OPENSRS: 2010

lunes, 13 de diciembre de 2010

ICANN 39 Review: The Latest Developments on New gTLDs and .XXX

Posted: 13 Dec 2010 05:48 AM PST

I just returned from ICANN's 39th international public meeting, held last week in the beautiful city of Cartagena, Colombia. This was a highly anticipated meeting by many in the domain industry, as major developments were expected with regard to both the new generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) process and .XXX, the proposed extension for adult sites.

New gTLDs

On the new gTLD front, ICANN's recent decision to allow vertical integration – which would allow registrars to operate registries, and vice versa – cleared a major roadblock in the new gTLD process. With this contentious issue settled, there was hope in some circles that ICANN would approve the most recent version of the Draft Applicant Guidebook (DAG), which outlines how to go about applying for a new gTLD, and officially launch the start of the new gTLD process.

While ICANN did not outright approve the DAG nor officially launch the application process in Cartagena, there was reason to be optimistic moving forward. ICANN's board passed a resolution at the meeting stating they considered many of the thornier issues related to new gTLDs (including trademark protection, root zone scaling and the economic impact) to now be closed. This in itself is a major step forward in the process. However, the Board also noted that there were still outstanding issues, including concerns from the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC), which is comprised of representatives of more than 100 governments worldwide. The GAC provides advice to ICANN on key public policy issues.

As a result of the GAC's concerns and in an effort to resolve the outstanding issues that remain in the gTLD process, the board resolved to have an extended, face-to-face meeting with the GAC in February 2011. The meeting will take place a few weeks before the next ICANN international meeting in San Francisco. While most of those involved in new gTLDs were disappointed that the process was not outright approved, most of the people I spoke to were encouraged with the progress that had been made. Many of those same people are hoping for closure to the entire gTLD process by the San Francisco meeting, but whether that actually happens remains to be seen.

Progress on .XXX

There was also some progress made at the meeting with regard to the proposed .XXX extension (which is separate of the new gTLD process). To recap: This adult-oriented extension has been discussed since the early part of the decade. ICANN and ICM Registry, the private company that wishes to introduce XXX, have historically disagreed on whether ICM cleared all the necessary hurdles to get the extension approved. An independent review panel eventually determined ICANN did not follow its own policies and procedures when it refused to proceed with .XXX, and at last week's meeting, the board announced it intended to enter into an agreement with ICM Registry, subject to the GAC's advice – another issue to be tackled in the extended meeting.

ICANN’s 40th International Meeting

So, in the end, significant progress was made on two high-profile issues, but they were not resolved entirely. This sets up a very interesting meeting in San Francisco. The approval of new gTLDs in a meeting in a city so intertwined with technology would make for a great story. And it would be good news for those whom have been waiting for their approval for so long.

miércoles, 8 de diciembre de 2010

Annual Report Now Available for the .INFO Top-Level Domain

Posted: 08 Dec 2010 06:49 AM PST

The annual report for .INFO was released today and for anybody interested in .INFO, or domain names in general should find it an interesting read.

The report shows that in 2010, the top-level domain (TLD) grew nearly 30% to more than 6.8 million domain names registered, holding it in place as the #1 new TLD ever launched.

From the report: “.INFO remains the seventh largest top-level domain on the Internet today, out of more than 270 today TLDs on the planet.”

For those who sell .INFO domains, the report also contains a number of great examples regarding how online businesses, individuals and non-profit organizations are using the TLD as well as interesting stats that link .INFO registrations to real world events, such as the earthquake in Haiti and the BP oil spill.

The full report is available at the .INFO website.

lunes, 6 de diciembre de 2010

Meet the Resellers: Heart Internet

Posted: 06 Dec 2010 08:10 AM PST

UK-based hosting provider Heart Internet, OpenSRS reseller since 2004, relies on OpenSRS to provide backend solutions for domain name registrations, SSL certificates and new services like goMobi that will help the company maintain the impressive growth rate that places it at the top of the heap in the UK.

