HostReview.com Web Hosting Interviews

An Interview with
Steve Dauber, Vice President of Marketing at Ensim Corporation

By Milena Sotirova
Editor DevStart, Inc.

July 28, 2004

Tell me something about yourself and your position with the company. What were you doing before you started working at your present position with Ensim? What were the major milestones in your life that contribute to your success?

As VP of Marketing for Ensim, I'm responsible for strategically positioning our products to the market, as well as ensuring that we build the product capabilities our customers need to succeed today and in the future. I started my career at Novell in its heyday in the late 80's, running marketing for Novell's network and systems management products. Since then, I've been VP of marketing at a number of startups, most recently for CenterBeam, a management service provider. So, I've worked on both the software vendor and the service provider sides, as well as both small and large companies.

Please provide us a brief history of Ensim?

Ensim was founded in 1998 to develop virtualization technology that allowed multiple independent applications to run on a single computer. This technology was quickly adopted by hosting service providers who needed to host many customers on shared systems. Because the technology and market applications were so compelling, Ensim received substantial investments from key venture capitalists�more than $85 million. This capital enables us both to invest heavily in R&D and to offer rock-solid financial stability to hosters looking for a strategic software vendor.

Early on, Ensim chose to focus exclusively on the service provider market. Since then, our product line has dramatically expanded to address all the aspects of the hosting business and we've become the leading software provider to this market, with more than 15,000 customers across the globe.

Ensim has been improving the control panel, including lately the package of Power tools that can automatically install and configure many of the most popular Web scripts available today. What is the core advantage of this new WEBppliance Pro's add on?

Every hoster is looking for ways to deliver more value to their customers. Ensim Power Tools makes it easy for web site owners to move beyond plain HTML and integrate bulletin boards, chat, portals and e-commerce into their site. By offering their customers premium capabilities like these, hosting companies are able to both increase revenue and compete more effectively in the market.

Why should shared, reseller, and small business customers choose Ensim over another hosting control panel?

Simple�Ensim-based hosters are more profitable. Revenue is higher because site owners prefer Ensim-based hosting. It protects their confidential site content, is highly reliable and offers premium capabilities like bulletin boards and e-commerce. Hosters' costs are lower because of Ensim's easy user interface, comprehensive online documentation and extensive automation. And Ensim Extend enables hosters to seamlessly scale their business from hosting a single site all the way to 100,000.

Ensim offers the industry's most complete product line for hosting, which is further complemented by add-on products and services from more than 100 partners. We have the industry's largest development team, support organization and financial resources. That's why when professional hosting companies are looking for a partner to provide the critical software that underlies their entire business, more choose Ensim than any other company.

Describe what Ensim is doing to anticipate the next year of web hosting software industry events?

We have a very large customer base that includes hosting companies of every size in almost every country in the world. We meet with these customers regularly to understand what is happening with their businesses. This allows us to identify trends regardless of where they begin to emerge�with small or large hosters, in the U.S. or around the globe.

Ensim also maintains tight relationships with other key technology vendors to the industry, companies such as Microsoft, HP, Urchin, Miva and many others. By understanding their long-term product plans, we can better anticipate the future needs of our customers.

What additional services or solutions does Ensim deliver?

One solution that we are very excited about is our Ensim Unify line of products. Microsoft and Ensim jointly developed and are jointly taking Ensim Unify to market to really spark the next generation of hosted services.

For those who aren't yet familiar with Ensim Unify, it's a platform that offers a common set of services and interfaces for all hosted services, as well as snap-in modules to allow instant deployment of new services like Microsoft Exchange mailboxes. It lets hosters quickly bring new services to market with minimal risk and expense. Even though it was just released earlier this quarter, we've already seen tremendous uptake by hosters, especially for rolling out hosted Microsoft Exchange 2003.

Your Corporation is showing high market flexibility, developing the availability of Spanish language versions of Ensim WEBppliance Pro.

How do you see Ensim in the global market arena in future?

We already do business almost everywhere in the world. About half of Ensim's customers today are outside of the United States, and we're continuing to expand our emphasis on European, Asian and other global markets.

What do you see in the future of the hosting automation software?

For a long time, hosting software has focused on the cost side of the hosting business, automating the tasks associated with offering relatively generic web sites. This has contributed to the ever increasing commoditization of the web hosting market.

We believe that hosting software needs to provide increasing value on the revenue side of the business, allowing service providers to offer differentiated, higher value hosting services to their customers. That's why we built Ensim Power Tools, it's why we built Ensim Unify, and it's a guiding principle that you'll see in other Ensim offerings coming out in 2004.

And finally, what was the most recent book you have read?

"The Innovator's Solution" by Clayton Christensen.

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