Hi Keith, in our previous conversations I’ve never asked you how did you enter the publishing business. It is a good time to tell me how did you start?

I have been in the publishing and print industry since the 1980′s, long before the Internet. We had a company that produced gaming modules and marketing for clients.

Did you do any printed media or magazines at the time?

We designed a mini-magazine for a client and produced our own newsletters. Mainly we were involved in other marketing areas dealing with print.

When you look back, can you say how did print industry changed within the last 20 years. Was the change driven by the Internet? Was a generational change or it affected readers of all ages?

The print industry was affected and changed by each in different ways. One leading to another, creating a domino effect. The economy affected the print industry with constantly rising prices on paper. The advent of email raised prices on mailing. With many magazine companies struggling, a lot of publishers looked to online as the answer and gave up on print too early. Magazines are geared to certain ever-changing demographics and if you do not continue to evolve with your demographics, you lose site of your objectives and eventually fail too. Staying on top of the evolution cycle has kept us in business.

Why did the publishers go online? Just to cut the expenses or to explore and use Internet as a new way to grow their audiences and to profit?

Most did it to cut expenses. Others did it because they thought it was a quick buck… and hastily threw stuff online. In the beginning, the technology wasn’t ready for true online magazines. Even now, it is in its infancy.

Why, please explain. I think that with all those tablets, the publishers or newspapers and magazines can finally come to something very different, than the standard desktop website editions?

With the iPad, Nook and Kindle, the options for digital magazines is actually becoming a reality. Many publishers are shooting themselves in the proverbial foot by taking their print magazine and just uploading it. The font is too small, the content is too much and it is not an enjoyable product for digital. You really have to understand both industries to do it correctly.

HostingTech is a fine example. They knew everything about the Internet and nothing about printing. So by overspending needlessly, they went out of business. You have to design for the medium. Our Digital magazines have separate content than our print magazine, with different designs and options. And as technology grows, we will adapt with it.

But you can finally make a story as long as it needs to be without complying with the limitations that come with the print. At the same time, one would add any kind of related content. Are you happy that people move from PCs to tablets?

Very happy. A print magazine is still a necessity in the fact that people want a product they can take with them to the park or even the bathroom to read. Laptops are too cumbersome and when I added a PC in the office bathroom, they weren’t reading magazines with it. There have been many ebook readers available in the past and a text version of Ping! Zine was downloadable for each format. But the early generation readers all failed until the iPad launched. We have seen a lot of success with our iPad digital versions

When did you launch Ping!Zine and was it the first magazine that covered IT hosting industry?

Launching Ping! Zine was a major chaotic time in our lives.

Why?

I got into the hosting business because our clients wanted websites and hosting for along with their other marketing needs. I enjoyed reading Web Host Magazine by Isabel Wang and HostingTech. Towards the end of 2002, Isabel decided to shelve the print version, going for more of a news site and little did i know, HostingTech was about to go completely belly up.

Based on mine and my partners publishing backgrounds, we thought we could pick up where Isabel left off by providing a fun hosting magazine to compete with the serious HostingTech and development was underway. Isabel even came on board in the beginning, with tremendous advice and friendship. We were 75% into the development when all of the sudden HostingTech employees announced they had been locked out of their offices and the magazine was shut down…

What do we do now when we were going to present ourselves as the competition to something that no longer existed.

Wasn’t something you needed to deal with at the start of a new project?

After bouncing around the idea of going with a more serious tone, we found out that Robert Marsh had bought the rights to HostingTech and knowing him, he would have changed it into a fun styled magazine. We felt defeated before we ever got to launch. But we were too committed and crazy to stop now and launched the first issue early 2003.

Did I mention Robert hired Isabel with the idea of her running HostingTech?

No! You didn’t!?

Rather than stepping in place to fill a void, it looked like we were going to compete with an already captured audience. Robert also bought WebHostingTalk and a few other properties at the time too.

Well, needless to say, Robert didn’t launch the revised HostingTech of Web Host Magazine and we were able to corner the market for a brief time. Thereafter we became very established and a leader in readership. That is the chaos I referred to…

Who’s reading Ping! Zine. Can you share any demographic data? Is the audience the same as it was within the first year after you’ve launch it?

The audience has evolved and expanded over the years.

Sure, but did it changed and how? Did most of the readers from the first years still with you, still subscribers?

