HostReview.com Web Hosting Interviews

An Interview with
Web Hosting Round Table - Industry Trends 2005,

By Milena Sotirova
Editor DevStart, Inc.

February 09, 2005

Web Hosting Round Table - Industry Trends 2005 with: Guy Yalif, Senior Product Manager Yahoo! Small Business group; David Chao, Vice President of Product Management and Strategic Alliances for Verio's Global Solutions; Thomas Vollrath, CEO North America, 1&1 Internet, Inc.; Ivan Vachovsky, founder and CEO Aplus.Net; Lance Crosby, Chief Operating Officer of The Planet;� Curtis Curtis, VP of Sales & Marketing Superb Internet; Jeremy Sabil, Director of IT GOT Corp.; Bevan Erickson Director, Sales & Marketing WestHost Inc.; Kurt Daniel, Director of Marketing and Business Development for SWsoft;� Jay Adelson, founder and Chief Technology Officer of Equinix, Inc.; Manny Medina, Chairman and CEO of Terremark; Bob Leffler, Director of Hosting Services, Pathlore�

1. Please can you tell us some words about you and your position in the company?
2. Where do you see the Industry growth in this starting year? What are the trends you are expecting to see growing in the next 12 months?
3. Discuss your vision for this year in regard to security. Do you see more challenges in this aspect for the Web Hosting Industry?
4. Where do you see the challenges before your company and how do you see overcoming the obstacles going along with the growth?
5. What will be the major acquisition you can predict for this year?
6. If you can summarize Industry 2005 in one sentence, what it will be?

1. Please can you tell us some words about you and your position in the company?

Guy Yalif:
My name is Guy Yalif, and I am the Senior Product Manager in the Yahoo! Small Business group (http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com), responsible for Yahoo! Web Hosting, Yahoo! Business Mail, and Yahoo! Domains.� Within Yahoo! Small Business - which hosts about one out of eight online stores - my team manages our web hosting product line to deliver an easy-to-use, reliable, scalable product at a great value.� I have spent my career in product management, product marketing, and management consulting.

David Chao:
My name is David Chao and I am the vice president of Product Management and Strategic Alliances for Verio Global Solutions, responsible for the strategic direction of managed hosting products and services, including storage and security services and global alliances.

Ivan Vachovsky:
I am the founder and the CEO of Aplus.Net.

Curtis Curtis:
I have been actively involved in the delivery of Internet services, including web/server hosting since 1993 when I owned and operated one of the first Internet Service Providers. Prior to that, I was hired by various government agencies to study what was then termed the Information Super Highway and the potential it offered. Since then I have run a number of hosting related companies and am presently VP of Sales & Marketing with Superb Internet; however I will be leaving at the end of February to pursue other opportunities.

Jeremy Sabil:
Director of IT at an ASP, GOT Corp. focused on delivering email marketing services to SMB and Enterprise.

Bevan Erickson:
I've been involved with the hosting industry since 1996, working primarily in marketing/sales efforts and product development. I currently head up the Sales and Marketing Department for WestHost Inc. and spend my time working to position and promote our unique services amongst what is now becoming a large sea of competitors.

Kurt Daniel:
My name is Kurt Daniel, Director of Marketing and Business Development for SWsoft, the recognized leader in automation and server virtualization software for hosting service companies, communications providers, and enterprises. SWsoft powers more than 80,000 servers for customers in over 100 countries. Headquartered in Herndon, VA, with offices around the world; SWsoft is a privately held, profitable company, offering comprehensive solutions including: Plesk, Virtuozzo, SiteBuilder, HSPcomplete and PEM.

Thomas Vollrath:
I joined 1&1 in May 2000 to open their subsidiary in the UK, outside London. In 2003 we began examining the U.S. East Coast for a number of possible locations to begin our operation here. I have been CEO of our US location since May 2003 and am responsible for establishing a base and structure for 1&1 Internet Inc.

Jay Adelson:
I'm Jay Adelson, founder and chief technology officer of Equinix, Inc. As the company founder, I'm responsible for ensuring that Equinix continues along the company's vision of being the hub and core of the Internet infrastructure, where the majority of networks interconnect and large content sites and enterprises colocate their infrastructure.

Lance Crosby:
My name is Lance Crosby and I am the Chief Operating Officer of The Planet. I am responsible for the sales, operations, development, managed services, engineering, and networking of all product lines; The Planet Enterprise, Total Control, ServerMatrix, and Insomnia365.

Manny Medina:
Manny Medina has been Chairman and CEO of Terremark since 1980, the year he founded the company and has guided Terremark's growth from a small real estate company into one of South Florida's most successful development firms and then led its transformation into a world renowned operator of integrated Tier-1 Internet exchanges. Terremark is a leading operator of integrated Tier-1 Internet exchanges and best-in-class network services, creating technology marketplaces in strategic global locations. Terremark owns and operates the NAP of the Americas, one of the most important Internet exchange points in the world. In addition, Terremark has an exchange point facility in the Silicon Valley of California known as NAP of the Americas/West, and manages and monitors its "NAP de las Americas-Madrid" in Spain and its "NAP do Brasil" in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The carrier-neutral NAP of the Americas is a state-of-the-art facility that provides exchange point, collocation and managed services to carriers, Internet service providers, network service providers, government entities, multi-national enterprises and other end-users.

Bob Leffler:
I'm the Director of Hosting Services at Pathlore Software Corporation. I'm responsible for the line of business within Pathlore that outsources the hosting of our Learning Management System (LMS), which is a software solution for tracking, delivering and analyzing training over the Internet. We currently host more than 200 LMS databases and 500,000 "seat licenses" for customers ranging from global airlines to insurance companies. Many of these customers have users spread across multiple continents, so our operation is truly global in nature.