Co-founders Jonathan Brealey and Tim Beresford started heart Internet in 2004. The pair, who had already created two successful businesses in Webfusion and 123-Reg, created Heart Internet to address what they perceived to be shortcomings in existing hosting provider offerings.

Jonathan Brealey, Co-founder, Heart Internet

“It was in a period where any hosting provision was really technical and quite poor and we saw an opportunity to make it easier,” says Jonathan Brealey, co-founder and Director at Heart Internet. To address the need, Heart Internet built a custom hosting control panel at a time when few other companies offered them. Heart combined the easy-to-use panels with hosting packages aimed at resellers.

“That’s an approach that’s still central to our business – making things easier,” says Brealey. From the start, Heart Internet looked to resellers as a way to extend its reach and also as a way to stay lean and focused on further developing its products and services.

“We get to deal with customers who are savvy and understand what they are doing,” explains Brealey. “Thanks to our resellers, we service a large number of websites, but we don’t have a lot of contact with customers because we have our customers who are reselling handling that relationship.”

Wide Range of Reseller Customers

Brealey says they have a good mix of resellers, including full-service agency customers that Heart Internet continues to help expand and develop important customer relationships. “We tell them that if they are selling someone a web site for a few thousand Pounds, then you definitely have inroads to sell hosting, domains and SSL to them as well.”

And for Heart Internet’s smaller resellers, generally one-to-three man shops doing web-design and development, Brealey says offering new solutions like goMobi makes a lot of sense. “We’re reaching out and explaining how to offer services to existing customers like goMobi as a £10 add-on.”

Why OpenSRS?

Heart Internet chose OpenSRS because they were looking for a service provider with a technical background. With innovation comes the need for partners who can provide backend services that keep pace.

Brealey says OpenSRS has always been a good fit. “You guys are technical and that’s how we like it,” he says. “Our developers like your API and the flexibility it offers us in terms of automating our services and keeping costs down.”

It’s a relationship that’s worked well for both companies as Heart Internet continues to bring its unique mix of innovation and simple-to-use, but powerful services to its customers.

Still Growing Fast

The company’s strategy continues to pay dividends. In 2009, Heart Internet found itself second on the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 fastest growing technology companies list and was recognized as the fastest growing Internet company in the UK. In 2010, they again made the Fast 50 list, demonstrating the incredible growth opportunities that continue to exist in the Internet and hosting space in the UK.

Heart Internet plans to maintain that growth and momentum by continuing to innovate and by bringing new services and ideas to their resellers to offer to their customers. For example, Heart Internet recently rolled out an innovative service that looks up usernames on popular social media sites like Twitter and Foursquare at the same time as a domain search availability search. Touches like this are what keep them ahead of the competition.

miércoles, 1 de diciembre de 2010

goMobi is here! Try it out for 30 days free

Posted: 01 Dec 2010 06:08 AM PST

Starting today, you're able to sell goMobi through OpenSRS. It's a new service from dotMobi that provides your customers with a simple, inexpensive way to build and host a mobile-ready website that works along with their existing site.

Why goMobi?

The mobile web is hot and it's getting hotter everyday.

The 2010 Mobile Web Progress Report by dotMobi revealed that the mobile web is showing incredible growth worldwide. The 2008 edition of the report showed 150,000 mobile-ready websites. Now, in 2010, there are over 3 million sites. That's an incredible two-year growth rate of more than 2,000 percent!

Compare that to the growth of the Internet on the desktop between 1996 and 1998. Back then the size of the desktop web grew from about 150,000 sites to 2.0 million sites. In other words, the mobile web is now growing at a far faster rate today than the desktop Internet did in a comparable timeframe.

Tap in to the Mobile Market

More and more big brands are adopting mobile Web strategies, but there's still incredible room for growth considering the number of mobile Internet devices that are being added every day. Consider this: right now, there are four mobile phones purchased for every computer purchased.

But mobile phones and other devices need mobile-ready sites – that's where goMobi comes in.

goMobi gives you a way to tap into the growth of the mobile web, providing additional value to your customers, and of course, giving you a way to make some money at the same time.

