Armed with a state of the art network, VenturesOnline.com is making headway
into the SME Web hosting and co-location market.
VenturesOnline.com began as a small Web design business before blossoming into
a full-fledged hosting operation in February 2001. Targeting small and medium-sized
businesses (SME), VenturesOnline.com offers a full suite of Web hosting services
– everything from shared hosting and dedicated servers to co-location, sophisticated
network operations and domain registration.
The single most critical factor that distinguishes VenturesOnline.com from
its competition is a network that is “significantly better than most other
hosting providers,” says Burns. “We have a routing optimization system
which we recently implemented that actually injects routing changes into our
routers to get around network blocks.” The system is based on technology
developed by netVMG. Its core function: to help manage and control the flow
of traffic across VentureOnline.com’s entire network.
Burns elaborates: “Basically, what that system does is that it goes out,
monitors all the traffic out of our network, determines the destination, and
then sends out probes out over our three different carriers and determines which
one provides the best performance. And then we’ll inject more specific
routing into our routers, so the next time traffic goes to that destination
it will take a better route.”
Implementing netVMG allows VenturesOnline.com to operate a state of the art
network that runs at optimal speed and efficiency. “We are actually one
of the first customers to implement netVMG in a large scale hosting environment,”
says Burns.
VenturesOnline.com has moved aggressively into the dedicated hosting and co-location
market space. Keeping in tune with its “Web hosting for Web hosts”
billing, the majority of its hosting business is done through resellers. VenturesOnline.com
CEO John Burns describes a typical reselling customer: "The typical customer
to date has been another smaller Web hosting company who resells from VenturesOnline.com
Virtual Hosting Servers; the next level to progress to is a dedicated server.
It essentially gives those customers a turnkey web hosting business that they
can put their own brand on and grow their business from there.”
Resellers can come from humble beginnings. As Burns explains, “we have
smaller resellers who actually evolve up to dedicated customers.” The idea
is to help all customers and resellers grow. “We really try to ‘cradle
to grave’ customers starting as a small virtual account, where they may
upgrade to a reseller, they get up to a big enough scale where they can afford
a dedicated server, and they just keep migrating up the path,” says Burns.
Growth at VenturesOnline.com has always been tempered with solid financial
realism. And this approach has helped allay the fears of customers who worry
about their hosting provider going belly up and folding. “We are a financially
solid, very stable business,” says Burns.
A deliberate approach to its balance sheet also shapes VentureOnline.com’s
infrastructure decisions. It built and operates its own 10,000 sq. ft. data
center in Greenwood Village, Colorado (a suburb of Denver). “We’ve
gone from co-locating to operating our own data center,” says Burns. The
data center was built in line with the needs of its hosting operations and incurred
no debt (associated with the buildout of the data center). As a result, VenturesOnline.com
was able to avoid the trap of building to the point of overcapacity in anticipation
of demand that never materialized – something that has hit many in the
industry extremely hard.
Geography also contributes to VenturesOnline.com’s overall stability.
With a market reach that extends worldwide to international locales such as
the United Kingdom, Australia and the Middle East, VenturesOnline.com is able
to roll with the ups and downs of the industry. As Burns explains, “even
if the local economy starts to suffer, we are pretty much insulated against
that because we have such a diverse customer base from around the world…and
that helps our stability.”
Solid customer service combined with very affordable pricing is the cornerstone
of VentureOnline.com’s appeal to SMEs. “We offer essentially the same
services as everybody else (but) at a better price…and we provide outstanding
customer service,” says Burns. “We typically respond to a [service]
ticket within an hour.”
Combining a highly efficient network with superior customer service and competitive
pricing has given VenturesOnline.com a leg up on the competition as it continues
to forge ahead in the SME Web hosting and co-location market.
About the Author:
Article courtesy of Tophosts.com |
