Archive for: March, 2010

.CO Local Sunrise Starts April 1, 2010

Tomorrow is the first day for .CO Local Sunrise applications and OpenSRS is ready to accept your orders.

Please note: this is the Local Sunrise phase and only holders of valid Colombian trademarks can apply for .CO domains at this time. Global Sunrise which is for all trademark holders doesn’t start until April 26th, 2010.

Each phase of the .CO launch is distinct. Make sure you put your orders in during the correct phase as application fees are non-refundable.

Keep in mind that there’s no real reason to rush for the sunrise or even the landrush phases of the launch. The domains in these phases aren’t given out on a first-come, first-serve basis. Instead, those domains with multiple, valid applications will go into an auctions process.

.CO Launch Page Has More Information

We’ve updated the .CO launch page here on OpenSRS.com with more information including details on the auctions process as well as some information about the different phases of the .CO launch. Additionally, documentation has been updated with everything you need to submit orders through OpenSRS

.CO Webinar – April 15th, 2010

We’re also happy to announce today that we’re going to offer a webinar for OpenSRS Resellers coming up on April 15th, 2010.

Crystal Peterson, Senior Marketing Manager, .CO Internet SAS, will be joining us to talk about the opportunity that .CO provides to you and will talk about how to market and sell .CO domains to your customers. Adam Eisner, Director, Domain Services for OpenSRS will also be on hand to answer any specific questions you might have about the .CO launch as it relates to OpenSRS.

We’ll hold two sessions to accomodate resellers around the world:

Thanks a Million, Ten Million!

Boy do we have some news: Earlier today, we officially announced that OpenSRS now has ten million domain names under management!

Having been with OpenSRS for just over two months, I have witnessed firsthand how quickly time flies when you’re having fun. My colleagues and the various teams have been so focused on the many internal projects that we nearly missed celebrating this very important milestone!

It’s a day like today that makes everything we do worthwhile.

We wish there was a way to get each of our ten thousand resellers in one big room so we could thank you in person. Unfortunately, we’re lacking the teleportation technology (our flux capacitor burnt out some time ago) and so we hope you will accept this blog post as our sincerest, most heartfelt thanks for helping us reach this important milestone.

The feedback received and the numerous conversations we’ve had with you have enabled us to build a wholesale domain name management platform that helps you to run your hosting and Internet business more efficiently and with confidence.

Although we’re proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish, we wake up each day with a goal to make it even better.

Ten million domain names isn’t the finish line for us. It’s an important milestone to be sure, but it’s just a pit stop on our way to being the wholesale domain name registrar you can count on, because we’re not slowing down for anything!

Thank you for your trusting us with your business.

Holiday Hours: Good Friday (April 2)

Happy Easter holidays from the OpenSRS team!

We’ll be closed this Friday April 2nd for the Easter holiday.

Our Technical Support team continues to be available 24/7 to assist you.

Please note that during this closure, there will be:

No orders or requests processed for the following TLD’s: (.at, .fr, .ch, .li, .it, .dk, .com.mx)
No special processing for .ca (registrant transfers, conflicting and municipal registrations) or .eu/.be (redemptions).

Here are the hours by department:

Department	Dates and Hours
Technical Support	Regular hours
Payments	Email support: payments@opensrs.org
Compliance	Closed April 2nd (Friday)
Service Bureau	Closed April 2nd (Friday)

Special thanks for Flickr user OakleyOriginals for licensing their colourful Easter egg shot under a creative commons license.

Meet the Resellers: Emerion WebHosting GmbH

Founded in 2000, emerion WebHosting has grown to become a leading hosting and Internet service provider to small businesses and individuals in Europe. Founder and CEO Bernd Hilmar oversees the company’s operations from its base in Vienna, Austria.

As with thousands of other OpenSRS Resellers, emerion has been a customer since the beginning. Hilmar says that there were a couple of reasons they chose OpenSRS to power their domain registrations.

He notes that the fact that OpenSRS was one of the first Registrars to offer an API was very important. “We found OpenSRS [in 2000] and we were very impressed about the API because it allowed us to automate our domain registrations,” he says.

