Plesk™, Inc., a leader in automated Web hosting software, today announced the general availability of Plesk Server Administrator™ Version 2.5. Plesk Server Administrator (PSA) is an award-winning, Web-based software solution that automates and simplifies the administration of UNIX and Linux Web servers. PSA was the industry's first software solution to provide self-management capability to non-technical domain users. PSA is currently used to manage over 400,000 domains for hosting companies in over 80 countries worldwide. Through PSA, Web hosters grow revenues, reduce costs, and improve customer retention.

Multi-Language Support
For the first time, PSA 2.5 addresses the global nature of web hosting by providing true multilingual capability in a hosting automation product. With one copy of PSA, web hosters will be able to simultaneously support users in multiple languages, including Asian languages that require double-byte encoding. This provides a new level of flexibility for hosting companies who want to support a diverse customer base.

"The immediate, yet global, nature of the internet has created very diverse users, many of whom would prefer to work in their own language" said George Pappas, president and CEO of Plesk. "Our hosting partners told us that they needed to support multiple languages without the expense or confusion of cumbersome, single-language licensing schemes. PSA 2.5's multi-lingual capability is a direct response to that need."

Cobalt Migration Capability
PSA 2.5 addresses another unmet need expressed by hosters, the ability to migrate from cobalt appliances to more open and cost-effective computing environments running PSA. In the past, hosters wishing to convert from a Cobalt hosting platform had to manually move all customer configuration and technical parameters to a new machine. Plesk now offers PSA with utilities and professional services that can accomplish this migration in a fraction of the time. The ability to quickly migrate to an open computing platform helps hosting companies better manage their capital assets and significantly lowers their hardware operating costs.

Additonal Plesk Server Administrator 2.5 Features
New backup and restore utilities. Users can now automatically back up all data and users on a PSA server from one operating system and restore that same server to a different operating system or new version of PSA. Other appliance and hosting automation vendors force customers to upgrade through expensive manual processes or offer no upgrade path at all.

New support for Microsoft Front Page 2002

Creation Utilities

Mail Utilities

Platforms and System Requirements
PSA runs on FreeBSD 4.2, 4.3, and 4.4; Red Hat Linux 7.1 and 7.2 platforms. System requirements include a Pentium® 166 or better processor with 32MB of RAM, and a minimum of 80MB of disk space for installation on "clean servers." PSA supports Netscape 4.x or Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.x or later.