Los Angeles, California – (The Hosting News) – October 17, 2007 –
ISPCON Fall 2007 has opened at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California. The three day event billed as ‘The Internet Industry Event’ launched with educational speaking sessions in the morning, a well delivered keynote address after lunch, and a networking event in the exhibit hall in the afternoon.

This fall’s event features several tracks for the sessions including: wireless, hosting, technology, VoIP, and business. Among the many intimate and informative sessions in the business track was the talk entitled, “Positioning Your Internet Company for Sale – and Making More Money” delivered by Tom Millitzer, President, New Commerce Communications. Mr. Millitzer, who is also a blogger at industry website The WHIR, delivered a great session that focused on how an Internet services company can maximize the price a buyer would consider fair in an acquisition. Among the many useful tidbits of information:

Rule #1 – Be honest.

Other than rule #1 – there are no rules.

Mr. Millitzer, who brings hundreds of transactions worth of experience to the table, explained such topics as: how to turn a negative into a positive, and his ”5 minute rule”. The 5 minute rule says that any decision maker who sees the details of the 40-50 page brochure created for the sale has to be able to make a decision regarding acquisition – right then (or within 5 minutes). He then went on to describe the M and A process – and revealed an industry secret. Overall, the discussion was very insightful – and the question and answer session afterwards brought up some key points from the audience as well.

One of the presentations in the hosting track was delivered by Tobby Davasia from the executive team at Bobcares.com and Douglas Johnson, Director of Hosting Marketing at SWsoft. This “tag team” affair delivered on the session title of, ”10 Ways to Improve Business and Data Center Effiiciency”. The short scoop on the 10 things:

1. Use I.T.
2. Automate ordering and ecommerce
3. Automate provisioning
4. Virtualize your infrastructure
5. Self service control panels
6. Standardize applications
7. Build upgrade processes
8. Automate billing
9. Marketing vision
10. Hire the right support staff

The session translated an incredible amount of industry knowledge and experience into a well delivered presentation.

Another session that delivered tangible results for the attendees was the aptly titled, ”Strategies for Growing Your Hosted Business” presented by Ravi Agarwal, CEO of groupSPARK and Rich Bader, President and CEO with EasyStreet Online Services. Mr. Agarwal explained how web hosts and ISPs could take advantage of the 20,000 to 40,000 new hosted exchange seats being created each month – each with the capability of generating an average of $20 per month of ARPU. Mr. Bader chimed in with real world experience in transitioning an ISP into a data center, colocation and managed services provider to increase margins. The combination of an active web hosting company coupled with a great service provider with high margin private labeled solutions was powerful.

Here are a few other thoughts from some hosting professionals in attendance.

Stacy Griggs, Vice President of Sales with HostMySite.com, “ISPCON is a great show. It’s always good for companies to get together and exchange ideas and best practices. The sessions were informative and high quality.”

Candice Rodriguez, Director of Business Development and Marketing at the Web Host Industry Review, “There are a lot more web hosting vendors. There are more companies who want to get their foot in the door with larger hosting providers.”

This content was written by Derek Vaughan and is provided courtesy of The Hosting News.

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