Try it yourself!

goMobi is a monthly subscription service and the service is not tied to a .mobi domain purchase. It's available to OpenSRS Resellers at a very low wholesale cost of $2.50/month.

The very best way to understand this product and what it offers to your customers is to try it out yourself. To facilitate that, we are offering a 30-day free trial with all goMobi subscriptions (for both you and your customers!). That gives you a month to give the product a try and get a good sense of how it works and what it offers to your customers.

You can find out more about how goMobi works, both for you in terms of selling it, and for your customers in terms of managing and using it on our goMobi pages.

Click on the “Try it Out” link to view a short screencast that will take you through the steps to provision and setup your own goMobi site in just a couple of minutes.

jueves, 25 de noviembre de 2010

Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted: 25 Nov 2010 08:03 AM PST

Just a quick note to say Happy Thanksgiving to our American friends south of the border!

Unfortunately for us, we’re stuck here at the office, toiling away, as you sit down with your families to enjoy your delicious turkey ‘n gravy, homemade stuffing and mashed potatoes. Mmmmm.

On the plus side, thanks to the power of the Internet, we can live vicariously through you today, relishing your tweets and photos about all the delicious food and the pigskin play-by-plays.

Happy Thanksgiving and best wishes from OpenSRS!

sábado, 20 de noviembre de 2010

“May I help you?” versus “Help yourself!”

Posted: 19 Nov 2010 07:20 PM PST

Full Service versus Self Service

A key strategic question in any service business is where to play along the spectrum from managed service (or full service) to self service. This is particularly true with Web services, which can be either particularly sophisticated (necessitating full service) or particularly simple (enabling self service).

The answer, as always, will be driven by what your customers need and what you are good at. It will also be influenced by your competitive landscape, your resources, your cost of goods and other business considerations.

The OpenSRS Business

I’ll use OpenSRS as an example. We have a big, talented team of engineers and I think we develop pretty usable solutions. Our resellers are also about as capable as they come. But a couple of other factors nudge us more toward managed relationships.

The services we offer are quite sophisticated and quite critical. Registries keep on tweaking their platforms. Spammers keep on spamming. And millions of websites and mailboxes depend on us to run smoothly. It is inevitable that we are going to have to help resellers through our responses and iterations and that they are going to come to us with custom problems and questions. Plus, it’s tough to differentiate ourselves from our competition based on product alone when the product attribute our resellers seem to rank highest is “doesn’t fail”.

So, while we are indeed hard at work on a profoundly more usable control panel, a more flexible API and more robust documentation, we staff a whole bunch of support people, account managers and communications folks and, ultimately, make our living offering superior service.

Although even at that end of the spectrum, we go from lower touch relationships like our Storefront program to higher touch ones like a large email migration, led by our professional services team. So, our resellers can get as much or little as they need from us. And we manage to achieve both the volume and the blended profit margin we need to have a healthy business.

The Web Design Business

Our upcoming launch of goMobi, the do-it-yourself tool for building a mobile website, has me thinking about the web design business in this context.

Web design, like any creative service, is historically as managed as it gets. Clients are paying for talent and ideas. Fees tend to be hourly, reinforcing the fact that the product is human.

But web design is evolving in an interesting way.

The traditional desktop website is still a wonderful vehicle for creativity, beauty, entertainment, provocation and emotion. It can perform valuable functions and it can position a brand. And no template can do what a talented designer can to bring a brand to life or engage a visitor.

The mobile website, however, has moved in a different direction. Thanks largely to the influence of the iPhone, users are showing a strong preference for mobile websites that offer pure function and speed. Icons and buttons. The goal, at least for websites (as opposed to more playful apps), is to navigate as easily as possible and get the information you need.