We have never been strictly a web hosting news magazine. Our content has been has been about technology, hosting, design, and even gaming. Once we launched a quality digital magazine, we gained a new audience, interested in the technical articles and such. We have many of the same readers but have lost many to the same reason. The reason i got yesterday from an unsubscriber… let me get that

“Jonothan R. : Can you remove my name and company name from the magazine subscription? I know longer in the industry?”.

Over the years I have seen many companies fail, grow and be bought out. What was once a bunch of kids creating control panels and web hosting services in their parent’s basements is now a multi-billion dollar business, run by executives and college educated staff.

Do the readers and subscribers loose interest over the publication, if they exit the industry?

They lose interest over the hosting and tech industry in general. The largest provider of dedicated hosting services now operates and real estate investment company. Some are looking for the next big thing, others just suffer from burnout. The hosting industry is truly a 24/7 job. I remember doing 48 hour shifts when our servers were hacked.

You mean the founder of EV1 and RackShack?

Ha-ha, no names are mentioned or animals harmed during this interview.

You have already did it anyway!?

Gabe created iNet and when he sold to Troy, he became a major real estate investor.

Fine. Let’s continue talk about Ping! Zine. Do you know which are the best performing ads published in the pint edition? Is it hardware, software or service providers?

The great thing about a magazine is the banner doesn’t expire. When you buy an online ad banner, you need to capture that instant ROI but with a magazine, you get your product in their face multiple times and when the potential client needs it, they remember your name. Opening an old or new copy of a magazine is a lot quicker than going to a web site and hoping to see that certain banner again.

Because our readers aren’t just owners of hosting companies, they need to know about quality hosting plans tooл our readers may not need your services immediately, but they will need them and we create a long term marketing option for the sponsors to reach them… want to ask me why i call our advertisers sponsors?

Didn’t I asked already?

The only thing that keeps Ping! Zine alive, is out sponsors. Without them, we couldn’t stay in business and provide quality entertainment and education to our readership.

Sure, but why “Sponsor” sounds better than “Advertiser”?

Through their generous sponsorship, we can provide that and in return, get their names and products in the faces of our readers. We never just sell ads. We are constantly looking for “advertisers” with products our readers want. If it was about the money, i’d be in real estate investing.

Well. Are you saying the the market value of the Ping! Zine and the customers it drives to vendors and service providers isn’t enough? Or you just want to show appreciation to your advertisers and emphasize their importance?

We love Ping! Zine with a passion… show appreciation… meaning if it was about the money, we would be jamming each issue with nothing but ads offering every product under the sun.

You have used the word “real estate” business a couple of time during this interview. Don’t tell me you have never considered to move to this business?

LOL. If I had my real estate license when Hurricane Katrina hit us, I’d be a very wealthy individual. Property values around us doubled over night and demand was increasingly higher than supply. I was too busy trying to save my own company, while watching many of my peers close down for good. We were without power for months, our office ceilings were caved in, etc. We were able to survive and grow from that episode. Thanks to our sponsors and friends!

I understand that! Tell me is Ping! Zine best for consumers or for small-business owners or probably for larger companies?

It is best for the consumers, SMBs and employees of large companies. The mid to little guy.

All of them?

A: People who are running servers for their non-hosting related bosses, small to medium hosting and tech companies, and employees of large companies looking to get new information. We can’t educate the owner of a large company on how to grow his business when he is already at the top.

What kind of companies advertise most – hardware vendors, software apps and solution providers or service providers?

Hardware and software providers, Commerce, DDOS protection, Server support, Colocation facilities, etc.

How hard is to create good content in times that content depreciates very fast. Do you often see your publications copied?

I hope they at least reference us, and that makes us happy. For those that don’t, well us rednecks down south know how to deal with you when we find you. For those that don’t, well us rednecks down south know how to deal with you when we find you.

Isn’t it very expensive to send one overseas?

Very, that’s why our digital option is so appealing

Were you involved in any other niches of web hosting industry, except media publishing?

Yes, we were running a semi-successful web design and hosting company at the time.

Why did you decided to leave this business, Was it because you felt like you needed to do something you would do better… or just web design and hosting, especially web hosting is quite boring… ?

My background is in publishing, so it was natural to do this magazine… and i never left the hosting and web design industry. I still have a hosting and design company, mainly to keep me on my toes. What affects our readers, affects me too. I have to care about the industry, because I am still in it.

