HostReview.com Web Hosting Interviews

An Interview with
Kevin Soendker, Chief Operating Officer, InetServices, LLC

August 29, 2007

Mr. Soendker, what are your responsibilities at InetServices?

As Chief Operating Officer, I am responsible for all product and service offerings with my primary focus on finding ways to turn new technology into powerful competitive advantages that enable our customers to successfully grow their businesses.

Could you tell more about InetServices' history and its development through the years?

InetServices was founded in 1997 as a web design company for small to mid-size businesses. We developed one of the first web-based template systems called SiteManager which allowed our customers to make changes to their websites without knowing any HTML programming. SiteManager was a huge success so in 2001 we changed from being a web design company to a Shared Hosting company.

In 2003, we acquired a couple of shared hosting companies and in the process we found that there was a huge demand for providing dedicated servers for other shared hosting companies and small businesses. Within 12 months we saw an amazing 400% increase in sales so we decided to discontinue offering shared hosting and focus all our attention and resources on dedicated and managed hosting.

Please tell us about your company's products. Are you planning to launch new products in the near future and what are they?

Our products are divided in three general categories: Dedicated Servers, Managed Servers, and Managed Colocation. All of our products and services are focus around high-performance and availability to ensure that our customers' mission-critical applications are always up and running.  Our impressive server line-up consists completely of multi-core, multi-processor servers with RAID 1/5/10 as a standard feature.  InetServices offers the largest multi-core processor selection in the industry which enables our customer’s greater flexibility and budget control.

Obviously I am constantly looking to further expand our products and services. While our Marketing department doesn't want me to say too much, I can say that we are getting ready to launch a Content Delivery Network (CDN) product as well as a Streaming Media offering.

Why are the small and mid-sized businesses the main focus of your company?

That’s a great question. First, we found it very difficult for small and mid-sized companies to obtain high-performance, high-availability solutions without having the financial budget of a Fortune 500 company.  While larger hosting providers service the GM’s and Pfizers of the world, they simply can’t offer the same services to a small business without charging for their massive overhead.

Second, we saw this as being the largest market segment for growth in the hosting industry. Starting back in 2004, the Small Business Administration (SBA) began a push for all small businesses to have an online web presence. That’s about 20 million small businesses in the US alone. For these reasons, we decided to keep our focus on small to mid-sized businesses.

How is your company different from the other companies in the industry?

It seems that most our competitors seem to be focusing their attention on selling the cheapest server out there. We don’t want to be a commodity like everyone else so we decided to focus on a vertical that has a need for high-performance, high-availability Enterprise class solutions but at an affordable price.

Furthermore, we found that with most our competitors it is very difficult to get online pricing for complex configurations such as server load balancing, direct attached storage, SQL clustering and multiple servers.  Therefore, we wanted to be the first hosting providers to make it easy for someone to get a price quote instantly from our website, whether it is a single server or the most complex configuration. 

Tell us more about InetServices' division DedicatedServerCity? What is specific about its services?

While InetServices has focused on superior customer support we found that there was still a huge market that wanted self-managed servers. Furthermore, we found that most of these companies had a need for a month-to-month commitment. So in order not to affect the level of service or support of InetServices, we created a separate division of the company that would focus on the self-managed market.

While DedicatedServerCity uses InetServices' facilities and network, it is run as a completely separate entity. Their success this year has been amazing and we have filled yet another hole in the dedicated server market.

How do you see the web hosting industry in two or five, or ten years? Do you think that managed dedicated servers will be the ultimate choice of everyone who wants to have a flawlessly running website?

The hosting industry will only continue to grow over the next several years. However, the growth will not just come from businesses getting a web presence, but from businesses moving their entire infrastructure to the web. We have seen a large increase in businesses moving their in-house servers to an outsourced managed provider. We attribute this shift for two reasons, 1) the need to reduce in-house staff in order to maintain their server, and 2) the need for higher availability services, such as power and Internet.

While we still see huge market for self-managed servers over the next several years, we predict the need for managed dedicated servers will be much greater than that of self-managed servers.

Could you please tell us what it is like to work at InetServices? How big is your company and do you offer any specials to your employees?

One of our initial goals at InetServices was to create a friendly, casual work environment that focuses on customer care. Also being in a highly technical industry that no one has all the answers, we created an environment that allows our employees to constantly learn new technologies as well as empower them to get whatever they need in order to help our customers. We believe if our employees are confident and happy, they will give 110% at their job.

Since InetServices is a privately held company there is certain information I am not at liberty to discuss. However, as far as our employee specials, we offer them the ability to purchase any product from us at cost. Because of our huge discount with Dell our employees purchased a lot of laptops, desktops, and large monitors for their personal use.

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