If you want to keep pace with the rapidly changing telecommunications business, one vendor says, you build modular software and keep thinking outside the box, away from the appliance.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [October 13, 2005]

Look at the website of Montreal, Canada-based Sitepak, and what strikes you first is what's not there. There's no product list, a small list of partners, and no prices.

That's because the company sells one product, Onsite Hosting Controller (OHC). At least, that's the name they gave the product when they founded the company in 1995. Since then, a modular platform has been expanded and the little puppy has learned some carrier class tricks.

Features include:

• Control panel with different access permissions to different users
• Online help
• Website builder with templates
• Webmail
• Shared and personal address books
• Mailbox manager, including forwarding and auto replying
• Mailing lists
• Third party app toolbox, for integration, plus SOAP-based XML integration
• Website access control, by folder
• Disk space manager
• Shopping cart and form handler, plus automatic customer e-mails
• Time zone display that shows time in the visitor's time zone
• Multiple languages
• Embedded portal
• Virtual Private Server (VPS) support
• Admin control panel plus site status verification
• Management of multiple sites including setting disk and bandwidth quotas
• Modular, extensible, distributed article
• Usage reporting and events log

What started out as a hosting platform has evolved into something that's quite a bit more than that. "We're middleware," explains Eileen Goldfarb, Sitepak's CEO. "Any hosted service can be integrated into OHC."

The company compares itself to SWSoft and Ensim. "Appliances are not scalable," says Goldfarb. "For example, if I patch the software, every appliance has to be patched, but large service providers usually have one massive e-mail server and they'd like to patch only one device."

"Our open architecture means that service providers don't have to wait for us to choose, say, the one VoIP vendor they'll be able to use," adds Patrick Bradley, Sitepak lead developer.

Instead, Bradley says, customers choose their partners and write whatever apps they need. "In practice, they write their own service adapters in whatever language they're most familiar with, such as Java, Perl, C, a shell script, or SQL, or whatever language is best suited to the task at hand."

ISPs get to keep whatever they already have, Bradley says. "They leverage not only their existing skill set by continuing to use the language they prefer, but they also keep using their existing tools. If they have in-house scripts that have been used for a long time and thoroughly debugged, they can integrate those scripts and create an adapter. The tools they're using today will be the tools OHC will be automating tomorrow."

Bradley understands this desire well. Before joining Sitepak, he was the sysadmin for CAM, Montreal's first ISP. He says that at the time, there was no such thing as an Internet business, and the company was forced to incorporate as a non-profit.

Although OHC has webmail, for example, an ISP can keep using their existing webmail if they prefer it.

Goldfarb adds that many ISPs see an upsell opportunity. They can keep customers on the old system, and allow them to upgrade for a fee. ISPs may also use the e-mail or e-commerce solution OHC delivers, both of which are adequate but streamlined, and upsell to a third party product with more features.

She says the company isn't selling many VPS packages because the price of dedicated servers has fallen so far, and because many customers expect the hosts to manage basic functions like e-mail. Fashions change. "We used to offer Cobalt compatibility. Now we only hear about Cobalt from customers who want to migrate off it."

Pricing and availability
The product is available as licensed software and on a pay as you go basis. Specific pricing was not disclosed, but Goldfarb noted that larger ISPs tend to buy the product outright whereas smaller ISPs prefer to pay as they grow.

Bradley elaborated, "I'm talking to a webhost that has 100 customers. They're in the startup phase, and they have a lot of money right now but they want to invest it well and get the company running properly. Our pay as you go system is very helpful to them, because when they add a new customer, they're paying a specific amount and they can see exactly how many months they need to keep the customer to reach break even."

Bradley says that as the host grows, it may employ OHC in several different ways. "They can start by renting time on one of our customers who has a reseller program. Then when they have more customers, they'll buy space in a data center, and purchase OHC to automate those customers. Then they'll buy a block of services to distinguish themselves from the competition, and eventually, when lots of new customers come in, bring it all in house to further cut costs."

"All of this is transparent to the user," Goldfarb enthuses. "It looks the same to the end user at every step."

Ease of migration is a key selling point, Bradley says. The company says that since the migration is virtual, not physical, pain is minimal and downtime nonexistent.

Bradley says the company has few technology partners because it's open to everyone, but that it's starting to work with more partners as the services Sitepak offers get more complex.

The future of the technology
Sitepak is seeing telecommunications convergence first hand, and is working hard to keep up with its customers. "We talk to MSOs, telcos, regular ISPs—and convergence is making every service they offer a hosted service," says Goldfarb.

The company is moving towards becoming a telco's OSS system, helping the company connect billing, services, data, voice, mobile, television, and other services into one offering. "If they run each piece independently, staffing requirements get out of hand," says Goldfarb.

Bradley says he's always looking at new services. Right now, he's interested in grid computing, which means "both renting space on a grid or using hosted services where the infrastructure is itself a grid and where the contracts for those services are QoS based."

The software is changing, but so is the entire telecommunications business.

—End