I saw cPanel bought a small Shared hosting provider to use it for testing. It is actually a good idea to have a business on the side, which could be used as a lab?

Yes, my feelings too

I have been always curious why the media in the web hosting industry are not critical to hosting providers and their business practices in a way that journalists do when it come to politics?

Personally Ping! Zine has always had a policy of looking for positive things on the tech/host industry to report about. We have covered things such as when The Planet data center caught on fire, but in a way to inform readers what was happening and what was being done. When something bad happens in the hosting industry, they cover it up well. Plus do you really care if hosting provider CEO “A” is sleeping with his assistant or whether he is taking care of the latest DDos attack?

We do cover any political items that affect our industry though.

Sure. But I didn’t see any web hosting media to say anything critical about Yahoo’s overselling or about other “Shared Hosts” that claim everything “unlimited”. There are many providers that mislead consumers and it is not like that the IT media would do anything to give publicity to such practices?. I’m just trying to understand why the IT journalists and writers look like they are always on the providers’ side by default, unlike political reporters who are always critical in their effort to protect the public interest… or maybe I’m wrong?

We covered overselling and “unlimited” issues many times in the beginning, but how many times do repeat yourselves?

Please tell me how did you come up with the idea to create Softaculous?

I noticed the difficulty people had in installing and maintaining their websites if they don’t have a technical background, which many people don’t have. The idea came from this very observation.

Were there any other auto-installer libraries before the launch of Softaculous? I think Fantastico was there, wasn’t it?

Yes, Fantastico was there. Later when we launched I realized two more were there as well. Installatron and SimpleScripts.

Then, I should to ask you did you resolve any issues that other auto-installers had and did you learn from them how to improve Softaculous?

Yes and no. As I said during the time I made Softaculous, the only one I knew was Fantastico. They were not regular updates n Fantastico at the time and that was one flaw we improved upon. I made sure our updates reach fast. Apart from that I found that we could innovate to such a great degree (as it is Softaculous now). And hence there are tons of features in Softaculous which were not there in our competitors and they now copy us. I guess the industry has also shown that Softaculous is a better product by adapting it.

Can you tell me how did you make the breakthrough? Is there any specific thing that helped you to make Softaculous so popular?

Not just one. We had so many innovative features such as: faster updates, demos, ratings, reviews, better UI, one click installation (many are still not one click till date). The only marketing we did was post at Web Hosting Talk in the “Announcements” forums whenever we released a cool new version. Rest was all word of mouth. The Softaculous success came because of the community of users, and also because of the hard work and innovation!… or the very

Do you remember the first web host that installed Softaculous?

Well Softaculous was a free installer for the first 6 months and we didn’t have any tracking of licenses in use then.

Is there a real competition in the market of auto-installer software products or the market is just too big so the companies would compete one to another?

The market is surely big and there is intense competition now. Before we entered the other players were, I guess, happy with the status quo. Fantastico with the one being the dominant one, Installatron being the an alternative to Fantastico and being dominant on DirectAdmin servers and SimpleScripts being the BlueHost installer. This was before Softaculous entered the market. But we did alter the way the market worked. Today I guess the competition has increased nearly 10 times what it was back then. It is good for the market.

What does Softaculous mean? Is it a word play game?

“Software” + Spectaculous” = Softaculous. This is how I thought of the name.

Were you the only one who created the core of Softaculous or you had partners in the development team?

I was the only one. I have been a coder since I was 16. I guess I learned quite a lot while writing Softaculous.

What was the most important project or job you had before the launch of Softaculous?

I used to maintain a forum software. I had also written an ERP for my Dad’s Factory which is still in use and handles production of over 100 Tons a day.

100 tons of …?

Textiles!

You obviously didn’t decide to lay on your father’s business and to have an easy life? What motivates you to work hard, to set and achieve goals and to move forward in business?

Well I guess one should do what one enjoys. And I enjoy software more than yarn (till date). Also in software you can play God as you are the creator of a whole new stuff! One single thought that motivates me is the fact that I want my software to be used by millions and millions of people.

Now I got it. You like being in charge :) ?

I guess yes :) Who doesnt !

Let’s get back to Softaculous! How you do you decide which scripts to add to Softaculous? What’s the objective? Is it to have the highest number of scripts automated for installation?

