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Interland, Inc.- Web Hosting -
Category Directory
(404)
720-8301
303
Peachtree Center Ave., Suite 500
Atlanta, GA 30303
www.interland.com
Sales
$107 million
Business Description
Interland, Inc. is a leader in delivering standardized business-class Web
hosting and online solutions to small-and-medium-sized businesses (“SMB”),
and helping them to achieve success by providing the knowledge, services and
tools to build, manage and promote businesses online. Interland offers a
broad range of products and services, including shared and dedicated hosting
services, e-commerce, application hosting, Web site development, marketing
and optimization tools.
Products and Services
Interland offers an integrated suite of Web hosting, Web site design,
applications hosting and related business services designed to specifically
address the needs of small-and-medium-sized businesses. These services
include:
• Shared web hosting;
• Dedicated web hosting and managed services;
• Web site design services;
• Web site promotion services;
• E-commerce and other applications hosting services;
• Domain name registration services; and
• Other Web hosting-related products and services.
Most of the Company’s web hosting revenues are generated from recurring
monthly fees. The remainder is derived from one-time setup fees for
installation and other related product and services. The Company generally
sells its services under agreements having terms of one to twenty-four
months; nonetheless, the customer may often be permitted to cancel during an
initial thirty-day period. Customers pay for the services either in a lump
sum in advance, or monthly. During fiscal 2003, the Company derived 96.9% of
its revenues from hosting and other hosting-related services compared to
98.2% in fiscal 2002. The balance of the revenues had been generated
primarily by other network related services.
Shared web hosting
Shared web hosting services range from entry-level starter packages to
business e-commerce shared Web hosting products. Interland’s shared hosting
packages minimize the cost for customers by providing hosting services for
multiple customers on a single shared server, spreading the cost of the
service over many users. Starter packages are designed for Web sites with
relatively low volumes of traffic and provide a Web presence at minimal
cost. The Company’s products are scalable solutions that make it simple to
upgrade to more full-featured services. The majority of the Company’s
customers currently use its shared hosting services.
Interland’s services feature easy-to-use control panels and extensive
on-line documentation that allow customers to control easily their own
applications. Business e-commerce packages feature important e-commerce
services including Secure Socket Layer encryption for e-commerce
transactions, shopping carts and database technology to conduct product and
service sales online. Through some of the Company’s business relationships,
its customers can also obtain merchant account and online payment processing
services.
On September 16, 2002, the Company introduced its blueHALO™ shared hosting
architecture, which was designed to integrate network operations onto a
common architecture and to implement a full suite of internal systems to
support the Company’s hosting services. Key technical features of the
blueHALO™ architecture include redundant firewall protection, load
balancing, multiple web server arrays, duplicate network attached storage
units and a disk backup system.
Dedicated hosting
In contrast to a shared hosting environment, which hosts multiple customers
on one server, dedicated hosting employs one or more servers dedicated to a
single customer. Dedicated hosting provides a customer with increased
performance, server access, the ability to use custom applications, greater
security and higher levels of technical support. Interland provides both
managed and unmanaged dedicated services. For managed dedicated hosting
services, the Company monitors, administers and troubleshoots the software
that operates the client server. For unmanaged dedicated hosting services,
the customer administers the server remotely, with the Company providing the
hardware monitoring and network and hardware support. Dedicated hosting
services are targeted for Web sites that generally require sophisticated
databases for critical application needs or typically experience high user
traffic volumes. The Company’s managed services are targeted to those who
need the complex services required for mission-critical Web sites, but do
not want to administer their own server. The dedicated services come with
proprietary control panel technology, which enables customers to setup and
maintain Web sites on the server.
Interland offers dedicated Web hosting services for major computer
platforms, including Microsoft NT, Windows and Linux. Since its acquisition
of Dialtone, Interland has achieved a leadership position in the dedicated
hosting market.
Web site design services
Following its acquisition of Trellix, Interland recently introduced
professional Web site development services. This expansion of our services
beyond our core hosting products is a recognition of the market’s evolving
dynamics. Industry analysts estimate that nearly 80% of all SMBs in the
United States do not have a Web presence. The Company believes that the
primary barriers to adoption of online solutions by SMBs have been their
lack of technical expertise and the cost barrier to trial; that is, the
initial cost of developing a Web site. Today, before being able to evaluate
the benefits of a solid online presence, an SMB would have to expend
thousands of dollars or devote numerous hours to deploy complex technology.
As a result, penetration has remained low. The Company believes that the key
to penetrating the estimated 18 million SMBs who have no online presence and
those among the 4 million whose online presence is not regarded as effective
is to deliver an affordable and easy-to-use total solution. The Company
refers to this business opportunity as the “mainstream market”. Although our
core hosting business is limited to providing hosting services only to
customers that already have a Web site, with the new software tools
available since the acquisition of Trellix, the Company is able to target
SMBs without a Web site. Interland’s in-house designers use the suite of
Trellix development tools to build full-featured, professional SMB Web
sites. Interland-designed Web site functionality includes features such as
e-commerce, scheduling, auctions, online chat and coupons. Because the
design tool was developed with non-technical end users in mind, customers
are able to make simple changes to their Web sites and manage their online
presence.
Web site promotion services
In order to benefit fully from a professional Web presence, SMBs need
assistance in promoting their Web site. Interland offers a broad range of
online marketing and promotions services, including online search, directory
registration, email and coupon marketing.
Interland is targeting the mainstream SMB market with a unique value
proposition offering a bundle of services, site hosting as well as
professional design, all for an attractive fixed monthly cost.
E-commerce and other applications hosting services
Interland’s applications hosting services allow customers to outsource to it
the deployment, configuration, hosting, management and support of various
software applications. The Company’s applications hosting services allow
customers to deploy a software application more quickly and with reduced
initial costs. In addition, many small-and-medium-sized businesses do not
have the internal technical resources to support multiple software
applications. The Company therefore believes that outsourcing these
functions to it is a desirable alternative for these businesses. The types
of applications the Company hosts for customers include collaboration tools,
business tools, mail-service tools and e-commerce applications. Currently,
the applications that the company hosts consist of Web site building tools,
Online storefront and e-commerce solutions and a suite of managed services
all of which help businesses succeed online.
Other Web hosting-related products and services
Interland also makes available other complementary products and services
including domain name registration and technical consulting. The Company
believes these value-added products and services enable it to provide its
customers the necessary tools to create, host and maintain a successful Web
presence. The Company believes that the outsourcing of these functions is a
desirable and increasingly preferred alternative for SMBs.
Corporate Strategy
Interland’s continuing strategic objective is to be the leading provider of
standardized Web hosting and online solutions to small-and-medium-sized
businesses. The Company intends to serve profitably its target market by
maintaining scale and efficiency in its operations, while employing
technology to deliver an attractive value proposition to its customers.
Interland believes the most profitable segment of the Web solutions and
hosting market is serving small-and medium-sized businesses. This market is
large, growing, and may be served with standardized products and services.
Standardization of products and services permits the use of standardized
processes, and of a higher degree of automation in many areas of operation,
including the Web site design process. This approach stands in sharp
contrast to that of other Web hosting companies, which focus on providing
labor-intensive, customized solutions to larger enterprises. By delivering
business-class Web solutions for SMBs in a scalable and efficient manner,
Interland believes that it can offer better value to its customers, leading
to growing market share and profits. On the other hand, certain aspects of
the SMB market present substantial challenges and risks.
ticker: INLD
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