International Reseller Hosting Opportunities

While most reseller hosting companies begin by serving their local city, state, region or country, it is important to consider various international market opportunities. Even if you start off local, the reseller hosting model can be expanded to offer localized servers through colocation agreements.

In many cases, expanding your hosting offerings to new markets only requires finding a data center partner with global locations, opening up orders to new clients and understanding the unique aspects of each market as they apply to your hosting firm. Independent of your home market, the international hosting market offers a wide variety of opportunities and has extensive growth potential.

Growth opportunities can vary widely as new markets emerge and grow, providing options for expanding into new markets for a variety of users.  In many ways, the European market is an example of both mature (Western) and emerging (global) markets in its various regions. This guide provides a case study of the market to help hosts understand the different opportunities in each segment of the market. With a proper reseller model, hosting companies can offer their services on a global basis, accounting for language, pricing and service level agreement (SLA) expectations.

Reseller Hosting in Europe

Many of the largest hosting providers in the world are active players in the European hosting market. Major players in the region include Rackspace, NTT and Savvis which offer Tier-1 data centers, managed hosting and value-add services for enterprise level clients. While resellers cannot strictly compete with these players, there are opportunities for resellers to begin working as outsourced hosting providers and system integrators, partnering with companies such as Global Crossing, BT and Orange to serve a variety of international clients.  These firms have mature presence in major Western markets such as London, Paris and Berlin, as well as an expanding labor force in Central and Eastern Europe.  The amount of IT talent and opportunities in emerging European markets makes the market increasingly attractive for mature hosting companies seeking out new opportunities.

The European reseller channel largely developed the market in the 1990s, led by companies such as Fast Hosts. These firms focused on aggressive pricing, responsive customer service and a variety of custom configurations for consumers.  Focusing on the business segment of the European market can provide significantly more opportunities than the consumer segment of the business, which is marked by aggressive pricing and lower margins.

One primary characteristic of European hosting firms is their integration of value-added systems integration in addition to core server space.  Building up a local sales and service force in Europe can be challenging for early stage firms, but many smaller hosts have contractors and partners in the region which allow them to actively compete for new business. It’s recommended that early stage companies focus up on shoring their local and regional presence before expanding, given differences in client expectations, pricing structures and regulations. After mastering your core market, however, partnering with a European company to expand your footprint can be an effective way to increase your bottom line revenues significantly.

Links

• Reseller Hosting Directory