ISPCON Spring ’08 kicks off next week. What’s billed as “The Internet Industry Event” runs Tuesday, May 13th, through Thursday, May 15th. We’re getting ready to make the trip and we hope to see you at Chicago‚Äôs Donald E. Stephen’s (Rosemont) Convention Centre.

Wednesday, May 14th, is “our day” with three Tucows-related events on the ISPCON schedule:

• The day starts early with a panel discussion, “Who Should Be Running Your Email,” scheduled for 8:45 AM in Room 9. Rohan Jayasekera, Director, Tucows Email Service, will participate as a panelist.
• Then, at 10 AM, Elliot Noss, our President and CEO, will present, “Why YOU and lowfat lattes are Google‚Äôs Worst Nightmare.”
• And be sure to join us between 1:45 PM and 2:45 PM in Room 11 for “In Conversation with Tucows.” You’ll be able to meet some of our key people, ask questions, and find out more about our products and services and where things are headed.

We‚Äôre gearing up for the show, and we‚Äôre looking forward to getting the chance to meet potential new, and current customers face-to-face. We’ll be in booth 114 as you can see on the map. See you there!

Many of you know me as one of the original OpenSRS guys, but more recently, I’ve been involved in running Tucows retail services – Domain Direct, NetIdentity and ItsYourDomain. As you may have already read, effective today, we are getting out of the hosting business. You can read the full press release in our Media Archive.

Why are we doing this and what does it have to do with you?

From a retail perspective, we believe that it is extremely important for us to be able to provide world-class quality for all of the services we offer. By examining the market, seeking feedback from our end users, and discussing our strengths and weaknesses internally, one thing became clear. In order to provide world-class quality for all of the services we offer, we must simplify our service offerings.

Many of our competitors attempt to provide a “one-stop internet services shopping experience”. We call this “the Walmart way”. We believe that we have a much higher chance at succeeding by doing very few things extremely well for our clients. You could call this “the boutique approach”. Our goal is to help our customers use their domain names and email addresses with the great services that other companies are already providing. In other words, rather than trying to compete with companies like Hostopia to offer better hosting services than they do, we are going to focus on making sure that our products work better with their great services than any other provider does.

Tucows Resellers also benefit from this increased focus. My retail team spends a lot of time with the OpenSRS and Tucows Email teams to ensure that they understand where their services are succeeding and failing from a reseller perspective. Being in the building provides us with a great opportunity to improve these services for the benefit of all Tucows resellers. With the benefit of our increased focus, we will also be able to invest more time working specifically on translating everything that we are learning about how to sell domain names and email in a competitive market into programs that Tucows resellers will be able to take advantage of. These programs could take the form of new code, new services and new marketing programs, depending on what works best in each case.

I’m very pleased with this development as I really believe it will be of tremendous benefit to all of Tucows customers – retail and resale. Of course, if you have any questions about the specifics of the transaction, please feel free to leave us a comment and either myself, or someone from the team will respond.

And of course, we will be notifying all affected customers about this change and how it will affect their hosting service – if at all. Many of our shared hosting clients are already hosted with Hostopia, so the changes should be minimal for the vast majority.

Drives incremental growth for Hostopia as Tucows focuses its retail operations on email and online identity

TORONTO — May 6, 2008 — Tucows Inc. (AMEX: TCX, TSX: TC) and Hostopia.com, Inc. (TSX: H) yesterday signed a definitive agreement for Hostopia to purchase certain of Tucows’ shared hosting customer assets including approximately 14,000 Domain Direct, NetIdentity and ItsYourDomain.com (IYD) customer accounts.

The full text of the news release is available at our media site.

Drives incremental growth for Hostopia as Tucows focuses its retail operations on email and online identity

TORONTO — May 6, 2008 — Tucows Inc. (AMEX: TCX, TSX: TC) and Hostopia.com, Inc. (TSX: H) yesterday signed a definitive agreement for Hostopia to purchase certain of Tucows’ shared hosting customer assets including approximately 14,000 Domain Direct, NetIdentity and ItsYourDomain.com (IYD) customer accounts.

Read the rest of this entry »

As we pointed out last week, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) which operates the .ca registry, is about to introduce some big changes to its existing WHOIS policies. The changes are largely associated with what information WHOIS databases, registrars and resellers are able to disclose about registrants.

These upcoming changes will have a pretty significant impact on some of our .CA policies. Specifically:
Our public WHOIS database, like CIRA’s, will protect registrant information by default. All personal information about individual registrants will be kept private, including the name of the Registrant and the name and any contact information.

• Registrants have the ability to disable WHOIS privacy from the CIRA registrant interface if they choose to do so. It is enabled by default.
• Corporations and organizations will have the option to request similar WHOIS protection in special circumstances. It is disabled by default.
• Interested third parties will still be able to contact the registrant by using a contact form available on CIRA‚Äôs website (similar to other WHOIS privacy services).
• Resellers will be required to keep registrant information confidential, revealing personal information via telephone or otherwise under very specific circumstances only.

These changes will come into effect on June 10. CIRA will begin messaging registrants about the upcoming changes this week.