Hostopia, a pure-play hosting wholesaler targeting small-and medium-sized businesses, is aiming to lower the barrier for service providers that want to get into game. The company, as part of that effort, recently unleashed outsourced OSS solutions as well as programs to help carriers boost low-end users up the value chain.
Hostopia Back Office is a series of modules that offer service providers the ability to sign up customers, provision hosting accounts and to bill recurring revenue for hosting services. "Service providers more than ever are challenged by the leanest capex they've ever seen," says Paul Engels, vice president of marketing and business development for Hostopia (for more on the company, see xchange September, page 16). This helps them get service up and running for as low as $1,000 or up to $25,000 for a complex OSS job, he says, adding "We rate that as close to free."
Hostopia has a dozen people working on the back office initiative, says Engels. "Normally three people working two weeks can handle all but most complex job," he says, adding that allows carriers to begin realizing new revenue from hosting quickly.
Also new from Hostopia is a lower tier of service called SOHO Plans. "These are hosting plans that go down market to small business to home office," says Engels. ISPs and telcos have millions of dial-up and hundreds of thousands of broadband subscribers, notes Engels, who says these users are a great opportunity for service providers to raise average revenue per user. What's been missing, he says, is a compelling low-end plan to reach these users and a path to get them to value-added hosting plans.
In its research, Hostopia found that many people with day jobs also have small businesses on the side or relationships with organizations such churches or charity groups. The first step to win business from such users is to get them to register for a domain related to a side business, hobby or community service, Engels says. From there, the service provider can offer the user a small Website. The retail price points are a low as $20 a year for e-mail pointing and domain forwarding. An additional $5 to $20 a month per user can then be added later for services like Web hosting, business-grade e-mail, and Website creation tools, he says.
