ResellerConnection.com:Speaking of Alabanza's services platform, what is its future?
Zohorsky: One of our primary goals moving forward is to provide small- and medium-sized enterprises [SME's] the same technological capabilities that are currently only available to big businesses. The key to this initiative will be providing as much automation as possible, but with less complexity and much less cost to operate. That's True Presence on the Web. And it's the future of Web Services.
Today, Alabanza and its competitors are offering what we call "front-end automation" in the form of web-based control panels and the like. But to continue to increase margins and revenues for our resellers, we feel that more "back-end" automation is needed. Customer support, technical support, security, systems administration—these are all factors that drain the reseller's resources. Automating these tasks would free the reseller to devote more time and resources growing the business through sales, marketing, and business development.
The value of automation can be witnessed throughout our client base. We have a reseller that hosts 8,000 websites by himself, with part-time help from his wife. That wouldn't be possible without automation. So we want to expand the power that automation affords, with a focus on extending it from the front-end to the back-end.
We also intend to expand the kinds of services offered with our software. Alabanza's software will evolve from a pure web hosting automation package into a comprehensive services platform. In addition to hosting web sites, our resellers will be able to offer their clients software services such as CRM and productivity applications. Our platform will allow these services to be provisioned on an on-demand basis, so that the reseller can turn them on and off with the flip of a switch. An entire suite of applications will be available for the reseller to sell, the technical administration of which will be simple, powerful, and automated.
ResellerConnection.com:So Alabanza's technology requires little technical expertise?
Zohorsky: Almost none. More than anything, it is business savvy and an entrepreneurial soul that make a successful Alabanza reseller. If you can walk down a commercial street in your community offering affordable web site hosting services to local businesses, you can grow a solid, profitable web hosting business using our service. Our site creation tool even allows a reseller to automate the development of a client's website. Accessing and gathering clients is what our resellers do, not administering servers.
ResellerConnection.com:What's in store for Alabanza's upcoming release later this year?
Zohorsky: Our next release will lay the groundwork for the "portal infrastructure," the platform on which we will release future web-based, on-demand productivity applications. This release will include general small business applications such as wireless email, calendaring, and messaging. With the platform in place, we plan to fill out the product offering over time by developing new applications internally or by partnering with a software developer who shares our focus on the SME market. Eventually, we will have vertical market applications developed for the platform, thereby expanding our model to address the technological needs of particular industries.
ResellerConnection.com:Any closing thoughts?
Zohorsky: We are very excited by what we will be doing for our resellers in the coming months and years. The new hosting platform will provide more applications that resellers can lease to their clients, increasing the average revenue Alabanza resellers earn on a per-customer basis.
