Michael Yablonowitz, President and CEO, uplinkearth

Can you tell us a brief history about how the company was founded?

The initial concept for uplinkearth was born in the mid 1990s, when co-founder Charles LaPadula began to notice an ever-increasing demand for web hosting services from his IT consulting company, CMS Consulting. At the time, I ran a successful Internet Service Provider. Together, Charles and I, with the help of our brand manager Robert Marton, formed uplinkearth to offer business class web hosting services, and enter fully the web hosting market. We opened our doors in 1997, and today we have over 10,000 customers.

Tell us about your new website design?

Absolutely. One of the things that we are constantly trying to improve upon is communication with both existing and prospective clients. As you can probably imagine, our web site is the primary medium which we use to communicate, so we are constantly looking for ways to improve it. Last summer, we started planning for a complete overhaul of the site.

By early March, we finally had a new version of our site ready for public launch, and so far we have heard great feedback. Many of the improvements are solely aesthetic, but we also improved accessibility, page loading speed and navigation. In addition, we added an entire subsection of the site for our new line of dedicated servers.

What are your marketing plans for 2006? What areas do you plan to focus on?

I can tell you that 2006 will be a year of strategic partnerships for uplinkearth. We are going to continue to add more features to our virtual hosting, including the recent additions of ASP.NET 2.0, telerik components, and auto-installers for open source software, such as WordPress and DotNetNuke. Our new dedicated server line, which we introduced in January, has exceeded our expectations and we will continue to market and promote it. Overall, 2006 is going to be a very busy year for uplinkearth. Beyond that—we’ll just have to wait and see.

Considering Windows, Linux, shared, dedicated, reselling, VPS, etc., what segment of web hosting do you see having the largest growth over the next 3 years?

From my perspective in the industry, it looks as though we are going to see substantial growth in the Dedicated Servers sector—as the recent generation of Internet startups continue to outgrow their shared hosting solutions. We are also going to see growth in areas of the market that cater to blogs and multimedia streaming, as personal websites are beginning to appeal to a broader demographic.

I think it is important, however, that we do not marginalize the shared hosting sector. Thousands of new small businesses are created each month, and the truth is that shared hosting will continue to grow exponentially. Starting at just a few bucks a month, it really is the most cost effective way for small businesses to establish a presence.

On the other side, which of these areas do you see the least growth?

A bit of a tough one. At this point, that the market is really in its boom stage and it’s hard to predict.

What is the 1 thing that keeps you up at night?

Technology! One of my biggest fears is that I will not be able to keep up with the rapid changes in hardware and software. Will the investments we’ve made in hardware pay off in 6 months? Will the new software platforms we are integrating work out? In this industry, you have to always keep your eyes on the horizon to stay ahead of the competition.

On the other hand, what is the 1 thing that makes you jump out of bed in the morning?

The thrill of the industry! I really love what I do, or I would not be here. Every day is an exciting new challenge for me, from forging new corporate partnerships, to brainstorming marketing strategies and turning customer feedback into creative new solutions. Our success as a company is contingent on the dedication and motivation of our entire team.