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HostSearch > Interviews >

Web Hosting Interview - Advanced Internet Technologies, Inc.

September 2003

Alex Lekas - VP Marketing for Advanced Internet Technologies - AIT.com

HostSearch interview with Alex, who plays an important role in AIT's marketing team, the team behind success of AIT in International hosting industry.

HOSTSEARCH: Hi Alex, can you reveal a little about yourself and your day-to-day role with AIT.com?

ALEX: As the VP of marketing for AIT, it is my job to position the company's message in the best possible light by showing the factors that differentiate us from our competitors. Hosting has dramatically changed since the Internet boom of the mid to late 90's, and we have seen the first phase of the shakeout with companies being bought and sold, merging with others, or going out of business altogether. The second phase is underway now with the key battleground being the small to medium business that has a need for IT services, but has neither the money nor the knowledge to support them in house.

My role is to shape the company's message so that we can show potential customers how selecting AIT as their service provider can improve their productivity and efficiency, reduce their expenses, build their bottom line, or all three. Part of my job is keeping up with what competitors are doing, part is spotting and positioning AIT on the leading edge of market trends, and part is in packaging the company's offerings in a manner that speaks to what customers need and want.

HOSTSEARCH: Can you give us a brief historical run through of AIT.com's development since establishment, and explain the role the company plays in the industry.

ALEX: AIT was founded in 1996, the proverbial garage startup that has since grown into a service provider for more than 190,000 domains in 107 countries, making us one of the world's largest privately held hosting firms. Initially, AIT was itself a reseller of another company's services, and later made the switch to being a stand-alone provider with its own army of resellers. That channel of 5,000 VAR's has been the backbone of the company's growth through hosting packages that give the individual entrepreneur the tools to be an independent ISP.

The experience of having been a reseller was invaluable in helping us see things from the perspective of the customer. Having been the customer allowed us to see processes and procedures that worked and ones that didn't; it also gave us a close-up look at the impact a provider's problems can create for the downstream user. That's one of the reasons we take the service end of the business so seriously. When speaking to customers, we can truly say, "we have been where you are, and have gone to where you want to be".

From its core function as a hosting and domain name provider, AIT has developed a digital toolkit for businesses to include application hosting, e-commerce, security, data storage, IP telephony, Internet access, and network installation. The success of the company's business model led to AIT being ranked 35th on last year's Inc 500 list, and being the only hosting provider to be included among the Deloitte & Touche Fast 500 each of the past three years.

HOSTSEARCH: So what makes your hosting plans unique to the industry?

ALEX: Our plans are geared to provide maximum profit margin for the reseller, and almost total administrative control for both the reseller and end user. The backbone of our offerings is the Independently Managed Hosting & Internet Platform, or IMHIP. The I-MHIP affords complete control over all of the services a reseller provides to his/her customers, to include the provisioning and management of hosting, dialup and domain registration. You get one clean bill each month and you also get a private labeled billing management solution that enables you to seamlessly re-bill your customers.

Hosting plans also come with an unmatched list of free features, to include a shopping cart, unlimited e-mail accounts, a billing solution so resellers can manage their customers, content manager, and private label DNS. That's the value proposition I spoke about earlier. Plans are affordable to begin with; then, we add on a number of free products or services that customers need for their own businesses, or want to re-sell to their customers.

HOSTSEARCH: Wow, that's sounds good! now if you will send a message to all prospect customers at once, what do you have in mind?

ALEX: That we realize our success depends on the customer's success. IT services are no longer a luxury; they're how business gets done. At the same time, there is a long list of providers courting the millions of customers who still do not have an Internet presence while also trying to lure people who get service through other providers. AIT's pledge is to take care of the technology behind your business so you can focus on what's really important - your customers. In addition, people should know AIT is primarily a hosting company; we're not a provider of other services that decided to add hosting because of the revenue potential. Hosting is what we do and it's who we are.

HOSTSEARCH: In your view, which five characteristics turn a good hosting site into a great one?

