Asp web hosting services

CONXION: The synchronizer - application service providers/Web-hosting services - Company Business and Marketing

With the desire for more applications from Internet-related companies (often called e-businesses) on a steady rise, it only makes sense that there would be a place in this market for application service providers. Santa Clara, Calif.-based Conxion is an example of an ASP - a new type of ISP that specializes in hosting business applications for corporate customers, minimizing the information technology talent that clients must keep on staff.

But it goes beyond that. Conxion uses its all-fiber IP network to provide download services to e-businesses for software, audio and video applications - but also offers application hosting for software vendors, as well as e-business start-up services, Internet access, VPNs and security services.

"Think of the Internet as a public WAN," says Antonio Salerno, Conxion's CEO and founder. "You should be able to run any application - with security and without packet loss."

The ASP side of the business is only a small part of Conxion, Salerno says. "The bulk of our business is in our Web-hosting service, followed by transit and transport, then the download work for big established companies." Big established companies like Microsoft - a primary customer of Conxion.

For companies like this, Salerno says, downloads can be fairly complex. This is the main reason for gaining as much capacity as possible. The company prides itself on saying that on any given day, Conxion's delivery capacity is nearly 25% of the total bandwidth used on the Internet. In addition to its network, the company has five data centers and plans to run 15 by the end of this year.

What Conxion really is, Salerno says, is a synchronizer. It "puts everything together" - by helping you start your e-business, run apps, and get security and control. "We're pretty specialized," he says. "If we were a restaurant, we'd be French or Italian. You'll still get the appetizer, the main course and the dessert, but in a specific way."

The key to Conxion's business model is being debt-free, Salerno says. "We knew we had to be fairly large from the beginning, so we [designed] our network so it could scale up." The company built the network on "contracts, not on speculations," so it could offer realistic timelines to its customers. This differentiates Conxion from its competitors - of which it has many due to the number of areas in which it provides services.

"PSINet does what we do, but they have a billion dollars in debt, and soon they will have to provide interest on that debt," Salerno says, explaining that Conxion's lack of debt makes it more flexible. "In this business, someone can easily come in and change the business model. Because we have no debt, we don't have the nightmare of someone coming in and changing everything."

Something that could change the Internet backbone market is the rise of VPNs, Salerno believes. However, "the way the backbone business has grown, you can't begin to track it," he says. "It's growing by so many orders of magnitude."

The thing for all Internet players to remember is that it is ultimately a very complex business, he says. "Anyone who looks at it as a singular issue and doesn't take into account that this has many pieces will fall behind," he says. "But if you consider all of the issues and you put them together, it's actually pretty simple."