Sitepak's new software plugs into an existing network, providing a layer of automation to any data center that already has all of the Internet functions (such as mail, billing, and DNS).

by ISP-Planet Staff [April 9, 2003]

Sitepak, a privately-owned company based in Montreal, Canada, yesterday announced the availability of its Onsite Hosting Controller (OHC) software.

The company says that its software is standards compliant and that the product does not lock in customers. "If the OHC is removed," says Eileen Goldfarb, Sitepak CEO, "the webhost only loses the control panels and provisioning capabilities that OHC provides." Essential services, including the websites themselves, remain intact.

It is a carrier grade solution, and can be installed on servers running any operating system including Sun Solaris 8 or RedHat Linux. The company is Sun One certified and is a Sun iForce Partner. The product uses protocols such as LDAP, SOAP, and SSH to interact with applications and infrastructure already in place.

"It was clear to us that [shared hosting] had to be part of telecommunications companies' full service offerings and it was equally clear that there had to be a way they could make money at it," says Goldfarb. "OHC lets Telcos do both. As a purpose-built hosting solution, it obviates the problems inherent with outsourcing and appliance-based models and allows providers to leverage existing infrastructure and intellectual property investments."

Goldfarb says that the fact that OHC works with existing infrastructure and does not force companies to redesign their networks gives Sitepak's product an advantage over appliance-based solutions, which require that services be installed on each server.

Adds Francois Belanger, Sitepak CTO, "For example, our server will provision DNS, e-mail, SQL, etc. Microsoft's MS SQL, for example, is priced per-CPU. You can install MS SQL on one server and tighten and optimize that server for MS SQL (or do the same for Apache). The user will not see that the website is on server A, the database is on server B, and the mail is on server C."

Recently announced customers include the ILEC SaskTel of Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada and LDMI of Southfield, Mich., a multi-service telecommunications company which just completed the acquisition of the Michigan and Ohio markets of CLEC Mpower.

Pricing and availability
The product is available now.

Pricing for the complete software license starts at $50 per supported website for 1,000 websites (the minimum order), and decreases dramatically for larger volumes. The complete license allows unlimited users, contacts and groups. Pricing can drop to $15 per website for volume orders.

Pricing for a bundled license tailored to residential broadband customers, providing e-mail only or e-mail and Web services, can drop to $10 per license for volume orders. The minimum order is 1,000.

Limited "personal" licenses are available to those who have already purchased a complete license. The "personal" license is available for a few dollars per website with a minimum purchase of 5,000. It provides minimal functionality for less demanding customers.

An annual support contract, of 25 percent of the license fee, commits Sitepak to providing four updates per year.

License fees include the bundled Sun ONE directory server.