Mr. Agarwal, could you tellus more about your position and your responsibilities in the company?
As CEO, I am charged with driving thecompany's strategic vision and expanding our presence in thefast-growth hosting industry.  groupSPARK continues to be atrusted resource for SMBs and a valued partner of Microsoft preciselybecause of our keen insights into the market, depth of technical knowledge andcommitment to delivering enterprise-class solutions to emerging growthcompanies. My primary goal is to preserve and build upon this reputationand to continue to innovate exciting new ways to meet the messaging andcollaboration needs of a diverse consumer.

What did you do prior tofounding groupSPARK?  How did groupSPARK grow to become a leadingprovider of Hosted Microsoft Exchange?
I’ve worked with small businesses forthe last eight years, most recently with Argus Care – a provider ofoutsourced IT support for SMBs.  It is from this experience – workingwith small business owners one-on-one – that I recognized the marketdemand for affordable, enterprise-class messaging and collaborationservices.  With this consumer need and my previous entrepreneurial successin mind, I established groupSPARK in 2002.

At that time, hosted Exchange serviceswere scarce and priced out of reach of most small businesses. What's more, hosted messaging was an option few service providers knewabout or offered.  By leveraging our technical ability and experiencewith the SMB market, groupSPARK was able to provide the nearly 30million emerging growth companies across the U.S. with an affordable,secure means to safeguard and share their most critical data. 

In 1997, before groupSPARK and Argus Care, Ifounded BizLand, Inc., a website hosting company with over 85,000 smallbusiness customers.  I served as CEO and Chairman, guiding thecompany through its initial round of angel and venture investments. Subsequently,I served in a variety of positions, such as Vice President of Marketing,Business Development, Product Marketing, and Corporate Development. As VicePresident of Corporate Development, I evaluated several companies for mergersand acquisitions and led the acquisition of two companies with strategicproduct fit. During my tenure at BizLand, the company raised over $21 Millionthrough a combination of equity and debt financing. I am currently the ChairmanEmeritus of BizLand.

Through the years, I’ve spoken atnumerous business and technology conferences as well as guest lectured at Boston University,Boston College,and Babson College. In addition, I’vecollaborated with professors at BentleyCollege and Boston Universityto write three case studies on BizLand - which have since been taughtinternationally.

In 2001, I was named one of the top tenbusiness people under the age of 30 in EntrepreneurMagazine's '3rd Annual 10 under 30' feature.

Could you tell us aboutgroupSPARK's private-label solution?
groupSPARK, based in Burlington, Massachusetts, is a Microsoft Certified Gold Partner and leading provider ofprivate-label Hosted Exchange.  We offer small to mediumsized-businesses – via partners like local VARS, integrators andresellers – access to the enterprise-class messaging system without thehefty costs and headaches commonly associated with purchasing and administeringthe Exchange server independently.  Leveraging the company’sWeb-based private label application delivery (PLAD) platform, groupSPARKpartners can configure hosted Exchange and related services under their owndomain and brand.  Set-up takes as little as 15 minutes and the result isa service that looks and feels as if it originated on site.

Could you describe yoursuccess with figures? How many customers do you currently have, how manymailboxes have you sold and how does this number grow year on year?
With over 700 resellers to date, groupSPARKcontinues to show strong results.  In 2006, the company’s customerbase increased 250 percent over the prior year – with the number ofmailboxes sold increasing 300 percent.  We have doubled the number ofmailboxes we sell each month in just three months.

Please tell us more aboutyour latest mailbox promotion?  How will it benefit your partners and SMBs?
Our latest promotion is a $15 reward forevery mailbox sold between now and May 31st, 2007.  So inaddition to getting the nice increase in recurring revenue our partners alsoget a bonus for each mailbox sold – which could potentially net themextra hundreds or even thousands of dollars.

With this extra money our partners can offera variety of different promotions to help entice new customers into gettingHosted Exchange mailboxes, use it to spark up conversations about Exchange thatmay have stalled, or even keep the money themselves.  We’ve seen allsorts of innovative promotions used in this case and we’ve seen somesharp increases in mailboxes sold from our partners involved in the promotionso it has already shown to be a success.  So successful in fact that wehave extended the offer to include everyone that may want to become a groupSPARKpartner, not just existing partners.

Who are your competitors andhow are your services different?
We have only one real competitor that comesclose.  Intermedia.net, primarily a web hosting company, has entered theprivate label Exchange Hosting market recently though we don’t considertheir offering to be full private label.

With groupSPARK, our partners have a trueprivate label offering – the end user has no idea that we exist and we gothrough great pains to ensure this.  Our partners can use their own URL,contact information, and branding.  The control panel that provisions thatsystem will appear to be completely provided by the partner. Intermedia.net has not been able to make their offering full privatelabel and the Intermedia name and logo can be seen – it’s small butit’s still there.  The important aspect of private labeling thisservice is so that our partners can manage and retain the customerrelationships and any ambiguity in dealing with their service provider can causestrains on that relationship.

What are your industrypredictions for this year?
2007 will be the year of Hosted Exchange, asan increasing number of SMBs turn to hosted messaging in order torealize significant time and cost savings while reaping the benefits ofan enterprise-class service.

Exchange 2007 is going to result in morecompanies outsourcing.  The switch from a 32-bit architecture to a 64-bitone which increases the complexity of working with Exchange and requires allnew hardware to be purchased to fully integrate all the features of it.

The need for storage space is going tobecome more important.  Outlook and Exchange is becoming the new filecabinet.  People are finding it easier to leave their information in theirmailboxes and are using it as their main storage space.

SPAM will become a bigger problem. SPAM already accounts for over 80% of emails received in a business setting. More and more SMBs are being targeted by spammers and all the statisticsindicate that SPAM is not only not going anywhere but it is increasing.

Mobility will continue growing.  We areprimarily an Exchange Hosting service but we also have BlackBerry Server, GoodServer, and Windows Mobile options.  The growth we are seeing in ourmobility services is far greater than what we are seeing in Exchange –and we’re seeing tremendous growth in Exchange.  People are findingthat it is important to always be connected and mobility devices are makingthis possible.

Any expansion/developmentplans?
Our focus will begin to shift toward more ofthe mid market companies with between 500 and 3,000 users.  We are seeingthat even larger companies and enterprises are more interested outsourcingExchange Server because they just don’t want to deal with the hassle ofconstantly upgrading and maintaining it.  To update to Exchange 2007 willrequire serious investments in hardware and software.  To ensure thatorganizations are getting the most out of their investment in Exchange theyneed to have personnel in house that are experts in working in the Exchangeenvironment.  Even larger companies are seeing the benefits of outsourcingtheir Exchange and putting their own focus on their core competencies.

What challenges do you andthe company face in the hosted solutions market?
The biggest challenge we are seeing, when welook at Hosted Exchange specifically, is educating the market on availablehosted solutions.  There is definitely a tremendous amount of interest anda real need for Hosted Exchange but the market has not been educated enough toknow that such a solution exists.

Microsoft estimates that the market forExchange mailboxes is 150 million potential users.  About 75 million ofthem are in SMBs currently.  Less than 1% of that is currentlycaptured.  Clearly the growth potential is huge.  But so isn’tthe task of getting the message out to the other 99% of the market.  Thegood news is that 2007 is the year we are expecting Exchange Hosting to explode.