On Thursday, managed hosting provider NaviSite announced that it had launched a new line of dedicated hosting products aimed at the small and medium-sized business market, the company's first step into the SMB market, and into dedicated servers. NaviSite says it intends to bring its enterprise-level quality of service to the SMB market, offering an upscale dedicated server product that starts at $199 per month, and comes bundled with monitoring services, and expanded technology features.

On Tuesday, Aplus.Net announced that it had named Phillip Spencer its chief executive officer. He will succeed Gabriel Murphy, who will continue on as president, and will take over as the company's chief strategy officer. Murphy helped orchestrate the acquisition of Aplus.Net in 2007, at which point he took over as CEO. Spencer previously was CEO of telco Everest Connections.

In a polarizing political move this week, the state of Kentucky sought to take control of 141 domain names associated with online gambling, at the behest of the state's pro-gambling governor, Steve Beshear, who considers online betting businesses to be ?leeches? on the community. A Kentucky judge ordered the names transferred to the state last week, but a hearing this week was to determine wither the state can shut down the sites.

On Monday, Microsoft reported that its $550 million San Antonio data center facility had gone online. The 470,000 square foot site is reportedly the company's most advanced data center, and will serve the company's Web-based application hosting backbone. The data center project was first announced in January of 2007, and was designed to provide support for the Windows Live online services.

Next to the mixed bag that made up the bulk of this week's big news, the small set of acquisitions seems almost like a movement, as three separate deals of varying size went down this week.

In what was by far the largest of those acquisitions, security firm McAfee announced that it had acquired Secure Computing, paying $5.75 cash per common share, for a total of $413 million. McAfee, which acquired Reconnex in August, says the new deal will use Secure Computing's network security product portfolio to help strengthen its leadership position in security risk management.

On Tuesday, we reported that US-based hosting provider Rebel Networks had acquired small London-based host Rarehost.com, adding to its local customer base and hosting infrastructure. Rebel Networks says Rarehosts will be re-branded as rebelnetworks.co.uk, and its data center space will be used to set up a UK presence for Rebel Networks.

Also on Tuesday, streaming content provider Abacast announcd that it had acquired peer-assisted content delivery solution provider Tukati, to create a new hybrid CDN product designed to offer live and on-demand media distribution. The combined product was previously offered through a partnership between the companies, but the providers say the deal will strengthen that partnership.

In terms of immediate follow-up the one to watch this will be the domain hearing in Kentucky. With a hearing scheduled to take place this week, we'll be posting some follow-up today.