Alabanza is often referred to as "the web host's web host." An innovator in web hosting automation, and arguably the market leader in web hosting reseller solutions, Alabanza's 500+ clients host more than a quarter of a million websites using the company's powerful hosting automation software.
ResellerConnection.com recently had the opportunity to interview Alabanza's president, Paul Zohorsky, regarding recent company developments and the company's strategy going forward.
ResellerConnection.com:Please briefly describe the service that Alabanza offers.
Zohorsky: Alabanza is a web hosting automation software company that provides technological hosting services and infrastructure to resellers, allowing them to focus their energies on client acquisition within their local or vertical markets. The key to our success and the success of our resellers has been, and will continue to be, using our software solution to automate the technical tasks involved in hosting.
ResellerConnection.com:Alabanza recently expanded its distribution model. Now, in addition to leasing servers running in the Alabanza datacenter, your customers can run installations of the Alabanza software in their own datacenters. How has this new option redefined Alabanza's target markets?
Zohorsky: We segment our target market into two sections. The first section is the web hosting resellers, whom we serve under the original ASP [application service provider] model. They run our software from leased servers that reside in our datacenter and on our network.
The second market segment that the new model enables us to serve is big businesses and organizations. While our software solution began as a web hosting automation product, today it can be installed locally by an enterprise and used for many more purposes, such as email and communications. The National Park Service might use it to centrally administer the website and Internet communications infrastructure of each national park. School systems could use it to provide web-based services such as email and calendaring to students throughout the local jurisdiction.
ResellerConnection.com:Alabanza has always maintained a strong commitment to Linux. As web services mature and become more pervasive, how will your commitment evolve, especially in the face of Microsoft's aggressive .NET initiative?
Zohorsky: We will continue to exploit our Linux experience, expertise, and infrastructure, and security will remain a top Alabanza priority. But, our commitment to Linux isn't to the exclusion of Windows or .NET. Flexibility will be a fundamental characteristic of upcoming releases of our solution, so the ability to plug in or interface with .NET and Windows functionality will definitely be there. But we actually feel that J2EE is more important to enterprises than .NET, especially with backers like IBM, Sun, and Oracle.
ResellerConnection.com:But Alabanza will offer a Windows solution sometime in the future?
Zohorsky: Yes, eventually our resellers will have the option of choosing to host their clients on Windows. And our services platform will certainly accommodate .NET plug-ins.
