Archive for: August, 2009

Join us for One Web Day

one web One Web Day 2009 is Tuesday, September 22, 2009. It’s a celebration of all things Internet and how it unites individuals and communities. This year’s theme is “One Web. For All.” At Tucows and OpenSRS, we believe that the Internet is the greatest agent for positive change the world has ever seen. In fact, that statement is the first of our four core values.

Every day we are inspired by the great examples of community and creativity online. Last year we got involved with a series of One Web Day blog posts and a small company celebration.

One Web Day 2009 in Toronto and in your city!

We are gearing up to announce our plans for One Web Day ’09 including collaborating with our local Toronto One Web Day project. We’d love to hear how you are promoting One Web Day in your organization or community. If you are just getting started, we encourage you to watch the video below, plan an event in your company or consider taking part in an event in your area. Check out the One Web Day site for resources and learn more about activities in various cities around the world.

Here’s a 5 minute video about why One Web Day is important:

More ways to get involved:

become a fan on Facebook
follow @OWD on Twitter
Subscribe to the One Web Day blog

We’ll keep you posted in the coming weeks as we celebrate the power of the Internet.

The Registries: .cc

Editor’s note: OpenSRS offers 25 different top-level domains (TLDs) for our resellers. This is the 11th post in a series intended to share information about the wide range of TLDs and to introduce you to some of the available resources that the various Registries provide.

The .cc domain, from the registry provider VeriSign, is the top-level domain (TLD) for the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. Like some other ccTLDs, you can capitalize on it being short, easy to say and diverse. While it is commonly linked to commercial Web sites, there have been other unique uses. In 2006, there was an unusual increase in .cc registrations originating from China. It was discovered that online e-commerce sites in that region were using .cc to mean “Chinese company” and it was creating an unexpected groundswell.

Here are some of the great ways to use this flexible ccTLD:

verisign.cc.table

Quick Facts:

VeriSign is the registry provider.
It is a ccTLD for Cocos (Keeling) Islands.
Started in 1997.
There are no regional location restrictions for purchasing.

Available Resources

The OpenSRS Commitment to Europe

The domains business in Europe is booming! Did you know that OpenSRS has nearly 2,500 Resellers in a total of 40 European countries? The European market is one of the fastest-growing areas we service, and we want to make sure our European Resellers know we’re there for you.

OpenSRS in Europe

Over the nine months, our Newcastle, UK office has grown from just one person to more than five! Marco Zuilani, Luigi Lagonigro, and Ben Reuss have been traveling and meeting customers all over Europe.

Parallels EMEA Partner Roadshow

In the next couple of weeks, we may be near you for the Parallels EMEA Roadshow. Plan to attend a Roadshow event in a city near you – it’ll be well worth it and the event is free.

Meet our EMEA team:

Marco Zuliani, Sales Director

Marco was born in Germany to Italian parents. Since his father was a foreign service officer, he grew up all over the world, including stops in Canada and Australia. After taking higher education in the US, he spent seven years with Intel selling enterprise software in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Marco happily joined OpenSRS in 2008 and is the force behind further building our European base.

Marco and Luigi Married, with one son and one daughter, Marco likes to spend time with his family and with his two Labrador retrievers. His other hobbies include rugby, squash, tennis, surfing (yes, in England!), and messing with his cars and motorcycles.

Luigi Lagonigro, Account Manager

Luigi is originally from the province of Puglia in the southeast of Italy. After college Luigi moved to the UK to work in technical support for Intel. With more IT education, he developed his technical career with various roles across companies in Germany, Switzerland and Holland. Luigi joined OpenSRS in 2008.

Luigi’s hobby is learning new languages. In addition to being fluent in Italian and English, Luigi speaks French and Spanish. He also plays tennis and football, and is an avid swimmer. Being Italian also means Luigi is a connoisseur of good food and fine wine, and he is always on the lookout for great places to eat and drink when he travels.

Ben Reuss, Business Development Manager
Ben
Ben is an enthusiastic member of our European team and is very focused on helping OpenSRS Resellers grow their business. After obtaining his education in journalism, Ben worked in a number of companies before joining us in early 2009. He is thriving in his role as Business Development Manager, turning a number of prospects into happy clients.

