Recently, we have been researching a new hosting partner. Not that there is anything wrong with our current hosting arrangements, but we are looking to reduce environmental impact. The web industry is second only to the airline industry in terms of energy consumption. More than just the number of computers it takes to make all this happen, the air conditioning to keep them all cool has a massive environmental impact.
For this reason, some time ago, I started to look for a suitable hosting partner in Iceland. The main reasons being that Iceland has the world's most advanced hydro-electric generation programme, and secondly, being a cold country, air conditioning is less energy hungry than in other parts of the world. To put it simply, you can simply duct in some cold air rather than refrigerating the air that you have inside.
I believe that we have now found a suitable partner to host all our customer sites. Having transferred a couple of test sites over the last few weeks, our first Icelandic server is now up and running. The tests should be complete by the end of January and with all being well, we will start to transfer customer sites soon after that. You shouldn't notice any disruption or loss of service and won't have to change anything as domains, user names and passwords will all be preserved. There will be options to change email settings to take advantage of newer technologies, but if you are happy with things the way they are, if it ain't bust, don't fix it, as the old saying goes.