For more than eleven years, XMission has proudly sponsored the Utah Arts Festival. This year’s festival kicks off today at Library Square (June 23-26) with XMission once again presenting the popular Sponsor Patio.

Our advanced hosting division, Stackable, now hosts the Utah Arts Festival website (designed by our good friends over at Third Sun Productions). If you require festival information, ticket information, or want to make a donation, their beautiful site has everything you need.

For the first time, our 400 S. window display features Utah Arts Festival graphics as well as digital art by local artists. Stop by (or drive by) and check out our colorful windows on your way to and from the festival!

XMission also provides free wireless access to the Salt Lake Main Library and Library Plaza. If you need to get out of the heat to check your email or update Facebook, we now have a very robust connection for you to use.

Enjoy the 2011 Utah Arts Festival!

It’s science fair season in Utah schools and XMission is again sponsoring the Salt Lake Valley Science & Engineering Fair on March 22-25 at the University of Utah. Each year, the Fair features the best young Utah scientists in grades 5 to 12. Students present their experiments and compete for a chance to represent Utah at the Intel International Science & Engineering Fair.

Local companies, including XMission, support the Fair by volunteering, donating needed funds, providing door prizes, and offering scholarships and grants. Last year, five Grand Award-winning seniors received $80,000 scholarships from Westminster College. Each year, our own Pete Ashdown judges the Fair and awards students the XMission Technology Award (including a fancy Newton’s Cradle) for best use of technology and the Internet.

Students who want to take their discoveries online may be interested in the Google Global Science Fair. Google accepts entries from any full-time students, ages 13 to 18. Students can submit entries starting from now until April 4. Prizes include National Geographic Expeditions and Google scholarships.

Your kids’ scary experiments in the fridge could pay off big! Good luck to all of the young scientists out there.

Big thanks to all of our artists who submitted work for XMission’s Digital Display Contest. We received so many creative and beautiful pieces and were thrilled to see them on our tubes at night.

After reviewing the popular votes, and making their own final decisions, our judges have concluded that the Digital Display Contest winner is:

“Summertime” by Bryce Buchanan

Congratulations Bryce!

XMission will continue to rotate all of the submissions on our display in the coming weeks and months. To see the animations at their LED finest, you will want to drive or walk by in the late evening.

If you have any other animations that you would like us to include in the rotation just for fun, please feel free to send those to marketing@xmission.com

For the past two years, members of our research and development team (Jason Hansen, Mike Place, and Eric Waters) have spent their days and nights working on a new premium web hosting service for XMission. Because of their hard work and the direction of our fearless leader, Pete Ashdown, we are very proud to announce our new hosting division, Stackable.

Traditionally, web hosts offered inexpensive, yet static hosting packages. Eventually, more expensive options arose but left web developers with little control and increased complexity. Now, companies like Stackable strive to offer a more developer-centric service that integrates the development and testing processes into web hosting.

Stackable responds to a number of challenges faced by web developers. For example:

1. Development Challenge: Scalability
   Developers must either purchase excess resources (storage, memory, bandwidth, hardware) in order to anticipate growth, or find themselves having too few resources when they require them. Often, scaling during a sudden influx of traffic can mean hours or even days of downtime.
   
   Stackable’s response:
   
   Fully scalable – both horizontally and vertically.
   Developers can instantly increase or decrease the resources provisioned for their sites as demand increases or decreases. Stackable allows developers to scale horizontally as well as vertically. For example, increase your site’s capacity in moments by adding memory from the Stackable control panel. If a developer prefers horizontal scaling, they can purchase four 256MB containers instead of a single 1GB container, Stackable will charge them for the same amount. Stackable is one of only a handful of providers that charge the same price for horizontal and vertical scaling.

   Utility Billing – Billed by the day
   Stackable will bill developers only for the resources they consume. For example, they may begin by purchasing a single container (256MB, which includes 1TB bandwidth, and 50GB storage). If they require additional resources for three days out of the month, they can increase the size of their container just for those three days and then reduce it back for the remainder of the month. Stackable will only charge developers for the resources they use per day no matter how often they need to increase and decrease their consumption during a billing cycle.

2. Development Challenge: Testing
   Developers cannot always insure that code developed on their workstation will work when uploaded to the hosting provider because of different environmental variables, such as software versions. Setting up a useful testing environment can be difficult and time-consuming. Developers often have to show test versions of sites which may or may not work as well in a live environment or might be difficult to move over.
   Stackable’s response:
   Real-world Testing
   Stackable allows developers to test website functionality on the live server, but using a private URL. This gives web developers the chance to test and refine their website in an environment identical to that of the live web server. Testing on Stackable means that developers will not experience any surprises when they deploy their site, giving them more confidence and security.

   Easy client demos
   Developers can easily create multiple versions of a website on Stackable, and then, with a single click, deploy a chosen version into production. For example, a developer may have three versions of a website to show to a client. The developer can show the client all three versions on Stackable, using private URLs. The client could select the preferred version, and then the developer could effortlessly promote that version to the live, public site. Because the IP address of the tested site does not change, developers will not have to wait for DNS updates. This functionality also works well for businesses using A/B testing to see which version of a site resonates more with their audience.

3. Development Challenge: Load-Balancing
   Developers have to purchase expensive load-balancing hardware, and administrate it effectively; or developers opt to forego load balancing altogether which limits their sites’ redundancy.
   Stackable’s response:
   Unlimited load balancing
   Nobody does load-balancing quite like Stackable. Stackable does not charge anything extra to load-balance across two servers or even fifty servers. Developers do not need to worry about administration of hardware because Stackable engineers manage it for them. High availability has never been so affordable.
4. Development Challenge: API Limitations
   Developers often use control panels that either have a lot of non-essential features, or too few features. As a result, developers alter their workflow to accommodate the control panel.
   
