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Web Hosting Talk - HOUSTON – The Planet, the global leader in IT hosting, today announced its participation at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference from July 13-16 at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans. The Planet is a bronze-level conference sponsor and will showcase its hosting partner and IT infrastructure solutions at booth 436. The company will also have a second point of presence at the Microsoft Software-plus-Services Pavilion, booth 1009.

Conference attendees who stop by The Planet booth can enter to win one of two grand prizes. The first-place winner receives six months of free service on a Dell PowerEdge R710 server, complete with two 2.4 GHz Intel Nehalem processors and 6GB of RAM (a $2,940 value). The second-place prize is a free Storage Cloud account for six months, which includes 100GB of cloud storage and 250GB of bandwidth (a $465 value).

The Planet will also host the IT Effectiveness Index at its booth, an online survey that lets small- and medium-size business owners see in real time how their IT system performance compares to industry peers. Microsoft is one of nine survey sponsors.

“As a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, we invite partners, customers and prospects to stop by either of The Planet’s locations to learn how they can leverage our hosting partner solutions and IT infrastructure to help their businesses grow,” said Steve Kahan, The Planet’s vice president of marketing and product management.

The Worldwide Partner Conference provides Microsoft’s partner community with access to key marketing and business strategies, leadership, and information regarding specific customer solutions designed to help partners succeed. Along with informative learning opportunities covering sales, marketing, services and technology, the Worldwide Partner Conference is an ideal setting for partners to garner valuable knowledge from their peers and from Microsoft.

For more information or to schedule an onsite meeting with a member of The Planet team, visit www.theplanet.com/WPC-2009.

About the ITEI
The IT Effectiveness Index is the first-ever benchmarking tool that measures the technology effectiveness of small- and medium-sized businesses throughout the world: Spearheaded by companies with a core interest in the SMB market, the survey provides insight and counsel for improving business processes and IT effectiveness. Members of the consortium include the following companies: HostSearch; Kennesaw State University; Microsoft; Nine Lives Media; The Planet; SmallBizTechnology.com; Small Business Trends; SMB Nation and Yankee Group.

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 17.8 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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