Oceanhost sells off successful VPS division to Openbyte

Oceanhost, a leading Web hosting and virtual private server (VPS) provider based in Durban, recently announced it had successfully negotiated the sale of its VPS division to Openbyte, an open source and virtualisation company based in Johannesburg. As of 1 November, Openbyte will be taking over full control of Oceanhost's VPS infrastructure, billing and support for all unmanaged VPS clients (Linux and Windows).

A VPS hosting environment imitates a dedicated server within a shared hosting environment. Openbyte has been specialising in virtualisation for many years and is a well-respected leader in this industry. Its virtual servers run off high-end Dell servers with RAID10 disk configuration for excellent I/O performance. In addition to this, its physical servers are equipped with redundant power supplies and hot-swappable SAS disks connected to hardware RAID with battery backup.

Martin Bester, technical manager at Oceanhost, said: "This move will take Oceanhost's virtual server offering to a new level for its clients by offering cutting-edge, open source solutions in a hosted environment. Jason Groves, owner of Openbyte, also commented on the move, saying: "This complements our existing service offering in terms of infrastructure which utilises open source products, as well as new solutions we plan to bring into the market."

Groves continued: "We are very excited to be able to offer open source, as well as enterprise open source (EOS) licensing models to the corporate customer who requires supported products in a virtual environment." He promised: "We will remain the cheapest South African VPS hosting provider without compromising on quality and uptime, leaving the same pricing model that Oceanhost currently offers."

Openbyte has very strict VPS quantity limits in place for each physical server. This ensures a stable environment and high performance for each virtual server, without compromising on the quality of the server speeds. Bester added: "Our clients can expect some great new offerings from Openbyte to complement their existing VPS services."

After selling off its successful VPS service, Oceanhost will continue to focus on its core services; namely, providing domain registration and Web hosting services.

Notes to editors

1. Oceanhost has been providing domain registration and Web hosting services in South Africa since 2007.
2. Openbyte offers stable open source ICT solutions and has been in the industry for over 10 years.