ALEX: These are my five characteristics that I think good hosting should have;
- Never forgetting that we are, first and foremost, a service company in a very competitive industry.
- A willingness to expand horizontally and look at products/services that augment our core business of hosting; this can be achieved by developing new tools for release to the customer base or by adding new services that are in demand.
- Being fiscally disciplined, a necessary by-product of being a privately held company that has never accepted outside capital. AIT has been profitable from the start, re-investing earnings in itself to grow the company.
- A relentless focus on the customer, in terms of service and in creating new products to expand profit margins for our resellers.
- Providing customers with value; price is a consideration in buying almost anything but a bigger question is, what does that money buy?

HOSTSEARCH: Which of these characteristics do you see as AIT's main strength?

ALEX: The first and fourth, which are interconnected. The hosting industry comes down to customer service. Any company can offer a low price or value-added features, but the key to retaining customers is keeping them happy, you can do that by solving their problems quickly and by listening to them. The IMHIP solution, for instance, came about as a result of talking to our customers about what they wanted from a hosting plan, their "wish list" for a solution. We will call new and old customers alike just to chat, to see what we're doing right and what we need to improve upon, and what help, if any, they need at the moment.

Customers will let you know about their problems in a minute, but it's just as important to find out the things that they like so the staff can continue doing those things. There's a very simple phrase that says, 'if we don't service the customer, someone else will'. That's very true, given the nature of the industry today and the increasing technical knowledge customers have. Plus, customers like it when someone picks up the phone and calls to ask their opinion. We have always received tremendous feedback from that very simple mechanism. We also ask our customers to rate the level of help that our tech support reps provide.

HOSTSEARCH: What strategies do you employ to market AIT.com?

ALEX: Without giving away too much, we're in a handful of magazines, a couple of online sites like "HostSearch", and we pay special attention to search engines.

HOSTSEARCH: You're offering many kinds of services and conducting your business all over the world. How do you manage such rapid growth, adapt to local cultures, etc.

ALEX: We've stayed fairly close to the course charted originally. We've managed money wisely and put the technical infrastructure in place to comfortably handle growth. We've not run into any cultural problems or issues as hosting seems to be a universal language with a narrowly defined set of needs and wants on the part of the consumer.

About 15-20% of our client base is outside of the US and to make AIT more user-friendly to the international consumer, we are translating the web site into multiple languages. Even though most business people around the world speak English, the translation will better explain what we offer. Translation is also going to become a service offering we make available to our customers as they take advantage of the Internet as a marketplace with no geographic borders. For the most part, though, customers overseas are looking for the same things as those in the US: they want a stable hosting plan, solid and dependable service, and value for the money they spend.

HOSTSEARCH: Where do you see yourself, AIT.com and the industry as a whole in five years time?

ALEX: Five years from now, there will be fewer hosting companies. We have already seen one round of mergers and acquisitions, and there will be more of that as some companies find that they have hit their growth ceiling. I don't believe AIT has reached that point and this company will continue to be a player in the marketplace. The industry has also reached the point where companies are getting very specific about the type customer they target: some provide low-cost basic solutions, others target the dedicated customer, and still others focus on the reseller channel. It is increasingly difficult to be all things to all people; the problem with trying that is that you can be good at some of those things, but you will be excellent at none.

The industry's redefinition of itself is happening now as providers go from calling themselves hosting companies to becoming managed service providers. That has been the experience at AIT as we track the evolution of what customers and prospects expect from us. The Internet consumer is much more savvy about technology that five years ago. Business people are becoming very specific as to the tools they want as they see how the Internet can help and also as they discover the limitations of the online component.

As managed service providers, companies like AIT put ourselves in the position of being the one-stop IT shop for business customers. From a user perspective, dealing with a single vendor is much more convenient; as a service provider, it forces you to be even more attuned to what customers need because failure carries a very heavy price. Despite that, the firms with staying power are going to be the ones that are, at heart, hosting service providers who have grown into businesses that offer more. We've seen a lot of companies who added hosting to their list of services find out that there is a lot more to it than simply providing someone server space and connectivity. A favorite saying at AIT is, all roads lead to hosting; we may add new services or branch into different directions, but all of those developments stem from the hosting component of the business.

HOSTSEARCH: What is the first website you visit when you turn on your computer?

ALEX: CEOexpress.com. Talk about having the world in front of you. I'm something of a news junkie given that I spent nearly two decades in journalism prior to joining AIT, so I place high value on a single portal that gives access to information from a variety of subject matter.

HOSTSEARCH: Thank you for your time Alex.

ALEX:

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