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Web Hosting News - HOUSTON – The Planet, the global leader in IT hosting, today announced the appointment of Duke S. Skarda as vice president, Information Technology and Software

Development. Reporting to Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Douglas J. Erwin, Skarda will be responsible for the company’s entire span of IT activities, including core IT operations, and software development and implementation for customer-facing solutions.

He will be the resident senior executive in the company’s Dallas offices.

“Duke Skarda brings extensive enterprise-level experience in the telecommunications industry, with deep technology strategy and architecture knowledge,” said Erwin. “His expertise in dealing with customer-facing technologies, including portals, order-entry services, financial systems and business intelligence, provides The Planet with new capabilities as we expand products and services to grow our global footprint.”

Skarda joins The Planet following a 10-year tenure with Level 3 Communications, where he held a series of increasingly responsible positions. Most recently he served as senior vice president for its Content Markets Group, where he led engineering and IT development for its content distribution network platform and IT support systems. Previously, as senior vice president for IT architecture and application development, Skarda led a broad range of programs, including business process management, and order-entry and service assurance development. In his role as vice president of IT architecture, he led the development of a long-range systems roadmap, systems merger and acquisition planning, and the development of the company’s enterprise architecture team. Previous work includes four years with Sprint.

Skarda earned a B.S. in Computer Engineering and Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas at El Paso.

About The Planet
The Planet is the leading provider of On Demand IT Infrastructure solutions, hosting more than 20,000 small- and medium-size businesses and 17.1 million Web sites worldwide. Customers have the power to choose from the broadest range of hosting solutions in the industry, from dedicated servers, Managed Dedicated Servers, Northstar Managed Hosting™ and data center colocation, all backed by 24x7x365 support. With the best choice of servers, software tools and world-class service, backed by state-of-the-art data centers and an enterprise-class network, The Planet turns IT into a powerful competitive advantage that enables customers to grow their businesses. For additional information, visit www.theplanet.com.

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