Announced Monday, LEAP ver 1.2 beta is the world's first and only webtop interface that allows users complete management access to their dedicated servers. This solution has been in development by SingleHop for more than a year, headed by Luke Tworek.

"We designed LEAP to allow clients to manage servers through our interface, just as they can manipulate icons and windows on their desktop, which represents a drastic change from our competitor's portals," Tworek said.

SingleHop VP and co-founder Dan Ushman said that a webtop application is a smater way to manage dedicated servers and the LEAP is the only such solution to keep up with the times in an era defined by Web 2.0 and increased connectivity.

"The most noticeable improvement between LEAP and competing systems is its Webtop, which brings a more modern look and feel to web-based server administration," Ushman said. "For example, a user could visually choose a server from their virtual cabinet, view its bandwidth usage and status, or jump directly into an SSH session to work on it and then with the click of a button reboot the machine -- never leaving a browser, never refreshing a page or waiting for the page to load and never having to download anything, such as a remote desktop client, or SSH."

In early June, SingleHop responded to hosting price outcry when it started offering a lifetime price cap for clients who switched to its services in the month of June as many managed hosting providers hiked prices becasue of energy costs.

One week earlier, Layered Technologies announced it would be raising dedicated server fees for many older clients beginning in July.