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By: James Koole on January 24th, 2012
Posted in: Events
Tags: Webinar
Comments: 2

Staying on top of where the hosting industry is headed is key in ensuring that you are able to react quickly and be successful.

Arming you with great information about the current state of the industry and where it’s going int he future is all part of what we do. If you’ve attended events like HostingCon, WorldHostingDays or Parallels Summit, you’ll know that we often offer sessions designed to share that knowledge we’ve gained with you.

Free Exclusive Webinar!

Coming up on February 2, 2012, we’re hosting a free webinar that we know you won’t want to miss.

We’ve arranged for Phil Shih, founder and managing director of Structure Research to provide a one-hour session titled, “A Look Ahead – Trends in Hosting for 2012.”

Phil Shih, Founder and Managing Director, Structure Research

Phil is a well-known speaker in the hosting industry. He has in-depth knowledge of where things are, and where they are headed based on his over ten years of looking at the hosting space. Phil was a long-time senior staff writer for The WHIR, and an analyst for Tier1 Research.

This webinar is just a start – we’re very excited to announce that we’ve partnered with Phil to bring you exclusive content like this throughout the year.

More to Come

As mentioned, the webinar is just the first of a number of many initiatives we have planned, some with Phil and some with other great partners – watch for blog posts and more great webinars coming up to help you stay current.

From day one, back in 1999, we’re always been very much focused on making sure that you have the products and services you need to succeed. That means having things like a huge range of ccTLDs and gTLDs, or partnering with multiple trust providers so you can always offer the right SSL or trust product for every customer.

Further extending and broadening that focus to include information and intelligence is just one more thing that makes us the best choice for companies looking for a wholesale Internet services partner.

Watch On Demand

Click here to view the recording. Like all of our webinars, it’s free.

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By: James Koole on August 8th, 2011
Posted in: Events
Tags: HostingCon 2011
Comments: 0

We’re at an inflection point with mobile Internet access right now, and hosters are in a unique position to take advantage of it. That was the key message today from Tucows CEO, Elliot Noss in his session, “This Mobile Moment,” given this afternoon at HostingCon.

I won’t go too deeply into the content of the presentation, but Elliot’s point is this: mobile is exploding, current providers aren’t doing a great job serving customers, and customers are just waiting for a someone to come in and do things differently.

Elliot suggests that hosters are uniquely positioned to take advantage for a number of reasons, like the fact that hosting companies are really good at customer service and are used working with small margins.

Phone to Modem = Feature phone to Smartphone

He also says the current situation with mobile access is analogous to the move from using our copper phone lines for telephone calls, to hooking up a modem and starting to use our phone lines for Internet access. He says the switch from feature phones used for voice calls and SMS to smart phones (pocket computers, really) represents a similar shift in technology use.

The point is this: hosting companies should be thinking about how they can leverage their expertise in service, support and understanding the needs of their customers to identify and take advantage of the opportunity that this mobile moment provides.

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By: James Koole on August 8th, 2011
Posted in: Events
Tags: HostingCon 2011, New gTLDs
Comments: 2

It’s presentations day for OpenSRS today at HostingCon 2011. We have a pair of speaking slots, and things got started with Adam Eisner’s talk about the impact of new TLDs for hosting companies this morning.

Of course, not everyone is at HostingCon 2011 this week, so for the benefit of all of you not in San Diego, here’s a summary of what Adam talked about. If you are at HostingCon, and missed seeing the presentation live, then you missed out on your chance to win a pair of sweet noise cancelling headphones. Jeffrey Cohen of InternetLitigators was at the presentation and walked away with the prize – congrats to you, Jeffrey, and enjoy the prize.

New TLDs Were Officially Approved at ICANN Singapore

The approval of what are referred to as “New TLDs” was the big news out of the last ICANN meeting in Singapore a few months back. Basically, that decision paved the way for the creation of hundreds of new domain extensions – think .nyc or .eco, and even .apple, .canon and .coke and you get the idea about how far reaching this evolution will be.

This profound change in how the domain name system works will have big impacts on hosting companies. If you are in that business, you’ll obviously want to be aware of what’s happening so you can make sure you’ve positioned yourself to take advantage of the opportunities that new TLDs may present.

Here’s an overview of what Adam talked about (slides are below in the embedded Slideshare):

• Right now we have 22 gTLDs (and hundreds of country code TLDs). In the next few years, New TLDs will add as many as 500 new TLDs to the root.
• ICANN started talking about new TLDs years ago, and approved the start of discussions about adding new TLDs to the root in 2008. It took a long time, and a lot of discussion with various stakeholder groups to get to where we are today (and we’re not quite done yet).
• In June 2011, at the Singapore ICANN meeting, ICANN approved the Applicant Guidebook and officially launched the New TLDs program.
• There are three different categories of New TLDs to consider:
  • Brand-based: .coke, .canon
  • Generic: .search, .blog, .cloud
  • Community/Interest Group: .eco, .gay, .toronto
• Key point: .XXX is not part of the New TLDs program. It’s a separate new extension that is launching this fall (and OpenSRS is accredited).
• Key dates:
  • January to April 2012: applications accepted
  • April 2012: Cards turned over
  • November: Applications approved
  • Sometime after that: first New TLDs go live in the root
  • Maybe an additional application/approval round after that
• Opportunity: Improved end-user perception – having a New TLD raises your stature
  • Get your own: no sharing the stage, your name on the right side of the dot, full control! All the good names are available on your own TLD.
• Costs:
  • $185,000 US Application Fee (if approved)
    • could be more (auctions, multiple groups after the same extension)
    • Marketing, legal fees, etc.
• How to:
  • Fill out the application, paying special attention to the Guidebook.
  • Get a partner who has technology experience, and knows the their way around the ICANN world.
• The Other Opportunity: Reach new customers by selling others: hundreds of new TLD extensions to offer.
  • New segments, new markets.
  • .MUSIC, .LONDON, .SKI and more!!!
  • It won’t be easy…look at .com vs. the other, newer gTLDs like .info, tel, etc.
  • What makes a “sellable” extension?
    • Priced smartly (less than $30/year)
    • No wacky rules
    • Follows the standards laid down by current gTLDs
    • Resonates with end-users (or a segment of end-users)
  • How to sell them?
    • Most new TLDS will partner with Registrars
    • Brands won’t offer names to the public
    • Integration should be pretty much the same as current gTLDs.

