HostReview.com Web Hosting Interviews

An Interview with
Web Hosting Roundtable - Industry Trends 2005: Guy Yalif, David Chao,Thomas Vollrath, Ivan Vachovsky, Lance Crosby, Curtis Curtis, Jeremy Sabil, Bevan Erickson, Kurt Daniel, Jay Adelson, Manny Medina, and Bob Leffler,

By Milena Sotirova
Editor DevStart, Inc.

February 09, 2005

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?

4. Where do you see the challenges before your company and how do you see overcoming the obstacles going along with the growth?

Guy Yalif:
For the Yahoo! Small Business group, we see opportunities to continue focusing on what customers really need... including easy-to-use products, strong customer support, and a full product line at competitive and reasonable prices for small businesses.� With hundreds of thousands of paid hosting customers, we continue to listen to and solicit feedback from our customers regularly to help ensure that we're continually making our products easier to use and matching our new services to customers' evolving needs.

David Chao:
The past year has seen Verio continue to transform and innovate, as we refocused our business around our core capabilities of global hosting, managed service and higher value Internet access and network solutions for businesses. We've streamlined operations and gained greater efficiencies and focus, with the result that today, Verio is a cohesive and dynamic organization that is focused, more than ever, on excellence in the delivery of superior services and products to our clients. With the backing of NTT Communications and our phenomenal team of committed employees and executives, 2005 will focus on two key areas - differentiating Verio from our competitors by leveraging our economies of scale, high volume and lower cost of delivery and increased investment in R&D to deliver new and improved products and services that provide unique and compelling value to our customers.

Ivan Vachovsky:
Aplus.Net has been in the web hosting business long enough to know and understand the challenges. We are prepared and we believe that 2005 will be a very successful year for Aplus.Net.

Curtis Curtis:
Like many of the early hosting companies, legacy issues always create the biggest obstacles. Fortunately we have made some strategic changes in the direction of the company, which should bode well for the future. From my perspective, the Company is well poised for the coming year - all that is needed now is the execution. Superb has an excellent management team and I am confident that they will execute as planned..

Jeremy Sabil:
Expanding even scalable infrastructures will be required to accommodate growth. There will be a requirement to mentor/grow user base into more complex offerings.

Bevan Erickson:
One of our biggest challenges this coming year will be in maintaining consistent high levels of service and support through this growth phase of our history. As we launch new products and services, we will need to work hard to maintain a knowledgeable staff, educate our existing client base, and inform the market without diluting or confusing our core marketing message.

Kurt Daniel:
SWsoft is dealing with a number of challenges directly related to our growth and future goals. We increased our revenue in 2004 by 150% and expect to very similar growth in 2005. Recruiting and hiring a large number of highly talented employees will be an ongoing issue that we'll need to work hard to address. Our product roadmaps and integration between our products are quite ambitious but will be delivered on as we have in the past.

Thomas Vollrath:
As we are growing rapidly it is essential to maintain the focus on our customers and to continue to deliver first class applications and support.

Jay Adelson:
Equinix is growing at a rate much faster than the industry at large. Several external analysts point to Equinix becoming the market leader in managed collocation by 2006. To maintain a leadership role, Equinix will need to secure new facilities that meet Equinix's high-performance requirements. Considering reports such as APC's which show that more than 90% of the data center space built today cannot meet the power requirements of the modern enterprise, finding appropriate locations will be difficult and the improvements required will be complicated.

With that being said, Equinix has already acquired three data centers that fit this profile and shown a strong level of expertise in this area.

Lance Crosby:
As one of the fastest growing hosting companies in the world, our greatest challenges are managing the growth while maintaining high customer satisfaction. Great focus has been put on innovative technologies and continuing to lead the industry with first to market products for our existing and new customers. Our ferocious appetite for datacenter space has also created obstacles in managing the growth as we look for space to take us beyond 2006.

Manny Medina:
Challenges would include improving internet access and communication flow throughout Latin America. To overcome this obstacle Terremark is investing in IT education in Miami.

Bob Leffler:
Growth causes pain in a number of quarters, but it's always surmountable with good execution and planning. Pathlore has always taken a conservative approach to growing the hosting part of its business. We want to be sure that any investments in infrastructure or staffing can be supported profitably within our revenue stream. We don't want to get ahead of the curve and create unnecessary debt just for the sake of growth. Adherence to this philosophy is what's kept Pathlore the only profitable company among its pure-play LMS competitors. Growth also means that processes and infrastructure must be scalable. You may have to change the way you are performing tasks to accommodate new demands on resources, too. But we're always looking for (and finding) innovative solutions to minimize the impact of increased workload on our staff.