Liam Eagle: LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

We’ve been at this for a while now. Just about four years covering the Web
hosting business, and I think we can say without exaggeration that we’ve
become a bit of a fi xture in that time.

Lately, I’ve become more certain with all of the work we do that we are a
part of a community. And I’m happy to say that we care about what our community
thinks of us, and I even fi nd myself feeling, more often than not, that
our community cares about what we think of it.

Our venturing into print is a way of fostering that connection and taking it
further, putting our work directly into your hands.

I’ve been looking forward to working in print since we first started batting
the idea around more than a year ago, taken by curiosity, ambition, and probably
a little vanity. Certainly, one thing about print is that it’s nice to see your
name in print.

But the more relevant, and ultimately the more satisfying, effect of this
project is it opens up new avenues to our coverage with its permanence, allowing
us to tell stories that we might not have otherwise been able to completely
capture.

One such story is our first cover feature, Karen Snider’s piece on the launch
of EV1Servers’s second data center. While data centers stories can be painfully
dull at times, filled with figures and rote repetition of the same few requirements,
Karen managed to fill her take with the feeling of the event, the
excitement and pride in accomplishment that accompany such an undertaking
and its outcome.

Similarly, Dennis McCafferty’s story about Savvis’s acquisition of Cable &
Wireless America’s assets through a bankruptcy auction could have been a
dull counting of beans, a list of SEC fi lings and consequences, but he managed
to access the intensity of what obviously was an intense affair.

Philbert Shih’s piece on Major League Baseball Advanced Media manages
to convey a bit of the keen energy of a man who, I can vouch, really does
care about his baseball. And Wayne Epperson’s security feature, too, invokes a
genuine uneasiness at facing the unavoidable.

What I mean is, this stuff is real. It’s right here in your hands, and we’re there
with it, building that community.