On Choosing a Registrar Partner

Of course, price was also a key consideration, but Hilmar says it shouldn’t be the top concern for those looking for a registrar partner. “Price is an important reason in this market, but it’s not the only reason to select a registrar,” he says. “It’s important for everything to work well day-to-day in this business.”

Hilmar says communication is also something to think about. He notes that he enjoys the level of communication that OpenSRS provides both through email messages that keep him informed of what’s new and also through regular contact with his account manager, Luigi Lagonigro, who works out of the OpenSRS office in the UK.

From a service availability standpoint, Hilmar says he likes the way OpenSRS keeps him informed of what’s going on. “[OpenSRS] has a status page so we can see by ourselves when something happens, and when it will be resolved,” he says. This allows emerion to more quickly react to, and minimize, any potential impacts on its customer base when service interruptions take place.

This focus on good communication is a philosophy that the company embraces for its own interactions with customers.

Emerion Embraces Social Media

Hilmar says the company is using both Facebook and Twitter to network with current and potential customers. With its Facebook page, emerion has attracted well over 1,500 fans already.

They use social media primarily to keep their customers informed. “We update the community with hosting news and provide them with an inside view of the inner workings of their hosting provider,” he says. But he cautions that too much information can have a negative effect, adding that “people can get angry about it” if you communicate too much.

As for the future, Hilmar says they’re just getting started in the social media space. “There are many ways to use social media. We will do more in future because we believe in the dynamic of the social interactivity,” he says.

A Beneficial Mix of Both Business and Personal Accounts

Emerion’s customer base ranges from personal shared hosting accounts to businesses with more advanced needs. He says having both types of customers allows them to better tailor their systems and provide better service to everyone.

“Honestly, we need both,” he says. “It’s interesting to work with the private customers because it’s an advantage to make the service easy to use for them and to improve the usability.”

But on the business customer side, Hilmar says the customers are often more demanding. “The business customer has more and special needs,” he says. “They want specific things and we improve our service with that needs and try to implement it as standard.”

Emerion welcomes both because they find the mix to be beneficial. “We try to cover both directions because at the end they both fit together very good,” he says. From his experience, servicing both types of customers helps improve the offering overall.

Emerion’s Custom Cloud Solution

Emerion has deployed a custom, clustered server system, which is a cloud,
and offers burstable resources for customers. It provides this in conjunction with a hosting control panel it developed in-house for an end-to-end system.

Hilmar says they decided to opt for a custom solution because it allows them to better serve their customers. “We wrote the software for our hosting control panel all by ourselves and it works together with our own system. Nothing else fit the specific needs of our customers,” he says.

He adds that it allows for more flexibility in providing an easy to use service. “With out own system we are more independent to do interfaces for our customers. It allows us to make it easier for our customers.”

That focus on “ease of use” and a commitment to providing a high level of customer service will no doubt serve the company well as it continues to grow.

Special thanks goes to Heather Leson who did a ton of work on this profile and also to our European office for facilitating a face-to-face interview with Bernd Hilmar at WebhostingDay last week. And of course, special thanks goes to Bernd for taking the time to meet with us and answer all of our many questions. We appreciate it!

Celebrating Ada Lovelace Day at OpenSRS

We’re celebrating Ada Lovelace at OpenSRS. Women in technology make a difference every day. Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science. This is a worldwide map of over 1900 pledged blog posts:

At OpenSRS, we have a talented array of women who are developers, programmers, implementation specialists, professional service experts, technical support, reporting specialists, account managers, customer service, sales representatives, video technology consultants, accounting, NOC analysts, technical writers, managers, directors, quality assurance specialists, marketers, communicators, ITIL-certified technologists, web designers, compliance officers, usability experts, human resources, internet savvy and more. Each of these talented folks makes our corner of the Internet run smoothly. We are in awe of their sheer force of knowledge. Here’s a picture of some of our talented folks:

We hope to inspire you to talk about the great work women contribute in your workplaces. And, we hope we can inspire young women to join our profession.

By the way, OpenSRS is looking for Application Developers, NOC Analysts, and QA/Developers . We welcome all skilled talent. And, men too!