Dot-com companies that need to hedge their bets on deploying successful
e-commerce Web sites may want to take a moment to review a new player in
the market.
Since its inception early in May, Hostcentric Inc. has managed to
transform the privately-held Web hosting firm into one of the top
application management and e-commerce solutions providers in the nation.
California-based Alldomains.com Inc. and Maxim Computer Systems Corp.
joined New York-based NSI Web Design and Virtualscape, Inc. in a merger
with Web2010 of Orlando, FL. The five-of-a-kind firm unified its
middle-market Web hosting services under the Hostcentric brand name.
Hostcentric is currently home to more than 44,500 Web sites for about
19,000 customers over its network comprised of more than 600 dedicated and
390 collocated servers.
Hostcentric quickly became one of the first companies certified by Oracle Corp. to provide hosting solutions
for its applications. Hostcentric’s certification allowed the firm to serve
up Oracle’s much hyped e-business offering known as
11i, the industry’s first fully integrated e-business applications suite.
As an application service provider, Hostcentric this week become part of an
elite business core operating under the umbrella of Oracle’s Authorized
Application Provider program. The tag allows Hostcentric to offer an array
of Oracle applications, in addition to its 11i suite.
Fred Pounds, Hostcentric chief executive officer, said Oracle’s
ratification of the Hostcentric’s ASP portfolio marks a turning point for
the firm.
“We believe that Oracle’s revolutionary, Web-enabled product will provide
our customers with the same back- office functionality and solutions that
traditionally only larger companies could implement,” Pounds said.
Scott Eleguin, Oracle practice development manager, said Hostcentric is the
most requested Oracle reference that its customers ask to speak with.
“Hostcentric is the only Oracle Authorized Application Provider that is
implementing the e-business suite 11i internally,” Eleguin said. “Its
services are in demand.”
Doug Allen, Hostcentric, chief information officer, said that due to its
recent amalgamation of Web hosting firms, Hostcentric needed a customer
relationship management solution that could integrate operations from of
the five founding firms.
According to Allen, Oracle’s CRM suite smoothes out the kinks in operations
by giving Hostcentric a complete view of its customers’ rented software
configurations as well as histories of their service requests.
“By consolidating all customer information into a single system,
Hostcentric will be able to service their customers more efficiently,”
Allen said. “It makes customer information instantly available at every
point of contact, whether it is with an account representative in a local
office or when a customer calls into the 24×7 tech support center for
assistance.”
Additionally, Oracle service provides Hostcentric with the ability to
create a single control panel where both employees and customers can go to
view and manage account information and requests for technical support.
Allen said Hostcentric’s Oracle call center package should be live by October.
“Hostcentric is well ahead of the learning curve, since we’ve been in the
implementation of numerous 11i applications for the past three months,”
Allen said.
According to IDC, revenues for Web
hosting services will grow from $1.8 billion in 1999 to $18.9 billion in 2003.
Forrester Research forecasts that application service hosting revenues will surge
from $933 million in 1999 to more than $11.3 billion by 2003.
By obtaining Oracle
elite status, Hostcentric has put together an
impressive offering just in time to take a deep drink from both revenue
streams.
As a result, Hostcentric is gaining ground on fulfilling its goal of
becoming an industry leader. It is capable of providing a near-perfect
package of mission critical e-commerce solutions to middle-market companies
that do business on the Net. Hostcentric is a good bet for companies that
choose to operate in the new dot-com economy.
