This week, Internet marketing firm eBridge Marketing Solutions (ebridgemarketingsolutions.com) and backup technology company R1Soft (r1soft.com) each reported their involvement with a hosting industry event.

eBridge said on Wednesday that it will be both an exhibitor and a participant in a marketing panel at HostingCon 2008.

The company says it has been a sponsor at each of the last three shows, and will be an exhibitor for the first time at this year's event. HostingCon is scheduled for July 28 to 30 at Navy Pier in Chicago.

"We're a long-time supporter of HostingCon," says eBridge president Hartland Ross, in the company's press release. "We like it because it is cross-platform and because it emphasizes business development, as well as hosting technologies. When clients ask us which shows to exhibit at, we always refer them to HostingCon. This year we felt it was time to take our own advice and exhibit there, too."

TheWHIR will be on hand with our whole team covering HostingCon 2008, and will once again be sponsoring the networking lounge in the exhibit hall tradeshow floor.

R1Soft said Wednesday that it would be a Silver Sponsor of LT Pact, the Layered Technologies partner event taking place this week in Las Vegas. The company plans to use the event to promote its continuous data protection products.

On Friday at 3:15 p.m., the company will host a session titled "The Future of Server Backup: near-Continuous Data Protection." The press release says the session will provide "an overview of backup techniques for Linux servers." And the title seems to suggest R1Soft might sneak in a bit of a sales pitch.

LT Pact began Wednesday evening, and sessions kicked off early Thursday.

The WHIR is on hand and reporting from the event. Updates will be available through our blogs (thewhir.com/blogs/whir-tv/), and we will be posting video content from the event on WHIRtv (whirtv.com).