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WebCentral Pivotal to Asian-Pacific Web Hosting Growth
WebCentral , Australia's leading supplier of Internet presence solutions is set to dominate the entire Australian marketplace. Though unbeknownst to most Web hosting pure plays in the North American market, WebCentral has been positioning itself within the past couple of months as the de facto market leader in the region through a comprehensive set of partnerships.
In a bid to enlarge its base of over 30,000 users, the 120-employee company has teamed up with Compaq and iNetstore in an effort to get the majority of Australian small businesses online. The alliance is designed to provide an easy and affordable solution for small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs) seeking to start e-commerce operations. The cumulative result is that a complete and affordable package will be created to enable businesses to bridge the gap between hearing about, and actually participating in the Internet economy.
The company is presently adding a thousand new customers a month, according to Stephen Johns, WebCentral vice-president for Asian-Pacific marketing, and plans to add many more clients through this deal and through other concerted efforts aimed to market shared hosting services to Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore.
"We have a very strong Web development channel which has been quite successful for us, but our concurrent mission is to enlarge our presence in the region with the establishment of new offices in these countries," he said in an exclusive interview with the Web Host Industry Review.
In fact, WebCentral has been leveraging its location to take advantage of the myriad of different languages and cultures in the region. The company plans to set up satellite offices versed in the mother tongue of the countries that they plan to operate in. This will allow WebCentral to effectively compete against local competition, while enhancing its operations on a global scale and offering its services to a potential market of millions.
The company is quite optimistic because the roll out of Internet services in the region lags behind that of North America, presenting the company with many great opportunities.
"There is a dramatic difference in infrastructure that exists between what is available in Asia-Pacific and what is available in North America," Johns states. "But despite this fact there is a reasonably high adoption rate of Internet and hosting technologies here."
He estimates that WebCentral controls 40 per cent of the Australian shared hosting market, which is still the leading mode of enterprise hosting in the Asian-Pacific region. With over 700 servers hosted in the company's state-of-the-art network operations center, WebCentral is equipped to host both shared and dedicated clientele on Australia's two major Internet backbones, Telstra Internet and UUNet.
The company's strong regional connectivity enticed Optus, Cable and Wireless' Australian Internet and telecommunications division, to select it for its own suite of Web hosting products. Optus will re-brand and sell a wide range of WebCentral's cost-effective and self-service Web host solutions, which are slated for availability by March 2001.
Optus will no doubt also benefit from the company's two unique features, its automated control panel entitled "Mission Control," and its multi-point content delivery system entitled "HTTP afterburn." The "Mission Control" panel is the intellectual property of WebCentral and is a fully developed automated management system that allows end-users to configure their e-mail and Web server. The "HTTP Afterburn" system leverages the company's working partnership with MCI WorldCom. It allows users to replicate their sites on other continental Internet backbones to ensure that the routing and speed of their Web sites are quick no matter where visitors might be located.
With these strong lines of services and solid relationships with major industry players, it is no wonder that the company recently reported record sales growth, posting December 2000 sales of $1.8 million (Australian), up 150 per cent from the corresponding period last year.
While the Australian marketplace has been traditionally perceived as being on the Internet periphery, WebCentral is pushing connectivity issues on the Australian continent to the forefront. Watch for this company to raise venture capital funding within the next couple of quarters in order to fearlessly expand into the rest of the Asia-Pacific.
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