Applications

ISPCON Services Session, Fall 2006

Making the right decisions may seem simple, but not every ISP does what's sensible. Mike Cassidy provided common sense advice, which is always good at ISPCON.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [November 29, 2006]

Mike Cassidy, one of the principals of ISP-Market, is now a regular speaker at ISPCON, talking about what services an ISP should offer. In his ISPCON Fall 2006 session, The Hottest Services for 2007 and Beyond, he started off by reviewing the lessons preached at previous ISPCONs:

• Survey your customers.
• Offer services that provide a high return for little cost. On site support may make sense if you have an store front.
• Incent your IT guys to sell services (but do it right or it will backfire—there are several "geeks in a small car" services and their reputation is terrible).
• Remember that there is a gap of opportunity between the residential customer and the large enterprise. No major player knows how to provide service to small business customers.

Put SaaS in your portfolio
Then he moved on to what's new. At this ISPCON, one item stood out: Software as a Service (SaaS).

"You are supporting this. It's here. It's called Web 2.0, or Office 2.0. It's e-mail, webmail, CRM, e-commerce, billing, CMS, and more. Like SugarCRM, it's a build one, sell many proposition."

Services
Cassidy highlighted several services that are very hot right now:

Storage, also known as backup, is popular because people are creating valuable photos and buying valuable music files. "Anyone may have a small iTunes fortune on their laptop," Cassidy said. He noted that Amazon now has a storage service called S3. Webmail.us announced on the first day of ISPCON that it is using S3 for backup.

Home and small business security and surveillance is popular. Some people want to monitor their vacation homes, while others might want to be able to check on their parents or children. One audience member said their office manager tunes in regularly to a daycare webcam. Cassidy noted that AT&T had just launched such a service.

The Digital Home continues to be a buzzword, and the pundits love to talk about complex services, but Cassidy had a very simple question: "Can you hook up a client's home theater?"

VoIP continues to be a popular and disruptive technology. Open source products built on Asterisk are available to ISPs and many Asterisk-related companies were at ISPCON.

Conclusion
Finally, Cassidy, who is a marketing consultant, said he's constantly surprised by how few ISPs bother to advertise their product. "Learn about companies like Paxfire, Adzilla, and 121 Media," Cassidy said. "The key product, which even Google cannot offer, is geo-location for advertising. It gives publishers a better CRM. Some of these solutions will also allow you to advertise your own services or offer ad space to your webhosting customers."

So which services should you offer? For that we return to where the talk began. "Not every value-added service is applicable to every ISP," Cassidy warned. "You need to establish a role, and don't abuse it. You need to know your customers."

— End