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By: Adam Eisner on September 28th, 2009
Posted in: Events
Tags: Parallels EMEA Roadshow 2009
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Earlier this month OpenSRS sponsored and participated in Parallels’ EMEA roadshow, which traveled to seven European countries in order to connect with web hosting companies in each region.

Liam Philley, Le Quan Truong and Ben Reuss at the Parallels stop in Stockholm, Sweden

The presentation focused on a wide variety of topics, but among the points I tried to emphasize to the European hosting community were:

• The growth and success of ccTLDs are on the rise. Over the past several years, gTLD market share has dropped while ccTLD market share has increased. Many market-focused web hosting companies have adopted a good range of ccTLDs (including .EU, .CA, .UK, .ME and .DE) and are promoting them aggressively.
• Web hosting companies are getting in front of their brands. According to Mitch Keeler’s count over at The Web Hosting Show (www.webhostingshow.com) , almost 100 web hosting companies are on Twitter, engaging customers, prospects and promoting their brands. Virtually every popular web host is active on Twitter, operates a blog and is very transparent when it comes to how they operate (we’re there too: follow @OpenSRS on Twitter).
• There’s opportunity to be found in leveraging the growth of the ‘personal web’. Whether it’s end users using a domain to tie together their Facebook, Twitter and Flickr pages, or using a domain name and email address to brand oneself (think of the .ME or .NAME extensions, or our own Personal Names service), consumers are quickly finding many personal uses for domain names. Hosting companies that leverage this trend will have an excellent opportunity to introduce a new revenue stream before the competition figures it out.

In talking to attendees at each stop, it was obvious that the hosting companies which attended found it to be worthwhile and informative. If Parallels hosts a similar tour next year, I highly recommend attending. It’s a unique opportunity to connect with other hosts in your area, meet Parallels staff, learn more about the product and check out some potential vendors as well.

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By: Mou Mukherjee on September 10th, 2009
Posted in: Events
Tags: cPanel Conference 2009, HostingCon 2009, Parallels EMEA Roadshow 2009
Comments: 1

The OpenSRS team attended HostingCon 2009 last month in Washington DC. Since then we’ve been a little busy preparing for the Parallels EMEA Roadshow which is now in full-swing. However, we wanted to take a few moments to thank everyone that we met this year. We hope some of you had a chance to drop by our booth and pick up some old fashioned stick-candy, and maybe even one of our spiffy new “Service Guy’” toys which we debuted at HostingCon 2009.

This year we had a group of fourteen OpenSRS folks attending and we were able to meet many resellers, prospects, partners, and industry leaders. We also launched our brand new sub-resellers program. Adam Eisner, our Director of Domain Services, presented “20 Ways to Outsmart Your Competitors.” Did you miss it? No problem. You can download Adam’s slides from our HostingCon follow-up page.

Announcing the winner of the Dell Adamo laptop!

As well, we are very pleased to announce the winner of our booth give-away! Congratulations to Eduardo from Hosting Panama the lucky winner of a really cool Dell Adamo laptop!

See you in Austin, Texas for HostingCon 2010 (or maybe sooner)

A special thanks to the team at iNet Interative for putting on a very well-organized and well-attended show. We look forward to seeing everyone next year in Austin for HostingCon 2010.  In the meantime we hope to see you again at one of our upcoming events:

• Parallels EMEA Roadshow – next stop in Paris on September 14
• WHIR Networking, Miami – September 24
• Cpanel Conference, Houston – October 5-7
• WHIR Networking, Washington DC – October 22

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By: OpenSRS Team on September 9th, 2009
Posted in: Partners and Resellers
Tags: Registries
Comments: 0

Este anuncio está disponible en español a continuación.

.ES is our registry focus this week. OpenSRS is meeting with ESNIC, the .es registry, when they visit Madrid on September 17, 2009 for the Parallels EMEA Roadshow.

With over 400 million Spanish speaking people worldwide, “.es” domains have the ability to cross borders as the Spanish domain. “.es” actually translates to “is”. Resellers can use the noun/verb combination to create domain names that play on language. During the last two years, .es have experienced high growth (reaching a million domains in 2008). This may be related to the reduced registration fee and the changes to registration rules.

Red.es, the registry sponsor, is heavily involved in a number of organizations with the goal of promoting the Internet in Spain and with the wider Spanish-speaking population. This includes activism as part of the greater Internet community. They currently have a contest promoting using .es within social networking sites.

.ES Registrations:

Quick Facts

• ESNIC (commercially referred to as dominios.es) is the registry, with Red.es as the sponsor
• Registration is open, however, there are restrictions on some of the specific sub-domains
• Established in 1988
• Over 1 million names registered and growing
• The website is offered in Spanish, English and Spain’s “co-official” languages: Catalán, Gallego, Euskera
• Can be registered and renewed for periods up to 5 years

Available Resources:

• . es Website
• Statistics
• News feed
• Anti-phishing campaign
• Facebook
• Youtube

.ES es nuestro registro de enfoque de esta semana. OpenSRS se reu?ne con ESNIC, el Registro .es, cuando visite Madrid el 17 de septiembre de 2009 para el Parallels EMEA Roadshow.

Con ma?s de 400 millones de personas de habla hispana en todo el mundo, los dominios “.es” tienen la capacidad de cruzar fronteras como el dominio espan?ol. “.es” Realmente se traduce como “es”. Los distribuidores pueden utilizar el sustantivo/verbo para crear nombres de dominio que creativamente jueguen con la lengua. Durante los u?ltimos dos an?os .es han experimentado un alto crecimiento (llegando a un millo?n de dominios en 2008). Esto puede estar relacionado con la reduccio?n de tarifa y los cambios a las normas de registro.