We see which scripts have a good potential and decide. Many suggestions come from users. Also we do want to have a very vibrant list of scripts in our library. I think the user should be given as many options as possible. The new script vendors should get a fair chance to enter the market. E. g. if a new blogging software comes along which is better than lets say WordPress, why should that script not be given a chance? Let the users decide which is the best in the market.

At the same time there are tons of scripts which come and go. We don’t add them.

Would you sell Softaculous one day or merge it with another software producer in order to achieve a certain business goals? Or you see it as a core, traditional business for you?

I really cant foretell the future. But I would do anything which is beneficial to the customers first. And yes Softaculous is a business for me which I enjoy.

So you are not one of those guys who would love to sell their business when they get a very good offer?

No, I wouldn’t sell Softaculous, its the way I am able to touch so many lives and help so many people who don’t know how to install or upgrade scripts.

So it is not just business, it is for cause?

Yes, I read this quote by Benjamin Franklin: “If you don’t want to be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing”!

I was just about to tell you that if you one day decide to enter politics it might work :) Business persons usually do care mostly about profits. You seem to think a little bit different?

I do care about profits as well. Also I feel rich people should do more to help the underprivileged people. I feel “With great power comes even greater responsibility”. I feel in sharing wealth when I have some considerable wealth that is to be shared.

OK, tell me is there any software scripts you have found and planning to add to Softaculous, which you find outstanding? Do you see any new application which would make a big breakthrough within the next few years?

I feel our 6 months our new product AMPPS which is a WAMP or MAMP stack is really a game changer. Its got Softaculous inbuilt and its free.

Thank you for your time Pulkit. It was good to talk to you!

Tell me is the World Hosting Days 2011 the biggest challenge for the WHD team? It looks you have grown a lot in 2010?

Our WorldHostingDays 2011 in Europa-Park will – again – be the world’s biggest hosting event. The event has grown a lot and it is one of our goals that people will once more say about our event that it is one of the best organized shows that they ever have been attending.

Do you expect more participants than WHD 2010 and is the exhibition area called hosting.FAIR bigger than last year?

While the attendance grew from 2,000 visitors in 2009 to more than 2,800 visitors in 2010, we already right now have more than 3,500 people that registered for our event in a few weeks. The exhibition area will not only be way bigger in terms of square meters, but also regarding the number of partners having a booth. In 2010 we had about 60 partners at our hosting.FAIR area, this year about 100 partners will be having a booth in that area.

Do you know any new software platforms and technologies which will debut during the WHD 2011?

All of our partners present their latest developments and future plans, of course. The attendees can discuss these either personally at the fair or hear about them in the talks and sessions. I am not aware of any special debuts at the moment, but you never know what the companies will pull out of their hats during WHD. It often occurs that this is only decided on short notice before the show starts.

I have an impression that WorldHostingDays is changing to become more an event where a larger corporations rather than middle-sized companies are presented. Please tell me do you still have space for companies which are not of large size?

Your impression is not correct. At WHD 2011 you will – of course – see the Microsofts and Parallels again, but we had the biggest growth not at the bigger partnership levels. The biggest growth clearly was at the basic gold partnership level – we will have more than 60 gold partners at WorldHostingDays 2011.

When you look at the agenda you can say “It is a another Cloudy conference”. I have seen keynotes titled “From Webhosting to Cloud Computing, Are You Ready for The Transformation”. One like this would be held in 2009 or 2010. What do you think, why the word “Cloud” is a keyword for the most keynotes as they are announced?

As long as there is no other really new big thing in the industry, the Cloud will probably remain the major buzzword at such conferences. And there is still potential in fact, because there are many companies and also private users left who don’t use the cloud by today. So all the hosting companies will try to make it even more attractive and add functionalities and security and convenience and so on.

Who’s new in WHD 2011? Who are the speakers that we will see for the first time and which are exhibitors which debut at the 2011 event?

Not only companies like Dell, NetApp, OnApp or Symantec but also companies like Flexiant, Kryptos, NovaStor, Telemax or Veeam will be partners of WHD for the first time. As I already said, we are really growing with partners of completely different company sizes.

Volker Smid (General Manager at HP), Paul van Brouwershaven (CTO at Networking4All) and Tobias Wann (Managing Director at VeriSign) are just some of our partners that will speak in our main.FORUM for the first time.

