Media Temple

Media Temple, Inc.

Type	Private[1]
Founded	1998[1]
Headquarters	Culver City, California, USA[2]
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Demian Sellfors CEO
Services	Website hosting Application software
Revenue	US$21,000,000 (2008)[3]
Employees	103 (2008)[3]
Subsidiaries	Vantageous, Krop, Virb, Reinvigorate[4]
Website	www.mediatemple.net

Media Temple (sometimes referred to as "(mt)") is a website hosting and software application services company based in Culver City, California, USA.^[1] It is a pioneer of "grid hosting", whereby multiple stand-alone servers are linked to provide additional capacity for clients during periods of peak demand.^[4] Current clients include Qantas, Adobe and Rip Curl.

Services

Media Temple's primary business is website hosting for more than 200,000 websites from 40 countries on Grid-Service.^[4] Its grid hosting system uses a network of servers that work together as a team. Traditional shared hosting like Dreamhost offer unlimited bandwidth, storage, etc. but cap actual CPU usage. A spike in traffic or unusual amounts of bandwidth being used is cause for a traditional hosting facility to shut the site down, as all the resources dedicated for a server will be eaten up by a single website (there may be thousands of websites per server on a traditional host).

Grid computing allows one to shift a process (or in this case a website) to other servers with more resources available. Media Temple's "grid hosting" can better handle spikes in traffic as it can assign more servers to help carry the load. This improvement comes with an additional variable cost of "Grid Computing Units" or GPUs (not to be confused with a graphics processing unit). Customers are able to monitor their GPU usage through their control panel and must pay an extra fee if they go over their monthly allotment. It is a trade off between an unexpectedly higher bill (Media Temple) or from going down (traditional shared hosting) during large spikes in traffic. If one is a content provider, the former is preferred because revenue goes up due to higher spike in traffic, while non-commercial websites may want the latter. The service was launched on October 17, 2006.^[5]

Grid-Service is scheduled to be replaced by a Cluster-Server in 2010^[6] (as opposed to a previous schedule for 2009^{[citation needed]}). The new storage system is being designed to eliminate the main source of service instability that Grid-Service suffered from. As of 2010, Rumours have surfaced reporting that Media Temple may opt to implement the features developed under the Cluster-Server brand in development into their existing Grid-Service product^{[citation needed]}.

Media Temple also provides a dedicated hosting service providing virtual private servers^[7] designed for clients whose websites experience high levels of traffic. According to the company, its clients include Diesel, Adobe, Rip Curl, Mashable, CheeseMind and Qantas^[8].

Incidents

Media Temple have come under criticism for service outages affecting Grid Service customers. Intermittent service availability has been a frequent problem, In one case, periodical downtime occurred between April 29, 2008 and May 28, 2008, until engineers made substantial changes to the system's storage architecture^[9].

Outages affecting Grid Service customers as well as customers of the company's virtual dedicated offerings due to a DDoS attack began in mid-2010, the company has stated^[10] that it is working to implement changes to its network architecture, and to work with its partners to prevent future downtime.

Media Temple Ventures

“	"(mt) Media Temple is a company with entrepreneurial heritage. After 10 years of intense web hosting experience, our firm has gained exposure to the many aspects of Internet business. With ideas of our own, some reaching beyond web hosting, (mt) Ventures is a form of this knowledge and experience applied. In 2007, we began making investments and acquisitions in ideas that were relevant to our brand and service vision. The companies include Krop.com, Vantageous.com, Reinvigorate.net, and our most recent and significant project Virb.com. The overall vision is to provide an integrated platform of Internet services that are powerful, easy-to-use and highly relevant to our creative customers."	”
—(mt) Ventures[11]

References

1. ^ ^{a b c} "About us". Media Temple. http://www.mediatemple.net/company/aboutus/. Retrieved 2008-06-12. 
2. ^ = 200813710 "Media Temple - Inc 5000". Inc.com. http://www.inc.com/inc5000/2008/company-profile.html?id = 200813710. Retrieved 2008-09-12. 
3. ^ ^{a b} = 200910100 Media Temple - Inc 5000
4. ^ ^{a b c} "Ventures". Inc.com. 2010 (2010). http://mt-ventures.com/. Retrieved April 10, 2010 (2010-04-10). 
5. ^ Arrington, Michael (2006-10-17). "Media Temple Crushes Shared Hosting". TechCrunch. http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/10/17/media-temple-crushes-shared-hosting/. Retrieved 2008-06-12. 
6. ^ "Labs - (cs) Cluster-Server". Media Temple. http://www.mediatemple.net/labs/cs/. Retrieved 2009-12-17. 
7. ^ "Nitro". Media Temple. http://www.mediatemple.net/webhosting/nitro/. Retrieved 2008-06-12. 
8. ^ "Why Nitro". Media Temple. http://www.mediatemple.net/webhosting/nitro/whynitro.htm. Retrieved 2008-06-12. 
9. ^ "Grid-Service - intermittent service availability". Media Temple. http://weblog.mediatemple.net/weblog/category/system-incidents/gs-grid-service-intermittent-service-availability/. Retrieved 2008-06-12. 
10. ^ "Issue Tracker #1319 Overview". Media Temple. http://weblog.mediatemple.net/weblog/2010/05/26/1319-overview/. Retrieved 2010-07-04. ^{[dead link]}
11. ^ "About - (mt) Ventures". (mt) Ventures. 2009-02-18. http://mt-ventures.com/about.html. Retrieved 2010-04-14.