• We’ve added several new clients (including a well known member of the Fortune 1000!)
• We’ve added 101 new dedicated servers and over 20 cloud computing instances
• We’ve opened an office in Boston
• We’ve earned our PCI Level 1 MSP Certification
• We’ve hired several employees, a large number of contractors, and even picked up an intern!
• We’ve gone from 3 data centers in the USA to 13 data centers and 16 points-of-presence including several international facilities
• While our competitors have raised prices, we’ve managed to keep prices the same or actually reduce them in many places.  All this while providing newer more powerful hardware across the board
• We’ve introduced a new Oracle ATG Commerce Standard Hosting Package which provides excellent performance, stability, and security, for a very affordable package price
• Served well over 200 TB of content
• Partnered with JBoss/Redhat, Oracle, Akamai, Keynote, Knowledge Path, and many other industry leaders in order to provide the absolute best hosting, support, and related services
• More more!

image from Purpleslog

I’m happy to announce that Spark::red ATG Hosting has received our PCI DSS 1.2 Level 1 Certification as an eCommerce MSP.  We have been Level 2 certified for a while, but completing our Level 1 certification with TrustWave as our third-party auditor is a huge milestone for us.

PCI DSS is the Payment Card Industry’s Data Security Standard.  It is a set of requirements and guidelines designed to ensure merchants who handle or process credit cards, do so securely.  There are different levels based on transaction volume and Level 1 is the highest level, required for the largest volume merchants.  Level 1 is also the most difficult certification to gain, requiring the strictest security protections, the strongest policies, and a very in depth audit by a certified auditing company, such as TrustWave.  Our certification process has taken many months and the completion of our Level 1 Report of Compliance (RoC) is a testament to our dedication to providing the highest level of secure environments to our clients and safeguarding their systems and information, as well as the information of all our clients’ customers.

At Spark::red we focus strongly on Security and Performance beyond the core ATG hosting services.  We handle more PCI DSS requirements than any other ATG Hosting provider out there.  If you are looking for an ATG Hosting provider to help manage your ATG web application, we can offer PCI Level 1 compliant hosting and handle many of your security needs.

During the golf tournament itself we were glad to be joined by two founding partners from Knowledge Path Solutions. Knowledge Path Solutions is an extremely talented systems integrator with a speciality in ATG.  Thankfully both were much better at golf than I am.  The weather was perfect, the course was beautiful, and it was a very pleasant day.  It’s not often you can mix business, pleasure, and support a good cause.

We’re proud to be supporting the community and hopefully we will see some familiar faces at next year’s fundraiser golf tournament!

In this newsletter we talk about the importance of improving your site performance, especially now that Google is using site performance as a search result ranking factor. We talk about Why, and provide several helpful links to help with How. I’d be remiss if I didn’t plug the fantastic ATG Hosting that Spark::red can provide, including extensive performance tuning at every level, web, app and database, using knowledge gained from 12 years of ATG experience.

We also reveal our PCI Compliant ATG Encryption Module which is the first PCI complaint credit card encryption option for the ATG eCommerce Platform. It handles strong encryption, key management, importing plain text and encrypted data, periodic re-keying/re-encryption, and more. It’s the fastest and most affordable path to being able to pass a PCI audit for your ATG eCommerce application. Contact us for more info: sales@sparkred.com.

You can see the whole newsletter here: Spark::red ATG Newsletter #1, and if you haven’t already, I recommend signing up so you don’t miss the next one: Sign Up for the Sparkred ATG Newsletter!

photo by The World Wants a Real Deal

Over at Spark::red ATG Hosting we’ve decided to launch a monthly newsletter. Once a month we’ll send out an e-mail with some very useful ATG content, technical tips and source code, business tricks and advice on leveraging ATG products to increase sales. We’ll talk about PCI compliance and how to reduce cart abandonment.

We won’t send more than one e-mail a month, we won’t spam you, bug you, bother you, or waste your time. Each mailing will be as packed full of genuinely useful information as possible.

Sign up for the world’s best ATG Technology and Business Newsletter!

Spark::red is pleased to offer a hosting package designed specifically for ATG MC4 customers. By providing an affordable solution tailored to the licenses and needs of the MC4 customer, and by delivering all of the required Oracle, JBoss, and RedHat licenses and support agreements, this package is the fastest way to launch an ATG Commerce application.

Spark::red is the only hosting provider with a package designed for ATG MC Edition customers. This should make it much easier for mid-market customers to get started with ATG’s eCommerce software.

Spark::red, the best ATG Hosting provider around, is offering reduced pricing on ATG Hosting and is committed to being aggressively competitive on price in order to help clients save money during the current economic slump.

Check out the ATG Hosting Economic Stimulus Special Offer for more information on how you can save hundreds of thousands of dollars, and still get the highest quality managed ATG hosting around.

It is a free, open, community portal for everyone who works with ATG software, developers, architects, project managers, business users, everyone. The site has a wiki for posting articles, your own pages and blog entries, how-tos, and more. There is also a number of forums for discussion and asking questions. We also offer free Subversion code hosting, and Jira issue tracking for open source ATG related projects and code development.

Please check it out, register, and tell us what we can add to make it more useful.

If you, or anyone you know, uses ATG, you owe it to yourself to check Spark::red out.

Here is the press release:

In PDF Form

In Text Form:

Spark::red Expands ATG Hosting Offering

SEATTLE, WA- December 17, 2007 – Spark::red LLC announced today that it will launch general availability of their ATG-specialized hosting solutions.

Spark::red has been providing hosting and technology services to an exclusive group of clients, including a Fortune-500 company.

“We made certain that we could respond to our clients’ individual needs with the personal attention and quality that allows us to distinguish ourselves,” said Russell Moore, spokesperson for Spark::red. “We have proven our capability, and are ready to expand our client base. ATG customers now have a premier hosting option, one that takes pride in delivery to the customer above all else.”

About Spark::red LLC
Spark::red, a managed ATG hosting provider, focuses on providing a specialized hosting solution for ATG applications. The staff of experienced ATG architects allows Spark::red to deliver production environments in days, instead of weeks or months.
With competitive pricing, a Tier 4 data center, and every staff member boasting over eight years of experience working with some of the largest ATG installations in the world, launching a new site or migrating an existing application will be quick, secure and painless. With Spark::red you will enjoy expert support, the fastest servers, and peace of mind. They invite you to contact them and discover the superiority of their ATG-specific hosting solution.

https://www.sparkred.com

Contacts:
Russell Moore
Spark::red LLC
russell@sparkred.com

Sales Inquiries
sales@sparkred.com