People who organize World Hosting Days has significant experience in hosting industry. Can you say that the Cloud computing trend changes the hosting hosting industry in favor of the larger corporate players?

I don’t think so. Every small hoster can offer cloud services to their customers, so they also profit from the hype that is mainly produced by larger companies in their huge advertising companies.

In my last year’s interview with Thomas Strohe I asked “Is the North American web hosting industry more innovative than the European one?” He said “No”. Did you see a major change in the European Hosting market (as far as we could use such definition) within the last year? Please also tell me how did the German hosting industry itself change within the last 12 months?

The one thing that comes to my mind is that they pay much attention to children’s protection today. As useful as the Internet has become and as much as it improves our life, you must not forget that there are also many threats for underage persons waiting there. Now hosting companies in Germany tend to include some web filters in their offers in order to protect the children.

Is there anything that we are missing up to this point that should be announced prior of World Hosting Days. Like the Cloud computing camp for example. Did you incorporated that one in WHD 2011 as you did last year?

We will have a new social event on the second evening. It is going to be a typical German party with much beer, nice food and good music. Kind of like the famous Oktoberfest.

Tell me about the Asian event named WHD.asia. Is it different from the European conference and what is its main focus?

Similar to our main event, WHD.asia will consist of different components. There will be talks delivered by industry experts, which will give you a deeper insight into certain aspects and topics of the hosting business. Secondly, our hosting.FAIR will offer everybody just the right forum to present their products and services. Last but not least, there will be social events like the ConneXion party in the evening, where you can follow up on business conversations, make some good deals or just have some nice food before you travel back home.

No matter if you are already represented on the Asian market or still need to enter it: WHD.asia is the perfect opportunity to get in contact with important industry colleagues from Asian companies. With WHD.asia we want to encourage European and US companies to introduce them to the Asian hosting community, or to tighten their connections to local companies, respectively. On the other hand, we also would like to invite Asian companies to take part and give them a forum to meet interesting business prospects. We are happy that big players of the Asian hosting market like Directi already seized the chance and will be a partner of WHD.asia.

What are your expectations of the WHD 2011 and of the changed brand “World Hosting Days”. Are you planning to organize an American event as well?

We changed the name from WebhostingDay to WorldHostingDays, or WHD respectively, in order to account for the show’s substantial development and growth. Moreover, the new name is intended to imply that WHD’s topics cover more than pure web hosting. Complementary industry sectors were already addressed in the past and became more and more important in the course of time.

With WorldHostingDays 2011 we want to set a milestone for hosting events – and I am very confident that we will achieve that goal!

Presently, there are no plans for an event in the USA, but there will be WHD.local at ten European locations in autumn 2011.

Tell me how did you come up with the idea to create CloudLinux?

I knew about the problem facing Shared Hosting companies for years. I had developed H-Sphere since 1997, and one of the most critical issues was always single customer affecting all other customers. Yet, we never had a good approach to deal with it. Nor did any of our competitors. So, after few years of not doing software for hosting industry, I took a look at what is going on – and noticed that this problem is still not addressed by anyone. I researched it a bit, and figured out that I have an elegant solution for it. Hence  - CloudLinux.

Did you develop H-Sphere alone? I remember it was quite popular at the time! Can you share with B10WH.com readers how many of you worked on the H-Sphere project?

I started PSOFT (the company behind h-sphere) with a partner back in 1997. In 2005, when it was sold to Comodo, the company had 60+ people, most of them working on H-Sphere, or providing tech support for h-sphere.

OK. I’m curious why didn’t you continue developing web hosting control panels? Was it because you needed to work on something innovative which would resolve any particular technical issue in Shared Hosting industry?

I felt the need to expand the sales/marketing expertise, as well as technical team to compete with cPanel & Parallels. That was the main reason for selling company to Comodo. I thought there is enough control panels on the market, and didn’t want to do something that was already done.

Are you saying you are not tempted to add a hosting control panel as add-on product to CloudLinux in the future?

Not at all. I don’t think there is a need on the market for another control panel. cPanel and Parallels are doing quite a good job, and people who don’t like either of those have a choice of ISPManager, DirectAdmin, InterWorx, HostingController, WebMin, and probably few others that I haven’t heard about.

Which control panels are compatible with CloudLinux?

