Daredevils With a Net —continued

Swimming with the phishers
Credit card fraud and identity theft are other areas that are of prime concern for webhosts who find themselves as the first line of defense in a growing number of attacks.

"We think the latest "phishing" attacks are of great concern not only to us, but to the reputation of all businesses on the Internet," suggests Parsons.

Phishing involves the sending of an e-mail which appears to come from a legitimate company but is actually an attempt to get the receiver to surrender private information, such as credit card data. Besides just stealing money from your credit card account, the captured information could be used far more devious purposes, such as identity theft.

Typically, the e-mail directs the receiver to a website where they are asked to update personal information, such as passwords and credit card, social security, and bank account numbers on a bogus website.

An example of a phishing scam is the recent flood of e-mails which were supposedly sent from eBay and claimed that the user's account would be suspended unless credit card information was updated. It is estimated that tens of thousands of people were tricked into providing credit card information in this manner.

"We have joined the Anti Phishing Working Group, an industry association focused on eliminating identity theft and fraud within the industry," adds Parsons. "Additionally, we recently implemented an anti phishing tool for the approximately 900,000 e-mail accounts on our network which identifies and eliminates phishing attacks at the server level."

Working on solutions for spam attacks, viruses, and fraud are part of what the webhosts say is their primary job, but there is a lot more to filling the big top.

Above everything else, webhosts list customer service as the single most important factor in becoming a success in this unforgiving business.

Michael Yablonowitz of Somerset, N.J.-based uplinkearth (and a onetime employee of Jupitermedia), a small webhost with ten employees, says no matter what the size of your company, it all comes down to one thing: service. "If you don't have it, you might as well quit right now."

Earthlink says customer support, including listening to the needs of customers and providing 24 / 7 tech support, is essential.

"Webhosts that do not provide the support that customers demand and expect will not be successful in this industry," comments Parsons. "There is simply no substitute for doing a good job on a consistent basis and then backing it up with great customer support."

Asked, 'what separates a successful webhost from those that will not make it?' FatCow's Ziesmann says that in the world of webhosts, three things separate the haves from the have nots. "First, top tier hosts operate their own data centers. This allows for managed costs, economies of scale and the ability to quickly respond to emergency contingencies."

The second tool for success, he believes, is having sufficient marketing capitol in order to "cut through the market clutter." The final element in creating customer loyalty is for the host to operate their own customer service department. "Outsourced customer service can provide near term cost benefit, but in the long term, negates the building of a core, loyal customer base which can be leveraged for referral," he said.

For Ensim Corporation, the formula is simple: "Keeping operations costs low, coupled with loyal, satisfied customers."

Crystal gazing
Where is the webhosting business headed in the next five, ten, or even, 20 years? "If I knew this, I'd be there now," jokes uplinkearth's Yablonowitz.

"We face many challenges, but changing technology and increased demand by customers seem to be the near term changes," he adds. "We are headed in a direction where the webhost will evolve from being a data storage provider to a one stop shop for small- to medium-sized businesses. Expanding that offering is critical in the next five to ten years." He also believes that 'free hosting' is a model that is doomed.

"In the next few years, the demand side of the market will become increasingly more sophisticated and experienced, so they will be better able to differentiate between established providers. The result will be fewer, better choices for the hosting consumer," notes Ziesmann. Another result, he believes, will be greater emphasis on quality of service and less focus on bottom-line price.

"We feel that webhosting will take on even greater importance in the next five to ten years as companies seek to lower their internal IT costs and reduce the need for in-house systems and network administration staff," says Parsons. "Over the next ten to 20 years, just about everyone will have an Internet presence in one way or another. The pervasiveness of domain names, e-mail, and hosting will be similar to technologies like the telephone and television."

As they add new acts to their circus of offerings and play fresh tunes on the Internet calliope, webhosts continue to thrill spellbound audiences in their quest to keep them coming back for more.

—End

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