We think this creates a business opportunity for web designers. It offers an obvious place to draw the line between managed service and self service. "I can build you a beautiful desktop site and you can build yourself an effective mobile site (for less than you would expect)." Maybe there's some training tacked on. Maybe there's even some demand for a "supported self service" model. In general, clients spend their money appropriately and get what they need from each channel. Designers continue to make money on desktop sites while they're awake and now they can make money on mobile sites while they're asleep.

Web designers will always make their living on talent, ideas and full service. But mobile creates demand for a new kind of website, goMobi has a great self service solution and designers are in a unique position to deliver it to market.

viernes, 19 de noviembre de 2010

The OpenSRS Quarterly for Q3 is now available!

Posted: 18 Nov 2010 11:49 AM PST

We're excited to announce that our OpenSRS Quarterly for 2010-Q3 is now available for download.

Have you found yourself wondering how your own own performance indicators measure up against other OpenSRS resellers? Key performance metrics like renewal rates by quarter, new registrations and transfers in and out have long been providing valuable insight to service providers like yours.

With over 10,000 domain name, email and SSL resellers in over 100 countries, from small Web designers to giant Web hosts and Internet Service Providers, OpenSRS has a unique perspective into industry data and trends.

The OpenSRS Quarterly report is meant to provide you, our reseller, with data you can use to benchmark your own performance and make informed decisions. We've analyzed the data across our entire base to provide you with valuable insight. You'll even interesting stats and numbers related to WHOIS Privacy usage and pricing compared to other popular registrars.

We expect this report to be just the beginning of a conversation within your organization, with your team and maybe even with other OpenSRS resellers about best practices and how we can work together to help you succeed.

If you're an OpenSRS reseller, click here to request this report electronically.

Happy Selling!

jueves, 18 de noviembre de 2010

CIRA Contest Looking for .CA Websites Making a Difference

Posted: 17 Nov 2010 12:26 PM PST

A few OpenSRSers are at the meshmarketing event held right here in our hometown of Toronto. One of the presenters is the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) who are the keepers of the .CA domain extension.

Over the past few years, CIRA has doing a ton of work to promote the .CA extension and to show Canadians how people are using their .CA websites.

CIRA .CA Impact Awards

As part of those ongoing efforts, today CIRA announced a new initiative. Starting on January 6, 2011, CIRA will begin accepting submissions for the .CA Impact Awards.

CIRA says they created the .CA Impact Awards as “a celebration of people and organizations that use their .CA website to make a difference.”

Prizes include a cheque for $5,000 for the winner. If you are selling .CA domains through OpenSRS, this is definitely something you will want to pass along to your customers. Who knows, maybe one of them will be the winner!

You can find out more at the CIRA .CA Impact Awards website.

jueves, 11 de noviembre de 2010

goMobi Available Soon to OpenSRS Resellers

Posted: 10 Nov 2010 02:22 PM PST

You’ve probably heard about goMobi service that was recently launched by the dotMobi registry. This wicked cool service turns any standard website into an easy to use, fully customizable mobile site with no programming required. Better still, the service is optimized for many of today’s popular mobile devices.

We’re excited about having this available to our resellers and have been working to integrate the goMobi service into our service offering and we expect to have it available before the year is out. We’ll be sure to let you know as soon as it’s available.

In the meantime, if you’d like learn how goMobi can help your customers turn their website into a fully functional mobile site with no coding required, drop by the goMobi website.

miércoles, 10 de noviembre de 2010

We’re Hiring in Europe. Can you Help?

Posted: 09 Nov 2010 10:08 AM PST

We’re continuing to build out our team in Europe and are recruiting the best talent we can find.

I wanted to reach out to our reseller channel to see if anyone knows of a candidate that might be a good fit with Tucows – someone that is passionate about the Internet, the hosting business and our industry in general, as well as having a solid technical grounding and aptitude.

The role we want to fill is a sales position with a mix of account management and business development. Language skills are important, and we are looking for someone that can speak Italian, Spanish and French.

Location is not important, we want to find the best person and are open to the city they would be based out of.

If you know of anyone that might be a fit please have them follow up with Thorsten or myself directly.

