Israeli players in the web hosting and billing markets, Sphera and TeleKnowledge, are partnering to bring added value to global hosting operations, Sphera said Wednesday at the ISPCON show in San Jose.
“Our mission is to automate the business operations of hosting providers, ISPs and ASPs, to drive excellent customer service and create new revenue streams for the hosting business,” said Sphera’s chief executive, Tamar Naor.
Sphera’s HostingDirector software manages all the layers in the hosting market, from the site owner through to the network service providers, she said. By “wrapping” each website up on the Virtual Dedicated Server, new applications can be automatically added. This will enable hosting companies to rapidly scale customers up from $30 a month to higher end packages, increasing their revenues.
“It is a people-less application,” said Naor. “Today, it takes 12 days to plug an ecommerce application into the customer site. Sphera reduces this to zero.”
HostingDirector 3.0, which is currently available for the Solaris and Linux platforms and which can be branded with the client’s logo, is being tested by a Japanese customer in Tokyo managing sites in Israel and London. An NT version of the software will be launched at the beginning of 2001.
TeleKnowledge brings its Total-e solution for value-based billing and revenue sharing. The company was founded in Kfar Saba, Israel, and has offices in Massachusetts and around Europe,
Sphera, which was founded in 1998, employs 70 people in Ramat Gan, Israel, and in its offices in New York, Washington D.C. and the U.K.