   Stackable’s response:
   Custom API access
   Stackable gives developers full API access. For example, a developer could create a dashboard widget containing the control panel features essential to that developer. This widget could also log the developer into the Stackable control panel from the desktop. Developers can create what they need to work better because of Stackable’s flexibility.
5. Development Challenge: Reliability
   Developers have to sort through hosting companies claiming to have the solution and expertise they require, only to find that they fall short.
   Stackable’s response:
   Over 16 Successful Years in Web Hosting
   XMission has successfully provided traditional web hosting to a variety of industries for over a decade. We listened to web developers’ concerns about traditional web hosting and learned more about what they really needed. Our engineers have taken that feedback and built a hosting product that helps developers to work more efficiently and productively. Stackable has inherited very high standards for technical ability and expertise, client communication, and reliability. XMission has always received excellent reviews from customers, and Stackable will continue to live up to its heritage.

Stackable also responds to the following business challenges:

1. Business Challenge: IT Expense
   Businesses who prefer the security of colocation have to purchase expensive servers, power, and space to effectively host their site. They also require additional systems administrators to monitor and attend to their equipment.
   Stackable’s response:
   Benefits of cloud computing, managed hosting, and colocation
   Stackable provides the same benefits of security and allocated resources as colocation, minus the hardware and staffing expense. Our engineers manage everything on-site. Stackable comes pre-configured, so businesses will not have to wait for lengthy setups. Developers can begin uploading their sites in minutes.
2. Business Challenge: Site Vulnerability
   Businesses using shared hosting have their sites slowed down, or taken down altogether by another site. This happens because multiple sites share resources on a single server. If any one client uses the majority of those resources, other sites tend to suffer.
   Stackable’s response:
   Resource guarantees for every client
   Unlike shared hosting, Stackable dedicates hosting resources to each container. For example, if two businesses on Stackable have a moderate amount of site traffic and suddenly one of the businesses has a huge increase, the second business’s site will not suffer. Their container(s’) resources will continue to remain intact and readily available.

We have a lot of work ahead of us to launch Stackable nationally, and we hope that those of you who have stood by us for the past sixteen years can help us spread the word to web developers you may know. We can’t wait to see where this takes XMission, and hope that you share our excitement! Please stay tuned for updates and follow our progress day-to-day on Twitter at twitter.com/stackable or on Stackable’s blog at blog.stackable.com.

XMission Voice includes all of the best features of traditional service such as:

• Unlimited local calls
• Voice Mail – Leave greetings and retrieve messages
• Call Waiting – Move between calls rather than sending calls to Voice Mail
• Call Forward – Bypass Voice Mail and send a caller to another number
• Selective Call Blocking – Prevent specific numbers from reaching you
• Selective Call Forwarding – Forward specific callers to another number
• Caller ID Block – Block your own caller ID number for your next outbound call
• Last Call Return – Dial back the last caller
• Anonymous Call Blocking – Prevent anonymous calls from ringing through
• Busy Buster – Automatically keeps trying busy numbers for you
• 3-Way Calling – Allow another person to join your existing call

…plus benefits you will not receive from a landline:

• Free nationwide long-distance (in the contiguous 48 states)
• Competitive worldwide long distance rates
• Voice Mail to Email – Access your Voice Mail from your email inbox
• Voice Mail to Web – Access your Voice Mail via our new Voice portal: https://voice.xmission.com
• Account customization with our online portal
• Other Features – XMission offers additional features upon request

If you would like more information, please contact our sales team. Encourage your family & friends with DSL to sign up too!

The UPA recognizes organizations that encourage employee well-being through policies promoting work-life balance, employee involvement, employee growth and development, health and safety, and employee recognition.

XMission received particular recognition for its commitment to covering health and dental insurance premiums 100% for employees, their families, and domestic partners. Like our fellow award recipients – Gastronomy, BYU Center for Service and Learning, and Green Valley Spa – XMission and Pete Ashdown believe in promoting a “culture of caring.”

We sincerely appreciate the kudos. For more information about the Psychologically Healthy Workplace Awards, visit http://www.phwa.org/ or contact the Utah Psychological Association.

A heartfelt thank you to all of our incredible customers who have supported us throughout the years. We can’t wait to see what the future holds for XMission, and for the Internet!

To celebrate this sweet day, we have a special 24-hour promotion for new and existing customers:

Mention “16″ when you sign up for a new XMission service and receive two free months!
(additional line charges may apply)

Remember, this promotion ends quickly, so please contact us as soon as possible!

If you have any special memories of XMission please share them in the comments section of this post.

Our deepest gratitude and many thanks,
XMission staff and families

XM

Register now at http://attend.utosc.com. Registration lasts until October 10, 2009 but you’ll save some money if you register before September 19.

To read about the presenters, keynotes, activities, workshops and more, please visit http://2009.utosc.com

Thanks to the Utah Open Source Conference for extending this discount!

Here are the details:

Ignite Salt Lake 3 (visit their website)
Thursday, August 20, 2009
6:00 – 10:00 pm
Admission is Free

Murray Theater
4959 South State Street
Murray, Utah

In partnership with Utah Free Media, XMission will sponsor a live video broadcast from the event. You can access the broadcast at www.utahfm.org