Trellix Lands Interland

Trellix President and CEO Don Bulens says today’s announced deal to provide Web hosting services provider Interland with Web-based publishing tools isn’t his company’s biggest deal to date, but, “it has the potential to be.”

Under terms of the agreement, the Concord, Mass.-based Trellix will license its Web site publishing platform on a private-label basis to Interland, an Atlanta-based company that provides Web hosting to small and medium businesses. The fast-growing Interland hosts more than 300,000 Web sites.

“Interland is one of the most well-positioned Web hosting companies in terms of growth, growing both organically and through acquisition. It also has a strong OEM business,” Bulens told ASPnews. In recent months, Interland has acquired the small business customers of AT&T (see AT&T Sells Off Small Biz Hosting Accounts), Interliant (see Interliant Sheds, Interland Grows) and CommuniTech.Net (see Interland Acquires CommuniTech.Net.

The Trellix Web site publishing tools will be used by Interland on what Bulens describes as “double private-label” basis. That is, Interland will license the software and deploy it in its hosting centers one of two ways — either under its own brand or to its OEM customers, who will offer it under their branding.
Trellix also offers its platform as a hosted product (see Trellix Caps a Busy Week).

“The flexibility of the Trellix publishing platform enables us to deploy it widely, and use it for both our direct and partner channels,” said Mark Alexander, Interland’s senior vice president of sales and marketing. “Trellix’s solution provides Interland and our small business customers with a complete solution for building and maintaining a successful online presence — from Web site building to promotion to e-commerce tools.”

Included in the Trellix platform are Web services from Miva (e-commerce), TimeTrade (scheduling and resource management) and Roving (email marketing).
In addition to the Web site building tools, the platform also includes the Integrated Configuration Environment (ICE), a customization and version management system. ICE allows Trellix partners to integrate external applications and services with the Trellix platform using software developer kits (SDKs) and application programming interfaces (APIs). Partners can also customize the look and content of the site building application.

IDC estimates that the small business Web publishing market will reach $9 billion by 2003. Bulens says that more and more telcos and other service providers want a piece of that action. It’s a big, but “exceptionally difficult market,” Bulens said, making a private-label/OEM alternative attractive. “Everyone has retreated to their core competencies.”

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