Hosting365 have announced that they’ve sold Register365, which is their shared hosting and domains business to Namesco a UK provider.
So now Ireland’s largest provider is no longer Irish. According to the press release Hosting365 are going to focus on their managed services.
What does that mean for the Irish hosting market?
It could be interesting times ahead, as Novara was already swallowed up by Irish Telco Digiweb earlier this year.
Are there more acquistions and sales in the pipeline?
Definitely a major change in the hosting landscape. The next major movements could be with the ISPs. If register365 is no longer Irish owned, then that would make Digiweb the default largest Irish hoster. However marketshares would tell the true story and it would be up to Digiweb to maintain the sales momentum to keep it at the top of the market.
John
Digiweb aren’t a “hoster” they’re a telco that provides hosting.
They started out as a hoster, but they’re not one anymore
Michele
Digiweb is probably unique Michele,
It may be an ISP but its hosting side is actually doing well. So without H365 and Digiweb at in the top hosters category, who is top of the chart? 🙂
I think we both know the answer to that one 🙂
Its Skynet, right?
Michele, do you have a link to the source of this? I quickly checked namesco, register365 and hosting365’s homepages but found no reference to this deal.
Reason why I am curious is that as you probably know namesco was acquired by Dada (italian company who also owns Register.it) last year…
http://www.irishwebmasterforum.com/hosting/6072-register365-sold.html
Will we see Blacknight offering any deals for transfer of domains
We’re already offering lower priced IE, EU and Co.Uk domains 🙂
I think its interesting that Hosting365 had chosen to exit this market following our (Digiweb) acquisition of Novara.
But indeed, the market is getting a great deal more competitive and its not going to get any less so. I’m looking forward to future developments!
To be fair Dan, unless the novara deal was done in a pub on the back of an envelope, you’ll know that large deals take time. When your deal leaked around the web, we were well into due diligence with Namesco.
As for competitive landscape, register365 was the largest and most successful shared hoster, growing multiples faster than anyone else (thus always maintaining a lead). That company now has the resources of a huge, highly profitable plc behind it, and a dedicated team if more than 80 people who only support domain reg and shared hosting. Irish customers now have more extensive support and the company has the resources for major marketing and innovation.
On the flip side Ireland now also gets a 100 per cent dedicated and focusses hosted managed services provider with extensive resources and more than 60 staff.
If anything – one heavyweight just became two 🙂 and I look forward to the industry evolution as a result!
Regarding the timelines, the piece in the SBPost would seem to disagree! But my question is really to do with why…
The shared hosting section had a fantastic name and brand and as you’ve pointed out, you had many domain names under the control of you and your resellers. So why sell the crown jewel that contributed so much in terms of awareness and sales funnel?
You were clear market leaders in that area – I can’t deny it, even with BK, Letshost and Digiweb snapping at your heels, but it does look like you gave up on a market while you were still ahead in order to plunge into another market already dominated by the ISPs. I wish you luck competing there with us and the others!
Irish media getting a technology related story wrong? That never happens
*cough*
Hey Dan,
As for timelines, the article said we decided to sell back in Jan, your deal leaked in April – not sure what point you are making?
As for shared hosting being fantastic – I agree completely, hence the huge price we got for it 😉 As for it being a crown jewel, it’s growth rate was significantly less than our managed services / hosted solutions business. If you understood fully what we were up to, we wouldn’t have much of a ‘strategic plan’ 😉
Thanks for wishing us luck competing, although you might be overlooking the fact that we have been extremely successfully competing in that space for more than 3 years now, and it is now more than 70% of our revenues. People don’t want to buy hosting solutions at the high end of the market from ISP generalists who are typically smaller than us in terms of hosting staff head count. We daily win business from all the ISP’s, yourselves included, on that fact alone.
As from my previous post, I would be more concerned that now there are two extremely well funded, well structured providers in the Irish market, competing at both ends of the spectrum in a highly focussed manner.