All that I listed above, and probably some others. Anything that works on CentOS, will work on CloudLinux. We also have quite a few people running CloudLinux with their own, home grown solutions.

Please now explain CloudLinux for dummies! What does it do? What makes it valuable and important for server administrators?

Back in 2010 we asked hosting companies to list top 3 reasons for server downtime. Single customer causing server downtime was the number one reason. Such incidence cause downtime more often then hardware or software failures, security issues, software updates or any other reasons. What CloudLinux does – it prevents ability of customer to cause such downtime. We effectively limit CPU & memory usage of the customer, so if customer starts to overload server – limits will be applied, and customer’s site will be limited (and will be slow or down). Yet, all other sites on the server will not notice any issues.

It is funny. When you say – “We effectively limit CPU & memory usage of the customer, so if customer starts to overload server – limits will be applied, and customer’s site will be limited” – this sounds exactly whata customers do not want. but it is actually more important for site owners, than for web hosts… because CloudLinux keeps the servers up and running and those hosted on them should be happy about it  Isn’t it like that?

Yes, and no. Imagine you have a server with 500 users. One of them causing downtime. 499 of those users really want that solution.

Actually, that extra one customer also want that solution, because when his site brings down the server, the downtime affects him as well. Of course some customers are limited at the moment when they just start slowing down the server, or just hit the limit. Yet, because we provide exact metrics, and show how much CPU was used, and when – most of them are accepting it, and hosts use such data to upsell heavy customers to VPS solutions.

Do you think that hosting providers who use CloudLinux should advertise it to customers and to say things like “Powered by CloudLinux”? Are you working to make CloudLinux popular to all site owners or you need it to be recognizable on an enterprise level only?

Many hosts already advertise CloudLinux as a way to show higher stability. And many resellers recognize CloudLinux as a stability factor, and only want to be placed on servers with CloudLinux.

Hmm… that’s great. This means that ClouLinux reached a level of reputation which is making it something like a standard in the Linux hosting market?

I believe so. Lots of people recognize the name now, especially among cPanel hosts.

I have met with the executives of many web hosting providers who have deployed CloudLinux and are happy about it. My personal opinion is that CloudLinux is going to become or even has become a standard in web hosting industry and this is not a compliment, because I meant it. I know all customers are important and that you might not want to point attention to any particular hosting provider, but I’m curious who was the first hosting provider to buy and deploy CloudLinux?

We had several running it at pretty much the same time. uk2 was one of the first ones.

This is interesting. Does CloudLinux fit to their OneApp Cloud platform? Is it integrated with it?

Sure. OnApp comes with CloudLinux template, and lots of hosts who use OnApp, also use CloudLinux

You now, when I do these interviews, my objective always is to show to the B10WH.com readers, who’s behind the technology. So let’s talk about you. Are you graduated in computer science and how important was your education for your today’s business?

I was doing CS degree, but I never graduated. I started PSOFT instead. The education was pretty important, as it gave me enough knowledge to understand underlying technology.

It is funny. I know many fine professionals in this industry who are either top executives or owners of popular brands and did not have time to graduate because put all their energy in business! What does your wife says about that?

My wife just completed her Phd, and thinks it is a total disgrace that I left college :)

You know, the smart people who do PHd’s and the university professors should always remember that there is a real business that support in academics and the universities.

I think it was a mistake on my part to abandon college. It wasn’t the best decision for sure.

You told me once you have 3 kids. On which side of the technology business do you see them – as consumers or as professionals?

I will let them decide!

Someone might say it is irresponsible not to guide your kids ;) but the truth is that you are probably a very good father, if you want them to choose by themselves. Most parents don’t do this?

I don’t know, but I think it would be irresponsible to decide for them. It is their life, and they should have a chance to make their choices. Of course they still have to get college education, and I will have some troubles explaining them why it is a must have.

How far will you go with CloudLinux. Which direction is it going to go. Will you develop it more like an OS (Os itself) or it will be an application for the Red Hat family operating systems. Or you are going to try building any kind of one-stop automation solution for hosting providers (excluding the control panels, as fas as you said you are not doing control panels anymore)?

CloudLinux is an OS, it is a fork of RHEL, but we plan to keep it as close to RHEL as possible. The goal is to make it the best OS for Shared Hosting companies and we are concentrating solely on that.