Being from north-east England, Ben is an avid Newcastle United Fan. His interests also range from traveling, hiking in the mountains and countryside, attending music festivals and writing film and music reviews.

We also have two EMEA Technical Support staff: Feisal Patel and Alastair Hardwick.

Meet Us at the Parallels EMEA Partner Roadshow

Marco, Luigi and Ben will be attending a number of the Parallels events in the coming weeks. They will be joined by LeQuan Truong and Mou Mukherjee of our Marketing team, Adam Eisner (Director, Domain Services), Liam Philley (Director, Email Services) and Dave Woroch, (Executive Vice President, Sales and Support).

Check here for more details about the events and if you attend one of the Roadshow events, be sure to stop by our booth to say hi!

(Ed note: If you are making a map, use the Google Charts API. Great stuff.)

.EU Growth Continues, Highlighting Continued Opportunities in ccTLDs

.EU logo EurID, the .EU (European Union) Registry operator, just reported a great July for new registrations with a total of 66,129 new .EU domains registered. That’s up 15% from July 2008 and is a 12-month high for the Registry.

EURid also reported strong a strong renewal rate of 81%, higher than the industry norm and a good indication that buyers are using and holding on to .EU domains. For more on .EU, you should take a look at Heather’s .EU profile in the “Registries” series.

ccTLDs Looking Strong

It’s not just .EU, either. We’re continuing to see some nice growth amongst ccTLDs (Country-code Top-Level Domains) and while many Resellers are already selling ccTLDs in addition to COM/NET/ORG, some are not. There’s lots of opportunity here for sales, either for individuals or business looking to identify with a country or region, or as an add-on in addition to a .COM domain. Make sure you’re offering ccTLDs both ways.

For example, a Canadian-based webhost should be offering the .CA (Canada) when it’s available (either as the first result, or as an add-on option). Same goes for other countries and regions. You’d be surprised how many people will take the ccTLD instead of the .COM, or even in addition to the .COM when you present them with the option.

Worldwide, .CN (China) and .DE (Germany) continue to battle it out for top spot amongst ccTLDs. .DE recently retook the lead from .CN. Rounding out the top five according to the VeriSign Domain Name Industry Brief are .UK (United Kingdom), .NL (Netherlands) and .EU.

We’ve mentioned that VeriSign report in the past, but it bears repeating here: it’s must read material for anyone in the domain industry. There’s lots to learn there, specifically about stats and trends that can help you grow your business.

At HostingCon 2009 a few weeks back, Adam Eisner, our Director of Domain Services highlighted ccTLDs as one of his “20 Ways to Outsmart Your Competitors”. The slides for the presentation are available as a PDF download for those that missed it. Adam noted that the real growth in the domain industry is taking place in ccTLDs and web hosts who ignore the market are risking missing out.

We’re actively working on adding more ccTLDs to the list here at OpenSRS and we’ll have some news to report on that front in the next couple of months.

A full list of the various domains available through OpenSRS, including list pricing, is available here.

EV Certs Starting at $199!

EV-Bar Extended Validation (EV) SSL Certificates for $199? Yes, you heard correctly.

Through the end of 2009, GeoTrust True BusinessID with EV certs are just $199 from OpenSRS. That’s a little less than half of the regular price for a GeoTrust EV cert.

This exceptional price will be in effect through the end 2009 and applies to new cert orders and renewals.

geotrust_logo There’s a huge opportunity here to bring EV certs to your customers at a price that is not much more than a standard, non-EV cert. It’s also a great time for you to add the green bar to your own website and lead by example.

By the way, if you are an OpenSRS Reseller and you haven’t been selling digital certificates, this is a great chance to make a splash with your customer base by adding a full range of SSL products to your lineup along with a huge deal on EV SSL from GeoTrust.

More to come

We rushed this promo out the door so you could start taking advantage of the huge savings as soon as possible. Over the next little bit, we’ll be pushing out some marketing materials for that will help you when selling these EV certs to your customers.

There’s more details in the SSL section of our website, including a complete product list with pricing.