.net reseller hosting and much of our dedicated hosting network and we have some very exciting plans in store with HELM4 and enjoyed the opportunity to meet in person with WHA to discuss our future plans. We’re really excited with the direction HELM has taken and the new modular architecture that it sports.

SWsoft the makers of Plesk, Virtuozzo and leading Hosting Vendor

SWsoft is one of the top hosting automation vendors in the hosting industry if not the leading technology company. SWsoft makes Plesk, Virtuozzo, Parallels are sister companies with Acronis and many more. SWsoft’s Virtuozzo and Plesk powers our Windows VPS Hosting offering and their sitebuilder product is used as our sitebuilder solution.

With SWsoft we talked about Virtuozzo 4.0 and the new high availability features it will offer when released.

Pictured are Mike Riolo, Director of Hosting Sales and Marco Crivelli from the Hosting Sales division. SWsoft probably had one of the strongest presences at HostingCon with all their top executives on staff meeting with hosts and attending the conference sessions.

The guys that keep the Internet Hacker Safe

I know the name is a bit misleading considering what they do is actually keep your website safe against hackers, but I couldn’t resist.  That’s Michael Ayers from ScanAlert. ScanAlert is our partner for PCI scanning and website vulnerability detection. ScanAlert offers all of our customers one year free PCI scanning.

It’s more than just meeting Vendors

A big part of any conference is of course networking with vendors and hosting peers but it’s also about learning about the new technologies and how to utilize these technologies to provide a higher level of service and customer satisfaction. This year was no exception and in the coming months you’ll see us announcing many new changes and partnerships all to make your hosting experience with Applied Innovations the best available.  Some of the new partnerships we’ll be announcing in the coming months are with Pinnaclecart and CRE Loaded Ecommerce and much more. I really don’t want to announce more just yet but expect to see a lot of great stuff coming as a result of our time at HostingCon.

Silverlight is Microsoft’s new cross browser, cross-platform web technology for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web.  Silverlight offers a flexible programming model that supports AJAX, VB, C#, Python, Ruby and integrates easily with existing web applications.

Today Silverlight supports fast, cost-effective delivery of high-quality video to all major browsers running on the Mac and Windows based operating systems.

Silverlight was previously code-named WPF/E. Applied Innovations has supported Silverlight hosting and the delivery of Silverlight based web applications since the release of .NET Framework 3.0 on all shared hosting, dedicated hosting and Windows VPS hosting plans are silverlight compatible and ready.

On Friday, Microsoft announced the release of Silverlight 1.0 Release Candidate and the Silverlight 1.1 Alpha Refresh for both Windows and Macintosh based operating systems. If you haven’t experienced Silverlight now is a great time to install the browser plug-ins and experience it. If you have already installed an earlier version of silverlight then you’ll be happy to know it automatically installs updates for you.

What can I do with Silverlight and what are others doing?

Probably the best way to experience Silverlight, is to experience Silverlight. Many consider Silverlight as ‘Microsoft’s answer to Flash’ but it really goes beyond that. I do believe it builds on the idea of Flash but provides a very open API and really offers next generation technology.

Below is a demo of “Silverlight Airlines” a Silverlight based application showing just what you can do with Silverlight to develop a new rich user experience.

Silverlight Airline Sample

During a keynote at MIX this year, Scott Guthrie demo’d the power of silverlight with an Airlines example. Using managed code they were able to easily program Silverlight to create a rich user experience within the browser. you can view the demo online, download the code and even read David’s blog for more information about this sample.

NetFlix Next Generation Video-on-Demand player.

Also at MIX 07 this year, Netflix demonstrated a next generation video on demand player built in silverlight. The Netflix video player actually allows you to watch a video over the Internet with a friend in a different location. So while traveling you can start the video, link up with the Children back home and experience the same video experience over the Internet. You can learn more about the Netflix video by watching the online video.

This is just a sampling of what’s available using Silverlight, if you visit the Silverlight Showcase you can see more real-world Silverlight applications and even download the source code to begin building your own Silverlight applications around the ready made examples.

What do I need to run Silverlight applications?

To view silverlight applications today, you’ll need to install the Silverlight plug-in, currently available for Internet Explorer and Mozilla on both the Mac and PC.

What do I need to develop Silverlight applications?

You can begin developing on Silverlight today!  you’ll need to download the runtime and tools. If you’re using Javascript you can download the Silverlight 1.0 (RC) or the 1.1 Alpha release if you plan to use the .NET languages. For more information on these two different versions you can visit the features matrix.

Microsoft Silverlight 1.0 Release Candidate - Mac or Windows
The runtime required to experience Silverlight.

Microsoft Silverlight 1.1 Alpha Refresh - Mac or Windows
The runtime required to view Silverlight applications created with .NET

Microsoft ASP.NET Futures (July 2007)
This release includes Silverlight controls for ASP.NET

After you’ve installed that then you’ll want to download the Visual Studio developer tools to start developing Silverlight applications and the Expression designer tools to start designing your Silverlight application. For more information on these tools you can read the Silverlight overview.

The Silverlight Developer Tools:

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2
The next generation development tool.

Microsoft Silverlight Tools Alpha Refresh for Visual Studio (July 2007)
The add-on to create Silverlight applications using .NET

The Silverlight Designer Tools:

Expression Blend 2 August Preview
Professional design tool to create user interaction for Silverlight.

Expression Media Encoder Preview Update
Feature that will be part of Microsoft Expression Media that allows you to create and enhance video.

Expression Design
A professional illustration and graphic design tool to create Silverlight assets.

For Silverlight Documentation, samples and add-ins, you’ll probably want to download the SDK’s:

Microsoft Silverlight 1.0 Software Development Kit Release Candidate
Download this SDK to create Silverlight Web experiences that target Silverlight 1.0 RC. The SDK contains documentation, samples along with templates for Visual Studio and has also a ?Go Live? license that enables building commercial applications.

Microsoft Silverlight 1.1 Software Development Kit Alpha Refresh
Download this SDK to create Silverlight Web experiences that target Silverlight 1.1 Alpha. The SDK contains documentation and samples.

You can Learn from samples and Documentation and Microsoft has made many of these available today:

Visit the Quickstarts to create your first application.
Download a sample from the Silverlight gallery.
Have a question? Visit the Silverlight Forums.
Read the Silverlight documentation.
Stay informed, subscribe to the Silverlight RSS feed.

The final puzzle piece: Silverlight Ready Hosting

Finally, you’ll need Silverlight Hosting and Applied Innovations is Silverlight hosting ready on all hosting plans. If you plan to use any of the Visual Studio 2008 features that make use of the beta .NET Framework 3.5, you’ll need to run these on a Windows VPS or Windows Dedicated Server today.  As always with beta releases we don’t deploy these on production servers but will make available Free Beta shared hosting servers shortly.

Developers are encouraged to try out our developer VPS hosting plan which is an ideal platform for testing new technologies like this!  With our developer VPS plan you’ll have full control of the operating system and be able to extend the server as needed for your application.

AppliedI.net is excited about the release of the new Silverlight 1.0 RC and 1.1 Alpha plug-ins and looking forward to watching Silverlight based websites develop in the coming months. We believe this technology will bring the Internet user experience to a new level and really expand on the adoption of Internet applications for mainstream applications. Today, Software as a Service (SaaS) is becoming the new business model for applications and Silverlight will only encourage it’s adoption.