Can anyone install it as stand-alone OS on a server or they need to have a RHEL OS installed on the server first?

Anyone can install it from the disk (we provide ISO image), though majority of people have pre-installed CentOS, and convert instead.

We are speaking a week prior to World Hosting Days conference in Germany. What do you expect from this event. And where CloudLinux is more popular by the way? Is it in the United States and Canada, in Europe or Asia?

CloudLinux is most popular in US, UK, followed by Asia and Eastern Europe. We don’t have lots of penetration in Germany and other western European countries, as that market is prefers Debian & Suse – which makes it more difficult for them to switch to CL.

WHD looks very exciting this year. It sounds like it is going to be biggest hosting event ever, and we are looking forward to meet our existing and future customers.

Thank you very much for your time Igor. I’m speaking to you in 2011 and I hope that when we’re doing the next interview CloudLinux will be even bigger and the OS will become a true standard in Shared Hosting.

Hi Martin, good to have you here. If you have to describe Host Color with a few words, what would you say? Is it a “Shared Hosting provider”, is it a “cheap hosting provider” or anything else?

It is my pleasure. Thank you for the opportunity. Speaking about Host Color I would say “Shared Hosting” or “Quality Web Hosting” and would never use the word “cheap”. I don’t understand “cheap” as “low in price”. In web hosting “cheap” does not refer to the price. It refers to unreliable. I know that many people would disagree with me, but just take a loot at all those “cheap hosting” offerings. They are not based on quality of the support, stability of the hardware systems, redundancy of the network or on how does the hosting company’s support work. All they say to customer is “you can get it cheap”. And “cheap” means a lack of standards. Cheap means that someone got a budget server with one hard drive and put a few hundreds of virtual hosting accounts on it. This is exactly what any reputable web hosting company must not do!

“Cheap” is not an option for Host Color. Nothing is cheap and  we do cheap. We do “low cost”, quality based Shared Hosting, VPS and Dedicated servers. Hope that this answers your question, despite that I would not use such words to describe Host Color’s business.

What would you say then?

It is on our website. We say we do “Web hosting about people, not about gigabytes”.

How important is Shared Hosting in your customer portfolio?

It is important. Our company entered into the web hosting market as Shared Hosting provider in 2000. I wasn’t in Host Color at that time, but I knew the company’s history. It has been opened on a dedicated servers hosted in Rack Shack, company based out of Houston, Texas, that doesn’t exist anymore. What I know from those who founded Host Color is that it wasn’t reliable provider so the company moved quickly to set up it is own hosting center in Indiana.

Why Indiana? It doesn’t sound like a good location for a hosting provider?

It is good! We are very close to Chicago and the location works great both for all American customers, no matter they are from East coast, West coast or live in the central part of the country. It is great location for Canadian customers as well. The RTT (Editor’s note: Round-trip time) is low for Europe and Asia as well.

You claim to offer redundant network. Which provider do you have?

We are connected to Level3 and Cogent and working to add Tiscali (Tinet) and a one more provide or quality bandwidth in Q2 or Q3 of 2011. We are also using a few smaller IP bandwidth providers which operate in Central U.S. Our network is reliable and we guarantee 100% up-time in our Service Level Agreement. Most of our Shared and Dedicated servers customers are currently enjoying more than 1300 days up-time. However I should say that there is more to be done and we are working on it.

I saw that Host Color manages customers’ accounts with a control panel named NextColor. I wasn’t able to find anyone else to using that one. Tell me more about it. Is it a proprietary technology?

Yes. We developed it in 2003 – 2004 and it was probably the best server automation software on the market at the time. However we decided not to release a commercial distribution and to use it in-house only. In 2010 we moved to cPanel/WHM however. We still have a few thousands of customers on NextColor, but we decided to migrate to cPanel.

Why? Do you say your control panel isn’t good enough?

No, I’m not saying that! It is an excellent software. It is stable, secure and easy to use. However we are not a software producer. We are hosting provider. And we decided to focus in web hosting, not in producing a hosting automation software. We are spending on improving the network, on testing and then implementing the best hosting automation standards and to continue providing the best possible customer support. These are very different from software development.

There is one more thing. We have seen that cPanel has become truly great software automation product within the last few years. Most web hosts abandoned the server management systems they used to use to migrate to cPanel. If we didn’t migrate our customers to cPanel we’d loose value.

