Kevin Soendker

Mr. Soendker, what are your responsibilities at InetServices?

AsChief Operating Officer, I am responsible for all product and serviceofferings with my primary focus on finding ways to turn new technologyinto powerful competitive advantages that enable our customers tosuccessfully grow their businesses.

Could you tell more about InetServices' history and its development through the years?

InetServiceswas founded in 1997 as a web design company for small to mid-sizebusinesses. We developed one of the first web-based template systemscalled SiteManager which allowed our customers to make changes to theirwebsites without knowing any HTML programming. SiteManager was a hugesuccess so in 2001 we changed from being a web design company to aShared Hosting company.

In2003, we acquired a couple of shared hosting companies and in theprocess we found that there was a huge demand for providing dedicatedservers for other shared hosting companies and small businesses. Within 12 months we saw an amazing 400% increase in sales so we decidedto discontinue offering shared hosting and focus all our attention andresources on dedicated and managed hosting.

Please tell us about your company's products. Are you planning to launch new products in the near future and what are they?

Ourproducts are divided in three general categories: Dedicated Servers,Managed Servers, and Managed Colocation. All of our products andservices are focus around high-performance and availability to ensure that our customers' mission-critical applications are always up and running. Our impressive server line-up consists completely of multi-core,multi-processor servers with RAID 1/5/10 as a standard feature. InetServices offers the largest multi-core processor selection in theindustry which enables our customer’s greater flexibility and budgetcontrol.

ObviouslyI am constantly looking to further expand our products and services.While our Marketing department doesn't want me to say too much, I cansay that we are getting ready to launch a Content Delivery Network(CDN) product as well as a Streaming Media offering.

Why are the small and mid-sized businesses the main focus of your company?

That’sa great question. First, we found it very difficult for small andmid-sized companies to obtain high-performance, high-availabilitysolutions without having the financial budget of a Fortune 500company.  While larger hosting providers service the GM’s and Pfizersof the world, they simply can’t offer the same services to a smallbusiness without charging for their massive overhead.

Second,we saw this as being the largest market segment for growth in thehosting industry. Starting back in 2004, the Small BusinessAdministration (SBA) began a push for all small businesses to have anonline web presence. That’s about 20 million small businesses in the USalone. For these reasons, we decided to keep our focus on small tomid-sized businesses.

How is your company different from the other companies in the industry?

Itseems that most our competitors seem to be focusing their attention onselling the cheapest server out there. We don’t want to be a commoditylike everyone else so we decided to focus on a vertical that has a needfor high-performance, high-availability Enterprise class solutions butat an affordable price.

Furthermore, we found that with most our competitors it is very difficult to get online pricingfor complex configurations such as server load balancing, directattached storage, SQL clustering and multiple servers.  Therefore, wewanted to be the first hosting providers to make it easy for someone toget a price quote instantly from our website, whether it is a single server or the most complex configuration. 

Tell us more about InetServices' division DedicatedServerCity? What is specific about its services?

WhileInetServices has focused on superior customer support we found thatthere was still a huge market that wanted self-managed servers.Furthermore, we found that most of these companies had a need for amonth-to-month commitment. So in order not to affect the level ofservice or support of InetServices, we created a separate division ofthe company that would focus on the self-managed market.

WhileDedicatedServerCity uses InetServices' facilities and network, it isrun as a completely separate entity. Their success this year has beenamazing and we have filled yet another hole in the dedicated servermarket.

How do you see the web hosting industry in two or five, or ten years? Do you think that managed dedicated servers will be the ultimate choice of everyone who wants to have a flawlessly running website?

Thehosting industry will only continue to grow over the next severalyears. However, the growth will not just come from businesses gettinga web presence, but from businesses moving their entire infrastructureto the web. We have seen a large increase in businesses moving theirin-house servers to an outsourced managed provider. We attribute thisshift for two reasons, 1) the need to reduce in-house staff in order tomaintain their server, and 2) the need for higher availabilityservices, such as power and Internet.

Whilewe still see huge market for self-managed servers over the next severalyears, we predict the need for managed dedicated servers will be muchgreater than that of self-managed servers.

Could you please tell us what it is like to work at InetServices? How big is your company and do you offer any specials to your employees?

Oneof our initial goals at InetServices was to create a friendly, casualwork environment that focuses on customer care. Also being in a highlytechnical industry that no one has all the answers, we created anenvironment that allows our employees to constantly learn newtechnologies as well as empower them to get whatever they need in orderto help our customers. We believe if our employees are confident andhappy, they will give 110% at their job.

SinceInetServices is a privately held company there is certain information Iam not at liberty to discuss. However, as far as our employeespecials, we offer them the ability to purchase any product from us atcost. Because of our huge discount with Dell our employees purchased alot of laptops, desktops, and large monitors for their personal use.