Ascio, formerly Speednames, gives its partners access to more than 250 top level domains worldwide.

by Jeff Goldman [February 6, 2008]

Ascio Technologies was founded in July of 1999 as Speednames, Inc. In 2001, the company changed its name to Ascio, keeping Speednames as a retail channel while switching Ascio's focus to a partner-based business model.

In January of 2007, Ascio was acquired by UK-based Group NBT plc, which also runs the managed hosting company NetBenefit, the corporate domain name management provider NetNames, the UK webhost Easily.co.uk, and the internet intelligence company Envisional.

Company general manager Jørgen Christensen says Ascio's eight years of experience in the domain name industry serve as a key differentiator for the company. "We have become ccTLD experts," he says. "We can register all TLDs, even the most exotic ones. And all this can be done through one interface. In addition to that, all our partners have their own dedicated service team to help them through everything, and their own account manager that they can contact directly when needed."

Integration options
The company's registration engine, AscioNIC, allows partners to register more than 250 TLDs through any of the following available methods:

• a simple e-mail interface
• the Ascio Web Service (an XML API)
• the Ascio Partner Portal website solution

According to company marketing manager Kristina Kunz, all three methods offer a similar degree of integration. "The interfaces we offer to our partners can be used as they wish," she says. "It is possible to have some orders handled through one interface and other orders through another interface, if this suits their needs. The order mechanism and the entire business logic are not interface-dependant."

Local presence
To aid in domain management, partner gets access to what Christensen describes as "extensive domain information covering the most important facts on the various TLDs, like registration requirements, name server requirements, expiry rules and settings, processing times, dispute and regulations and documentation requirements, among other things."

Access to the vast majority of those TLDs is fully automated, allowing partners to register them as quickly as possible. "Very few competitors can offer as broad a TLD offering as us," Christensen says. "We can also provide our partners with an extra service called Local Presence in 32 countries, making it possible to register domains in countries with restrictions."

The key challenge, Christensen notes, is supporting local presence in countries where it's required. "Ascio has an extensive network of reliable agents that can help those customers who do not fulfil specific local presence requirements to register their domain names also under these more restricted TLDs," he says. "These local presence services are provided in accordance with the specific registry regulations and within a controlled legal framework to ensure the best and most reliable service to our partners and customers."

Additional services
In addition to domain name registration, other key offerings include a 200 TLD domain availability checker, as well as a new brand and domain monitoring tool called Asciowatch, which is planned for release in March of 2008. "With this software, we can monitor brand abuse across 250 top and second level domains," Christensen says. "We can help fight brand infringement by monitoring the Internet globally and find out what variations of our partners' customers' brand names have been registered and by whom."

Still, Kunz says, Ascio's strengths ultimately come down to the range of ccTLDs offered. "We can offer over 250 TLDs to our partners with the highest level of automation," she says. "We are truly ccTLD experts, meaning that it is our core competency and we have extensive knowledge which we are willing to share with our partners. We have offices in Copenhagen, London, Munich, New York, Zurich, Oslo, Nice and Madrid. Ascio is indeed a global player."

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