Thanks for your help!

viernes, 29 de octubre de 2010

Using our Registrar Service accredited registrars can have their cake…

Posted: 28 Oct 2010 09:27 PM PDT

You may have heard the news last week that Automattic, the company behind Wordpress (and other cool services) has become its own accredited registrar and it got me thinking that it’s been a while since we’ve talked about our own Registrar Service.

We have all different kinds of wholesale, or white label, clients selling domain names through OpenSRS. From the independent web designers, to larger agencies, ISPs and hosting companies and yes, even other registrars.

The part I love the most when I tell our story, is that unlike some other businesses, we don’t have that heart wrenching chapter where the customer outgrows the service provider and waves a sad farewell as they strike out on their own. In fact, far from saying goodbye, we tend to hold our resellers’ hands and walk them through the accreditation process. (We’ve been through it over thirty times ourselves.)

Our Registrar Service is all about bridging the gap as an OpenSRS reseller decides it makes business sense to become its own accredited registrar. It’s a complete replica of the same platform we use to manage more than ten million domain names for more than 10,000 resellers. Plus, you can use a familiar API to register TLDs for which you’re accredited, while still registering domains for other TLDs through us.

See, I think most service providers considering a choice between reselling and accreditation would think about it this way:

If I resell, I don’t have to worry about the technology, but I sacrifice some ownership and (inevitably) some branding.
If I become an accredited registrar, I get that extra bit of control (and accountability) but I assume a significant technical burden.

There is indeed a significant upfront investment and effort involved in becoming an accredited registrar. But once you decide that investment is worth it, our OpenSRS Registrar Service is sort of like having your cake and eating it too. You get that branding all the way through (to WHOIS records and elsewhere), you get the extra bit of control and accountability, but you still get to offload the really messy technical stuff.

We have tons of information on our website about our Registrar Service, including a case study that explains how we helped Holland’s largest telco KPN, transition from an in-house system, to our Registrar Service for .NL domains.

The most important thing I’d like you to consider is this:

If you’re already selling domain names and interested in becoming an accredited registrar, we can help you through the accreditation and technical certification process in addition to providing one of the best domain name registration and management solutions in the industry. And if you are already a registrar and you’re spending way too much managing systems and processes outside your core competence, we can help you too.

lunes, 25 de octubre de 2010

Locking .CA Domain Names

Posted: 25 Oct 2010 03:34 AM PDT

The transition to the new EPP-based registry platform for .CA domains went very smoothly. The last of a couple of minor bugs have now been fixed and everything is back to the new normal for .CA domains.

We thank all of our Resellers for their help and patience throughout the transition process. The result is a better experience for .CA domain registrants and a .CA domain extension that’s much easier to sell and support.

Locking your .CA Domains

We do have one important follow-up note for Resellers with .CA domains in their accounts. With the transition to the new platform, domain locking is now available for .CA domains. The default state for domains after the transition is “unlocked” so you will want to lock the .CA domains in your account to provide an added level of security to the registrants of those domains.

Using the “Bulk Domain Change Management” section of the Reseller Web Interface makes this a pretty simple task:

Click on “Bulk Domain Change Management”. Then click “Bulk Domain Search” which will allow you to get a list of all the .CA domains in your account.
Search for “*” and select .ca domains in the “Search for Domains by TLD” section. Add your email address and click “Results to File” to run the search.
In a few minutes you’ll receive a list of the .ca domains in your account. Copy the list out of the email and then paste it into a text editor and save it as a .txt file with one domain per line.
Return back to the “Bulk Domain Change Management” screen and click on “Domain Lock” to start the locking process.
On the next screen, select “Upload a list of items” and then “Choose File” to upload the text file you just created. Add you email address to get a confirmation email when the bulk change is completed. Then select “Lock Domain(s)” and click “Submit” to lock the domains.

Here’s a quick screencast tutorial demonstrating how to do it:

viernes, 22 de octubre de 2010

New Features and Enhancements for OpenSRS Email Service plus 1 more

New Features and Enhancements for OpenSRS Email Service

Posted: 21 Oct 2010 11:15 AM PDT

We’re just putting the finishing touches on a Fall Release for OpenSRS Email Service. Your users should see these new features and enhancements starting on October 28th, 2010.

