The Planet's New Reseller Program

Having absorbed a big acquisition, the company prepares to grow its shared server products by growing the channel, which means working with you.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [January 25, 2007]

Earlier this month, Houston, Tex.-based webhost The Planet launched a PR blitz to announce that after merging The Planet and EV1Servers, the newly massive webhost had chosen to use the name The Planet. The company claims to run "one of the world's fastest networks at 100 Gigabits per seconds." It says it has over 40,000 servers. It also claims 22,000 customers with 2.8 million websites, accounting for "approximately two percent of all U.S. Internet traffic."

Its data centers connect to seven different bandwidth providers.

It's big.

The company also announced continued dedication to on demand services supported by Check Point Firewall, F-Secure antivirus, and its own proprietary DiskSync backup solution.

Reselling it
The Planet did not announce that project that is the topic of this article: its nascent shared server reseller program (which will complement the existing dedicated server reseller program).

We spoke to Yvonne Donaldson, director of public relations for The Planet; and Rick Greer, the sales operations manager who is building the reseller program.

"We put in a new dedicated sales team," added Donaldson. "Rick is part of that sales team. We never had a team making cold calls. We are making cold calls now."

In addition, top management is talking with existing dedicated server resellers to learn what the program needs.

Greer explained the division of labor between The Planet and its resellers. "Our service provider customers provide services on top of hosting. They are business advisors to customers who are often small companies."

So any size company could join the reseller program? Or will it involve catering to a few large resellers who will in turn resell the service to smaller operators? "Any size company could sign up," Greer said.

Of course, it's still early in the design in the program. It doesn't even have beta testers yet. So stay tuned for more news as the program is developed with feedback from current resellers.

— End