Hello Mark,
I fully understand your position.
What I am suggesting in terms of "extra services" are not major services but
simple complimentary additions to a domain that a customer expects upon
getting a new domain name.
-simply domain forwarding
-under construction page
-catchall email forwarding
I am not suggesting Full email services, or Hosting Services, or DSN
management, or any other major service
One of my major points that supports the above is that other registrars
already offer those services ... so basically OpenSRS resellers as a whole
are at a disadvantage which means OpenSRS the company is at a disadvantage.
Another point is there is a lot more to actually selling a product that just
the technology. So even if all resellers have exactly the same product. The
company that excels at marketing, branding, selling, support etc. will
always win. Plus the current innovative companies will find other tech ways
to differentiate themselves if need be.
This is not a black and white issue ... there are many gray areas ... which
is where I am
> Ask yourself this: if OpenSRS starts offering all the extra services,
> like URL forwarding and web hosting, then what will they need RSP's
> for?
to answer your question. They will need to RSPs to sell the domains like
they do now. Also they will need the RSPs to provide valuable feedback on
their services, provide new ideas, constantly get feedback on their software
etc.
later
David
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Mark Jeftovic
> Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2001 11:11 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: RE: Wish List
>
>
>
> I have to speak up at this point after sitting on my hands and keeping
> my mouth shut thus far in this thread.
>
> Speaking from my own experience, the success of our company stems
> directly from what OpenSRS does not offer. Why? Because thats
> what we do, we add the value and thus we justify the mark-up.
>
> Now we have spent a lot of time, effort and money developing our
> systems, infrastructure and support mechansims to do just this.
> In fact, we have often said that when you consider the end-to-end
> functionality of domain name management, registration is the easy
> part, and what we specialize in (managed DNS) is the hard part.
>
> The last thing we want to see is OpenSRS opening the door for a
> bunch of RSP's who don't have the technical expertise in-house
> to provide our services to enter our market. Not because this puts
> us in competition with all those RSPs, but because this puts us
> in competition with OpenSRS (leave out for the moment that we
> already do compete with OpenSRS in .CA)
>
> We've found our relationship with OpenSRS very beneficial and as
> we enter our fourth year of business we plan on this continuing,
> but if we wake up one morning and OpenSRS RSP's can suddenly offer
> URL forwarding, email forwarding and DNS management without lifting
> a finger themselves to do it, well then our relationship with OpenSRS
> hits a new juncture.
>
> There are other services OpenSRS can introduce which do not raise these
> issues, the most likely one is already here, web certs. Now here is an
> industry segment just waiting to be taken because the established players
> are overpriced (Verisign, Thawte) or inept (Equifaxsecure) and the cert
> player OpenSRS has teamed up with (Entrust) is from my brief experience
> in dealing with them, both helpful and clueful.
>
> So there is nice large market sitting there that is a perfect compliment
> for a high percentage of RSP's (whose core value add is often web
> hosting), which is dominated by overpriced, complacent or incompetent
> companies, with little barrier to entry and enough room for some quite
> healthy margins (an easy 50% markup at 149.99) and not many RSP's seem
> to be jumping on it.
>
> Ask yourself this: if OpenSRS starts offering all the extra services,
> like URL forwarding and web hosting, then what will they need RSP's
> for?
>
> Think about it.
>
> -mark
>
> --
> mark jeftovic
> http://www.easydns.com
> http://mark.jeftovic.net
>
>
>
