Talk the talk

Stephen McCarron, managing director of website hosting company Hosting365.ie, talks to David Clerkin.

I understand Hosting365 is the largest independent hosting company in Ireland after just two years in business. How have you achieved this?

Web hosting has been honed to a fine art in the US and Britain, so we’ve concentrated on providing a service that’s competitive on price even against international competitors.

Why can you offer hosting cheaper than the main internet service providers (ISPs)?

We’ve deliberately made ourselves more flexible.

Instead of spending vast sums of money on data-centres and very large fixed connectivity, we’ve made our network mobile and independent, allowing us to take data-centre space and connectivity from the most price-effective providers.

Where are your servers based?

Our servers are currently based with the Data Electronics data-centre in Kilcarbery, and InterXion based in Park West business park.

We’ve also installed fibre connectivity into our own building, which allows us to deploy new services extremely quickly.

Does it make a difference to customers if servers are based in Ireland?

Absolutely.

Proximity to your end user is crucial from the point of view of ensuring fast response times for your network.

Also, if your hosting provider is local, then dealing with support teams in other time zones is never an issue.

What is INEX and why have you joined it?

INEX is the Irish neutral internet exchange.

If anything could be described as the heart of the Irish internet, then INEX would be it.

It allows us to connect to all the major Irish internet service providers, providing the shortest possible route for any customer using a major Irish ISP.

What is the most common form of hosting requested?

Typically, new users require only a few megabytes of webspace and some space for email postboxes.

We currently have over 10,000 websites hosted in this way.

What do you think are the biggest threats to internet-related businesses usage?

We used to face a very real threat when we lagged so far behind the developed world in terms of broadband availability. Barring any poorly- conceived legislation requiring providers to log years of internet traffic data, the future looks rosy.