HOUSTON--The Planet, the global leader in IT hosting, today announced its participation in South by Southwest SXSW Interactive, scheduled for March 13-15, 2010, at the Austin Convention Center. The Planet will be at booth 303-305, showcasing its hosting solutions, Partner Plus program and project Sand Castle, which offers free servers to Web developers. The Planet will also be accepting applications on-site for its Microsoft WebsiteSpark program, with a year of free hosting given to a winning applicant.

“SXSW Interactive consistently draws some of the brightest minds in social media and technology spheres to Austin, including emerging startups, Web designers and developers”

“SXSW Interactive consistently draws some of the brightest minds in social media and technology spheres to Austin, including emerging startups, Web designers and developers,” said Duke Skarda, The Planet’s vice president of information technology and software development. “For these companies, a reliable platform for hosting their business or applications is critical, and customers tell us they choose The Planet based on the quality of our network, data centers and customer support. We’re looking forward to discussing our hosting capabilities, partner programs, the Sand Castle project and Microsoft WebsiteSpark with show attendees.”

The Planet is title sponsor of a Tumblr www.tumblr.com event at SXSW, to be held Saturday, March 13, at 6:30 p.m. at Emo’s Austin. Participating companies include SoundCloud http://soundcloud.com/ and Kickstarter www.kickstarter.com/.

The company is also a gold sponsor of Houston at SXSW, an event showcasing Houston-based technology companies, filmmakers and musicians. The event will be held Monday, March 15, at 7:00 p.m. at Hudson on Fifth in Austin.

For more information on The Planet at SXSW, visit http://www.theplanet.com/events. To learn more about The Planet programs, including Partner Plus, Sand Castle and WebsiteSpark, visit http://www.theplanet.com.

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 18.5 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 http://www.theplanet.com.