On Monday, 1&1 announced that it had opened a new data center in Lenexa, Kansas. The 55,000 square-foot data center includes five separate server rooms with a total capacity for 40,000 servers. The facility is the first US data center opened by the company, which launched a US operation several years ago.

To coincide with the data center launch, the UK-based Fasthosts announced the launch of its reseller-focused hosting offerings in the US. To promote the launch, the company is offering resellers a one-year free unlimited hosting package, providing them the tools to try offering hosting with no risk. After the end of the trial, the company's unlimited reseller package will cost $50 per month. The service will be hosted at the new Lenexa data center.

Along with the major data center launch event, 1&1 issued several somewhat less grand announcements this week.

On Tuesday, the company reported that it had begun offering the 1&1 MailXchange product, based on Open-Xchange's email and collaboration platform, to customers in the UK. The company first launched MailXchange in Germany in early 2007, and extended the product into the US and France in May of 2007. The product will be available to UK customers starting at £6.99 per month, plus VAT.

And on Wednesday, the company announced that it would be purchasing renewable energy certificates from the Bonneville Environmental Foundation in an effort to offset emissions of carbon dioxide created in producing power for the new Lenexa facility. 1&1 says it will buy enough certificates to match 100 percent of the energy used at the data center.

Along with a handful of news stories from 1&1, this week saw several announcements of acquisitions related to the hosting business.

On Wednesday, Hewlett-Packard announced that it had signed an agreement to acquire storage virtualization developer LeftHand Networks for $360 million in cash. Just a month ago, HP made the significantly more pricey acquisition of EDS for $13.9 billion. The company says the acquisition will add to its repertoire of virtualization solutions.

Also on Wednesday, hosting provider Namecheap announced that it had acquired PeopleHost, though it didn't publicize the financial elements of the deal. PeopleHost, launched in 1999, manages more than 2,000 domains, according to Namecheap. The move is part of Namecheap's long-term growth hosting growth strategy, says the company.

And on Thursday, application hosting and CDN provider GeoVario announced that it had acquired CDglobal, another CDN provider. The company says CDglobal will be incorporated into the GeoVario brand, and its assets used as part of the company's "geo diverse" hosting.

While few of this week's news stories leave any urgent lingering question, the most interesting ongoing story will likely be the Fasthosts launch in the US, as the company reports on how successful its free offering is in attracting new users.