Here’s what’s happening:

Allowable email message size increased to 35MB: incoming and outgoing messages can now be larger. This reflects the increasing size of things like photos and other attachments users are sending through email.
Maximum length of a folder name increased: users can now create folder names up to 40 characters in length (up from 15) for both IMAP and Webmail.
Three new languages: Webmail is now available in Swedish, Norwegian and Danish including the user help system built into the webmail interface. This is in addition to the languages already supported: English, French, Spanish, German, Dutch, Italian and Brazilian Portuguese.
Per-user branding: you can brand webmail down to the user account level instead of just the domain level to add or remove features like the calendar and RSS reader for a subset of accounts on a domain. You’ll see a new drop-down menu to select the brand on both the “New Mailbox” and “Edit Mailbox” screens in the Mail Adminstration Center (MAC) where you can set the brand on the account.

Expect to see the new release in the Production Test Environment (PTE) starting on October 21st, 2010. A week later, on October 28th, 2010, we’ll promote the release to both Cluster A and B.

Welcome Thorsten Einig, OpenSRS’ New Managing Director, Europe

Posted: 21 Oct 2010 04:35 AM PDT

It gives me great pleasure to welcome Thorsten Einig to the OpenSRS team as our new Managing Director, Europe. Thorsten brings a wealth of experience in the hosting and internet industry, and we're excited to have him leading the charge as we continue to support and grow our OpenSRS business in Europe!

Thorsten has more than ten years of experience in the hosting and domain industry. He spent eight years with 1&1 Internet in both Germany – being in charge of 1&1's domain business – and the USA, and last held the position of Business Development Manager for 1&1 in North America. Most recently, Thorsten worked as a Senior Product Manager at Leaseweb B.V. in the Netherlands.

Thorsten's first-hand knowledge of the hosting industry and his depth of experience, specifically in terms of understanding the unique needs of the European market, will be of great benefit to our existing customers in Europe. We've tasked Thorsten with the responsibility for growing our business in Europe while still maintaining and reinforcing the existing strong relationships that we have with our European resellers.

Thorsten will be based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, while his team will remain in the UK to bridge Canada and Europe.

jueves, 21 de octubre de 2010

Welcome Thorsten Einig, OpenSRS’ New Managing Director, Europe plus 1 more

Welcome Thorsten Einig, OpenSRS’ New Managing Director, Europe

Posted: 21 Oct 2010 04:35 AM PDT

Thorsten will be based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, while his team will remain in the UK to bridge Canada and Europe.

Free WHOIS Privacy from OpenSRS

Posted: 20 Oct 2010 08:36 AM PDT

Did you know that an estimated 20% of .COM domain owners have WHOIS Privacy enabled on their domain’s public WHOIS record?

For GoDaddy, that means as many as 8 million domain owners pay an extra $8.99 per year to have their personal address and contact information protected from the public Internet. That’s tens of millions of additional dollars into the pocket of the world’s largest domain registrar!

Many wholesale registrars enjoy high margins on WHOIS Privacy as well. For example, when a reseller purchases the Privacy Protect option from eNom, that adds an extra $6 per year to the cost of the domain registration.

At OpenSRS, we offer WHOIS privacy for free.

It’s just another reseller-friendly choice we’ve made (foregoing substantial additional profit) to set ourselves apart from our competition and to help you profitably satisfy your customers and set yourselves apart from your competition.

So, WHOIS Privacy has real value to your customers. You get it for free. This affords you two wonderful options:

Charge for it (like GoDaddy) and enjoy the 100% profit.
Make sure your customers know and appreciate that you are not charging for it.

(Look out for some great white label materials soon to help explain the benefits of WHOIS Privacy to your customers!)

Giving you the opportunity. Giving you the choice. For us, that’s what being reseller-friendly is all about.