Back

Strato Medien AG, founded in 1994, is certainly a top-notch concern, even though a number of the sites that it hosts could perhaps be considered lower echelon in terms of popularity and complexity. Nonetheless, Strato holds 40 percent of the overall market in Germany and the largest gross of clients Ð 380,000. The only requirement to join their masses is a an account with a German bank; "if the U.S. president has an account in Germany," says Heinze, "he is heartily welcome to become our client."

Strato partners with Adobe, AOL and the huge KPN-Kwest hosting firm in Holland. The company maintains a mix of firewalls and polices 1,300,000 domains (heilhitler.de slipped through, though, much to the chagrin of the German government and media). Fifteen percent of their clients eventually leave, but Strato allocates 2,000 new domain names each year. "Premium" services can cost up to $45/month for a maximum of 1,000 MB of space and 1,000 e-mail addresses.

Erstklassige ISION: PrŠdikatswein (a quality wine)

ISION Internet AG hosts the top-class, missions-critical sites, such as as Ebay Germany, which gets 6 million page impressions per day, Focus Online, a magazine similar to The Economist; Der Spiegel Online, a world-famous newspaper; and Tomorrow Internet AG, one of the most innovative European media houses that develops and markets high-penetration online platforms.

ISION commandeers 35percent of the market for missions-critical sites and maintains a two-gigabit bandwidth ceiling for 30,000 clients of managed hosting on 532 Windows NT and Linux servers. The company follows the common German priority of providing a complete hosting package. "The focus is both hosting and the solution that is hosted," says Andreas SchwarzwŠlder, director of communications. "We design, host and manage sites end to end, give access to our own backbone, and manage and control the solutions." ISION showed Max Bahr, the largest home-improvement chain in Germany, how to build its business model completely on the Internet, by hosting them in their datacenters, giving them access through their own backbone and providing full support through their ports, systems, and services.

"Normally the market is very vertically-oriented," says SchwarzwŠlder. "However, most of our clients are from the old economy, and we run comprehensive e-business for our customers like Exodus does in the U.S."

Wein fŸr alle LŠnder
(A Wine for all Countries)
Cybernet, founded 5 years ago as a business provider, also does exceptionally with missions-critical sites. Pushing onward and outward with high-end datacenters in Munich, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Vienna, Zurich, Lugano, Lausanne, Milan, Padua, Trient and Rome, the firm provides three levels of service: basic, professional and exclusive.

The company today hosts 10,000 sites on NT and Linux platforms - everything from German Parcel to D&W Autozubehšr, an online automotive accessories catalog promoted by scantily-clad Victoria's Secret-type women, as well as the German extensions of American firms such as the Boston Consulting Group GmbH and F.W. Woolworth.

Cybernet is growing 120 percent each year and expects more extensive growth with three new datacenters in Frankfurt, Munich and Hamburg at 11,500 ft2 each. Cybernet operates one of the continent's biggest high-speed backbones belonging to a single provider.

Auslese PrŠdikatswein
(a very sweet, quality wine)
European Computer Research Centre, founded in 1984 as a research institute and now part of Cable & Wireless, has evolved over the years into a major German business hosting company, partnering now with Cable & Wireless International to provide their hallmark connection speed; the powerful ECRC infrastructure provides a 0C-192c 9.953 GB/second backbone connection to convey compressed data, reliability through a redundant network infrastructure, and an international presence with connections to the most important peering-points.

ECRC is not exclusively involved in hosting, but their 30-website client palette includes colorful national companies such as Hypovereinsbank, the second-largest bank in Germany; Webmiles, a company that rewards various classes of on-line purchases; and GMX, Germany's biggest e-mail and messaging service provider.

ECRC offers two ways to access the Net: virtual hosting or colocation hosting. In all, ECRC has 28 Internet connection points at its disposal, to be increased to 50 by the middle of 2001. The company has recently established both a large, 23,000 square-foot datacenter in Munich and the first of many global nodes for Cable & Wireless in Frankfurt, through which the entire worldwide network is tied together.

Machen die ersten Schritte beim Weinbau
(Taking the First Steps in Wine-growing)
Now let's turn to the younger wines. A couple of German hosting upstarts follow the common German priority utilized by firms such as ISION of providing a complete hosting package and are frequently involved in the development of content and other "extras." Salmacis (SAL-ma-sis) interestingly derives its name from a legendary Greek spring in the woods that curses bathers with hermaphroditism. What that has to do with its services - including hosting, configuring computers, offering server solutions, and providing Internet programming and software - is anyone's guess.

Salmacis' main business is developing software for customers that require Intranets, but they host 1500 domains, including gca.com, a small advertising firm near Munich; housemusic.de, a promotional site for the genre with artists and booking links available; dj-empire.com, a DJ booking company owned by the famous German Producer Giorgio Moroder; and technoopera.com, a project combining opera, techno and house music.

Overall, house music hosting reigns with Salmacis. "It's very easy working with them," says Julia Ufer at housemusic.de, "because our company lacks the internal technical know-how. We do the news portion, but Salmacis takes care of the graphics, DJ ads and hosting service."

The firm offers five levels of hosting, ranging in price from $37 to $109/month, and going the extra mile is imperative for fledglings like Salmacis. "Customer Service is 9 to 5," says Managing Director Sebastian Keith Bayer, "but some customers will call me on my 'handy' if there's something very important. When you are programming a lot of software for your hosting clients, you have a very close relationship with them."

EU Hosting Services provides the "extra" of application hosting for the 900 firms and 20,000 domains they host, such as Duser Entertainment, a media production outlet; suchmaschinenindex.de, a powerful search engine; and ravenpack.com, an IT group.

EU Hosting Services hosts a few more total sites than Salmacis (1,800) on 150 Linux units in Munich. The firm maintains 25 percent of its offerings in the dedicated hosting sphere, having obtained their DC3 lines by partnering with UUNet, according to Manager Sernc Matevz.

The company, begun in September, 1998, grows 30 percent monthly; 50 percent of its new clients emanate from its existing client base. Prices start at $15/month and generally max out at $69 when you want a full-service e-commerce site; multi-messaging retrieval services (via phone) are popular.

Beteiligen Sie sich an der Weinernte
(Get in on the Harvest!)
Germany is going to have the largest growth in online accounts in Europe by 2003, which provides a very tasty opportunity. But know your focused German competition: ECRC, Strato, ISION, Cybernet, as well as Salmacis and EU Hosting Services. At least for the moment, die Deutscher herrschen! (Germans rule!)