How would any hosting provider loose value if they use Plesk or any other control panel, not cPanel for example?

cPanel has become the most popular server automation standard in Linux hosting. Having Enkompass they are now a player in the Windows hosting market as well. Plesk is also good, we offer it to VPS customers hosted on the Parallels Virtuozzo Containers virtualization platform. However we use cPanel/WHM for Shared hosting. It is indisputably the best automation product for Shared and Reseller Hosting, which means that it is the same for managing a stand-alone dedicated servers. I have a good news for our customers as well. We have begun offering cPanel Cloud Hosting.

Isn’t it something that any web hosting provider already does?

Not really! Take a look at Cloud hosting offerings announced by different providers and you will that they are Virtual Private Servers delivered from any Cloud computing platform. What we do is a High Availability cPanel based virtual hosting. This means that we offer Shared Hosting accounts hosted on a Cloud. We have a cluster of servers, which feature load-balancing and High Availability and the accounts of our Shared Hosting customers reside on top of the cluster. It is an excellent service, because our customers save money and time on software licensing and on virtual private server management. We use a technology called Fuscan Linux Cloud to automate cPanel Cloud management and provisioning of virtual hosting accounts on the cloud. It is a new technology and we were one of the first to implement it.

I’m skeptical when it comes to Cloud computing. Nowadays everyone is speaking about it and most providers claims to have it. At the same time it requires a huge investment to build a Cloud computing hosting service? So how could a small or a middle-size d hosting company afford to own a cloud computing infrastructure ?

Well, the major providers want consumers to think that they are the ones who could build and operate a stable Cloud computing hosting infrastructure. However the reality is different. It requires an investment to build a Cloud infrastructure, but it is not a mission impossible. I’d say that any company would start with an investment of $50,000 and to scale its Cloud infrastructure up, depending on the growth rates.

Host Color Cloud is not a monster infrastructure. It is growing and the growth rate depends on customers’ demand. So if anyone says that Cloud computing is a privilege for a companies of large scale like Amazon, RackSpace, etc. then you know one’s opinion is biased. You can see a that more and more web hosting providers adopt some kind of Cloud computing technologies. You can see a growing number of Cloud enablers. So without claiming to be an expert, I can say that we see a lot of competition in the Cloud Hosting market. It is not a competition of corporations however.

Let’s get back to Host Color’s business? How do you see your company in the today’s very competitive hosting market? What do you do to attract customers? I didn’t see much of an advertising for Host Color, compared to some other hosting providers.

We have our own sales and marketing channels and they work good for us. We do not heavily advertise our Shared Hosting, because we do not do “unlimited” disc space and unlimited everything Shared Hosting. We are working to get customers who need stable and customized web hosting environment, which means VPS and Dedicated servers. In the Shared hosting niche we recommend and are trying to attract web designers and developers who are using specific content management systems like MODx, CMS Made Simple, TextPattern, bEvolution, Drupal, Joomla, Typo3. This is not something other do not do, but we have a tradition in supporting different Open Source CMS.

Do you do any Affiliate program?

Yes we do and we offer good payout rates, because unlike Shared Hosting providers Host Color is a popular for its Virtual Private Servers and Dedicated Hosting services. But we don’t do crazy, unrealistic commissions on Shared hosting like $100 or $120 per sale. Our standard affiliate commission is 25% of the sale amount. The lowest commission is $11.97 for Blog Hosting plan. The highest one is a $199.75 per a sale of Dedicated Hosting Power, purchased on monthly contract. However we have customers who buy dedicated hosting services on annual basis, which means that an affiliate could make $1,437 if they refer a customer, who buys a Dedicated Power, dedicated server.

Would you sale Host Color if any bigger web host makes an offer?

I don’t know. This is not my responsibility. Owners must decide on any such offerings. What I know from them is that we would never sell our customers. I have seen a lot of statements like “We buy customers” or “Sell your customers”. It is ridiculous! Host Color has more than 10 years of  business history in the web hosting industry. Our brand and our reputation bring business. So I presume that the company would consider any buyout offering, only if it accounts Host Color’s brand reputation and business history, not just our annual revenue.

Thank you very much for this interview Martin.

It was my pleasure. Thank you for your  time and your business. I’m glad to be one of the hosting industry professionals featured at B10WH.