Red.es, el patrocinador del Registro, esta? muy implicado en una serie de organizaciones con el objetivo de promover la Internet en Espan?a y con el resto de la poblacio?n de habla hispana. Esto incluye el activismo como parte de la gran comunidad de Internet. Actualmente tienen un concurso de promocio?n cuyo objetivo es la dinamizacio?n de los dominios .es en las redes sociales.

.ES Inscripciones Estadi?sticas:

Datos ba?sicos

• ESNIC (comercialmente conocido como dominios.es) es el registro, con Red.es como patrocinador.
• La inscripcio?n esta? abierta, sin embargo, hay restricciones en algunos nombres especi?ficos.
• Fundada en 1988.
• Ma?s de 1 millo?n de nombres registrados y creciendo.
• El sitio web se ofrece en Espan?ol, Ingle?s y en leguas co-oficiales de
  Espan?a: Catalán, Gallego, Euskera
• Puede ser registrado y renovado por peri?odos de hasta de 5 an?os.

Recursos disponibles:

• Sitio web .es
• Estadi?sticas
• Contenidos de noticias (News Feed)
• Campan?a Anti-phishing
• Facebook
• Youtube

Special thanks to Carlos Barrientos for his collaboration on this post including working directly with the registry and for his translation assistance.

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By: OpenSRS Team on September 8th, 2009
Posted in: Partners and Resellers
Tags: Meet the Resellers
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Giovanni Losi of REGdom took a few minutes to tell us about his company for Meet The Resellers. REGdom is an important player in the Italian Internet industry. Here’s our chat:

How long has REGdom been doing business and tell us about all the services you offer to your customers?

We started our business in early 1996 as one of the first .it maintainers, registering .it domains at the newly born .it registry (NIC). At first, we were more focused on web hosting as a classic Internet service provider (ISP); however while growing, we acquired our own data center which allowed us to start a new area of activity offering hosting solutions to other companies. This allowed us to develop partnerships and create new product offerings.

In late 2001, we became more aware of the need to split our products in different brands, managing them as different companies in the attempt to be more flexible and quickly follow the changes of the market. Our products lineup now varies from hosting/housing to fax-to-mail services. As REGdom – the brand focused on domain registrations – we’re developing a completely new platform to allow our partners maintain their domains in an easier way.

Any interesting stories from your company’s history?

Our company took part at the first round-table discussing the rules for .it domain registrations when the Italian Registration Authority was founded. It’s interesting to see how this market has grown and how many key players are still here while others are gone. I think that paying attention to the past is a great way to learn and to lead a new path for the future.

We are proud of our contribution to the .it registrar agreement and also were involved in the technical procedure tests. Being a small actor in the progress of the Internet is one of the factors that makes this job so exciting.

Giovanni Losi, Product Manager
REGdom

How did you personally get into the Internet business?

Well, like a lot of people in this sector, it all started as a hobby. I have loved technology and computers since I was a child, so I think I was one of the first to be passionate about the Internet when it became a reality in Italy in the middle of the 90s. After working for a company selling computers and related services I jumped on the new economy ship and started working as a systems administrator for an ISP. I immediately fell in love with this new world and its opportunities. Year by year, I became more interested in how the Internet works and what lies behind everything. In 2008, after some months splitting myself in two different positions, I fully crossed the line to become a REGdom Product Manager.

Where are you located and what makes it such a great place to do business?

Our headquarters is in Brescia, a city in northern Italy pretty close to Milan. It gives almost the same advantages as working in the more famous city: affordable technology, low prices for bandwidth, without considering that all the biggest ISPs and the MIX (Milan Internet eXchange) are in this area. Apart from that Brescia is more liveable than Milan: less traffic, less air pollution, a smaller city centre. It’s less chaotic. We’re just 20 minutes driving time from the Garda Lake, a vacation spot where relaxing with many activities, from sunbathing to water sports.

Thanks to Luca Giarelli for the photo and for uploading to the Wikimedia Commons under a CC-BY-SA 3.0 Creative Commons License.

How long have you been an OpenSRS Reseller and how has your partnership with OpenSRS helped your company succeed?

We signed the contract in 2003 but we started doing business seriously with OpenSRS a couple of years later. At the beginning we used to register domains with many other registrars because we would have loved to try different reseller services. When business started growing we realized we couldn’t afford to have as many web panels with the increase of TLDs. We needed a strong partner with a solid assistance to rely on, and our path led us to OpenSRS showing it as that kind of ideal partner. It gives us the opportunity to keep all our domains in a unique interface and the API support helped and is still helping us to grow and speed up our registration processes.

What can we do to make the relationship stronger?

It has been a good idea to create an European technical department, supplying us a better and faster support, more reliable with the same working hours.

Widening the tld’s choice range would be appreciated too, as our customers are mostly based in Europe and sometimes they want to register European ccTLDs. As we deep developed our systems to connect with your API we would like to fully take advantage of that and register even more domains (and TLDs) with OpenSRS.

Any other suggestions or feedback for us?

The squishy cows you sent us are wonderful! Everybody loves them in the office and I’m planning to bring one on holiday with me for some fancy photo shoot, please send us more gadgets when possible!

Having a direct OpenSRS contact who speaks our language is an additional thing that should not be under estimated. No other operator at an international level has offered this to us.

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By: OpenSRS Team on September 3rd, 2009
Posted in: Announcements
Tags: Holiday Hours
Comments: 0

Summer is almost over with the arrival of Labour Day. We have reduced hours for this September holiday long weekend. Hopefully, your weekend will include splashing in big pools of water like our Reseller Service guy:

Here’s our hours by department for Monday, September 7th, 2009:

Have a great weekend!