Nov 9, 2006 : ISPCON Shifts to Profits Wednesday

📅 November 9, 2006 - Internet service provider conference ISPCON carried on Wednesday in Santa Clara, California, with service providers taking to the exhibit hall in greater numbers and sessions shifting from the broader marketing theories that populated the previous day's agenda to more specific directions for making money.


The day's earliest events included a presentation in the hosting track that involved WHIR bloggers David Snead and Isabel Wang, who discussed the market for "Hosting SaaS or Web services for SMEs."

In Wednesday's Keynote session, "Who do You Want to be When You Grow Up? Four Providers You Wish You Were (and how to get there)" representatives from four service providers, including Rich Bader of EasyStreet Online Services (easystreet.com), Dan Hoffman of M5 Networks (m5net.com), Dane Jasper of Sonic.net (sonic.net) and Jonathan Snyder of KeyOn Communications (keyon.com) contributed to a discussion moderated by another WHIR blogger, Paul Stapleton of DH Capital (dhcapitalllc.com).

The panelists offered advice on the kinds of strategies new and upcoming ISPs might employ in their efforts to achieve the kind of success present onstage.

In an afternoon vendor sponsored session held by SWsoft (swsoft.com) product manager Doug Johnson led ISPs through the process of building out their infrastructure using SWsoft's platform to offer services like Web hosting and hosted Microsoft Exchange, drawing additional revenue from their existing customer bases.

Johnson's presentation offered projections for the kind of infrastructure required to serve 1,000 customers, 5,000 customers or more, along with elaborate financial breakdowns of the kinds of returns those investments were likely to produce over one, two and three years.

An afternoon hosting session on "Offering Utility Computing for SaaS and Web 2.0" saw Todd Abrams of Layered Technologies (layeredtech.com 👉 Total Reviews: 3
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Along with altering the pricing model, they agreed, gets hosting providers and customers away from placing value on the specs of the box underlying the hosting service as customers simply purchase capacity. This enables hosting providers to make use of older equipment in constructing grids, gets customers away from the idea of owning the boxes running their applications and enables providers to deliver additional applications through the same equipment.

In the day's final hosting session, "Driving Profits with Development, E-commerce and Applications," panelists David Fortini of Forval International (elipservices.com), Scott Jarus of Cognition Technologies (cognitiontechnologies.com), Jay Schaivo of GeoTrust (geotrust.com) and John McKown of Delaware.Net (delaware.net -> hostinger.com) discussed services like Web development and e-commerce, that can drive revenue in addition to more basic hosting services. They highlighted some of the platforms, applications and verticals best suited to generating profits with these services.

ISPCON ended its Wednesday schedule with a cocktail reception and "CEO Exchange" networking session. The event concludes Thursday with a closing reception and Segway giveaway, as well as a complete schedule of afternoon events.