The takeaways:

• There’s an opportunity to secure a brand or community
• New TLDs represent new markets and new opportunities
• Having your own TLD means full control of the namespace and anything is possible.

And here’s the full presentation for those who want the slides to go with the summary:

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By: OpenSRS Team on August 8th, 2011
Posted in: Events
Tags: #hc2011, HostingCon 2011
Comments: 0

HostingCon 2011 kicks off today and it promises to be a very busy and exciting week.

OpenSRS has a big presence at HostingCon as usual and we’re going to make sure that whether you are in San Diego this week, or anywhere else in the world, that you know what’s going on.

Here’s just a taste of what’s happening over the next few days:

Speaker Sessions

Today we have a pair of awesome presentations that you’ll definately want to attend. First up is Adam Eisner, our Director of OpenSRS Product Management:

WHAT DO NEW TLDS MEAN FOR YOUR HOSTING BUSINESS?
with Adam Eisner
Monday, August 8 at 11:00AM

Thanks to ICANN’s New Top Level Domain program, hundreds of new domain name extensions like .WEB, .MUSIC, and your own .BRAND will soon be a reality. Learn how these new extensions will change Internet users’ perceptions of domain extensions and how to ensure your hosting business is prepared to profit.

If you attend Adam’s session, you’ll have a chance to win some nifty noise cancelling headphones from OpenSRS. We’ll give them out after the session to one lucky attendee.

Grab some lunch and take a breather, but make sure you don’t miss Elliot Noss, Tucows President and CEO in the afternoon:

THIS MOBILE MOMENT
with Elliot Noss
Monday, August 8 at 3:00PM

The meteoric rise of mobile computing has hosting companies scrambling to address new customer needs and leverage new market opportunities. Elliot revisits similar moments in the past 20 years looking for clues to how hosting companies can capitalize.

If you aren’t in San Diego, or can’t make either of those sessions, we’ll post up a summary of each later today so you can still get the great content that Elliot and Adam are presenting.

We’re Just Getting Started!

The exhibit floor opens tomorrow morning at 11:00 A.M. and we’ll be all ready to say ‘hi’ to attendees and to tell them all about the many new things we have in store for our resellers in the next little bit.

Drop by booth #439 to see us! You can’t miss it – look for waving Service Guy and the brightest, most colourful booth on the show floor.

While you’re there, be sure to drop off your business card for a chance to win an Apple iPad 2 from Afternic and OpenSRS. They provide domain listing services for the domain aftermarket and are a key partner for OpenSRS, providing great quality domains for our Premium Domains service. We’d love to talk more about how you can start offering Premium Domains to your customers and help them find their perfect domain.

Our good friends at Trustwave have a really cool contest going on at HostingCon. They’ve put together a really fun game for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch called MadLocks. Download it for free starting today and then play for a chance to win a 15″ MacBook Pro from Trustwave. More details on the game are available at their website. Of course, we’d love to chat with you about offering Trustwave SSL products through OpenSRS. And we have a special incentive program going on right now with Trustwave that gives OpenSRS Resellers a chance to win an iPad 2 courtesy Trustwave.

But Wait! There’s Even More!

Believe it or not, there’s still more to talk about! Stay tuned to the blog over the next three days for extensive coverage of HostingCon and for some more news from OpenSRS. And be sure to follow @OpenSRS on Twitter for more HostingCon news and info. Who knows, there might be some surprise giveaways and other fun stuff for our Twitter followers.

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By: James Koole on May 12th, 2011
Posted in: Events
Tags: Control Panel, Webinar
Comments: 0

It’s been a week or so since we introduced the Domain Manager tab in the OpenSRS Control Panel. We hope you’ve had a chance to dive in a play around and let us know what you think. We’ve already received some encouraging and constructive feedback – keep it coming!

We’re pretty excited about the Control Panel and what it can do, but a lot of the really neat stuff is behind the scenes. We know there’s a bunch of you who are keen on hearing about some of the neat kit that powers things like the search and filtering features. So we’re offering a webinar to bring some of that information to you.

The webinar will be hosted by yours truly and Paul Tichonczuk who is a Senior Web Application Developer here at OpenSRS. Paul T. is going to talk about some of this new tech and geek out a bit on how things fit together to provide the fast, intuitive interface that you now have in the Control Panel. I’ll take you through some of the neat things you can do with Control Panel – like filtering your domains lists, and how to setup DNS templates. Think of it as a bit of a power-users demo.

Do plan to check it out if you want to get some pro-tips and learn about some neat developer stuff. We promise to keep it understandable whether you are a developer or not!