Web Hosting Association in the Works

• By theWHIR.com , June 23, 2006

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Web Hosting Association in the Works

By Anastasia Tubanos, theWHIR

June 23, 2006 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- The Web hosting industry is constantly expanding and evolving, by most accounts a very healthy business. But some say that Web hosts, a complex and dissimilar collection of businesses, and their related vendors could benefit from being unified in an industry-wide association.

Tony Holloway is one of those people. In fact, he's currently the driving force behind a project pursuing that end. Holloway is the CTO and co-founder of Web hosting provider Madrooster (madrooster.com), but for roughly the past year he has been working on providing the hosting industry with an association. Known temporarily as the International Providers of Internet Technologies & Hosting Association (ipitha.org) the association's mission, says Holloway, is, "to promote high standards of integrity, ethics and professionalism while providing business resources to the hosting industry."

The idea was born just after the first annual HostingCon last June, where Holloway noticed the camaraderie between vendors and attendees. He started batting about the idea of an industry-wide association with them. There was interest, but nobody seemed to want to shoulder the burden. A few months later, however, Holloway encountered a situation that drove him to take the project on himself.

"We got the chance to pick up an alliance from one of those kiddie hosters; one of those 14- to 15-year-old kids running a server out of their house. Well, the servers got unplugged and the kid was like 'sorry about that' and about 400 people lost their Web sites," says Holloway. "That's just unethical, plus there were some people who paid for years of Web hosting and only got two or three months out of it. So we got involved and dealt with that the best we could. But I thought to myself, what prevents these kids from getting up and screwing people over? There's no protection out there for the consumer. So that kind of pushed my drive for this. Let's give the consumer a reason to buy from us, give him something that says, hey, we plan on being here and if for some reason we're not here, we're not going to just leave you hanging."

Holloway has a list of goals he hopes the association will address, including working on group discounts for health insurance and retirement plans and providing legal advice discounts. More importantly, Holloway wants the association to set strict regulations, not with price but with validating the status of a company with proof of business license and Tax ID numbers. He also hopes to set some standards like having hosts install the same PHP modules or working with software vendors to make systems compatible when moving a client from one host to another.

Another function Holloway thinks will be invaluable is training and general information for Web hosts hiring new sales reps or technicians. "You can help save your company money by not having to hire a MSCE or A+ for a Level One tech," he says. And as many Web hosts know, it's not always easy finding a sales rep who is completely familiar with how to sell for the hosting industry.

"Where I'm getting my opposition right now is regarding sales. Everyone wants to know how this association will bring them more sales," says Holloway. "Directly, it's not going to bring them more sales. What this is trying to do is help them run their businesses more efficiently so that they can spend time concentrating on their marketing schemes. As far as the uniformity of standards in the industry, that right there should reduce their support tickets. This enables them to focus on marketing and advertising so that they can make more money. It's about saving them time and money and running their business more effectively than it is about bringing in the direct customer."

Andy Schroepfer, president of Tier 1 research (tier1research.com), says he likes the idea that it could help some of the more poorly run companies become more organized, thereby raising the professionalism of the industry. But he believes Holloway's list of benefits is lacking if this association is to be a fit for everyone.

"You can't have an industry-wide association unless you get the industry-wide players to participate, so what's in it for IBM, Verio or Equinix? Tell me what's in it for them and maybe I'll understand," says Schroepfer. "Any company that's got real money at stake in this business is already going to be providing the best they can on the benefit side, already paying more than they need to on lawyer costs, already building partnerships with people they believe they need to align with. I just don't see where this association is going to be able to attract those types of firms into this alliance."

Although Holloway knows larger companies won't necessarily benefit from the insurance and legal discounts, he sees a few things that would make it worthwhile for them.

"The consumer benefit makes it almost a peer pressure type of thing," he says. "If a smaller company is proudly displaying association membership and the reasons behind it, and yet someone like, say, GoDaddy isn't, it could make the consumer wonder about GoDaddy's position in the industry. This happens all the time in other industries. The second reason has to do with standardization of the industry. GoDaddy gets a large number of transfers from other companies and with standardization this will help make these transfers go easier. While its true GoDaddy could benefit from this without becoming a member, a good businessman knows to support things that are helping you run more effectively, so it only makes sense for them join the association."

Nothing is yet set in stone. Holloway hopes to discuss the logistics behind an industry-wide association at a meeting on July 16 at the Mirage Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. He also hopes to have daily meetings during HostingCon to get the most feedback possible before anything is officially formed.

"We're going to generally touch on every subject and for people who think I should be shot, hung or whatever for bringing the idea up, I want to know why they're so passionate about not having this association," says Holloway. "And for those who are interested, I want to give them more of an example of the things an association could provide. Some people have a union-type structure in their heads because they haven't been part of an industry-wide association before or because they're uneducated, but I think it's just a matter of finding what direction the association needs to go in and making sure that people are going to be there to support it and take part in it."

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