Epoch Internet is a backbone provider, a webhosting service, and an access provider. The company hopes to expand its market reach by reselling services through ISPs.

by Alex Goldman
Associate Editor, ISP-Planet
[December 13, 2000]

Epoch Internet claims that it is the only company offering hosting services that were originally designed for small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs).

Paul Hoffmann, Epoch vice president of hosting, said there's a big difference between serving the small office, home office market segment and taking care of small businesses.

"Companies that build products for the SOHO market create simple products that cannot be scaled up, while products that were built for carriers and large enterprises are not economical for mid-sized businesses," Hoffmann said. "Our product is specifically designed for companies that have 50 to 1000 employees."

Business bio
Epoch Internet was founded in 1994, and is headquartered in Southern California. It is a privately-held, Tier-1, business-to-business Internet service providing webhosting, high-speed access, and e-business solutions targeted at the SMB market.

Epoch's partners include Cisco, Microsoft, and IBM. Williams Communications, a major investor in the company, orchestrated Epoch's network buildout (right). Hoffmann said the backbone is the foundation of Epoch's business.

"We focus on providing dedicated and high-speed access," Hoffmann said. "We're also provide colocation, but by focusing dedicated hosting service, we don't need the large-size hosting centers that colo providers require."

Architecture
The hosting services are available in four environments—Linux, Solaris, Windows NT, and Windows 2000. The company developed its own provisioning software and monitors services through a combination of tools including Ipswitch's WhatsUp Gold.

Epoch Internet uses SiteLite's advanced app-level monitoring and dbs services for database-driven Web sites. For example, if standard monitoring software is watching Microsoft's SQL Server and IIS, but .asp code that is accessing the database fails, then SiteLite will detect failed database queries wheras many other monitoring systems would simply show that SQL Server and IIS were running. Hoffmann is especially proud of the company's Point of Distribution (POD) webhosting architecture. He said that while the traditional hosting architecture has multiple individual points of failure, such as core routers and aggregation switches, Epoch provides end-to-end redundancy.

He said Epoch uses paired routers with a proprietary fault-tolerant heartbeat—similar to the Hot Standby Routing Protocol—between two routers that will alert either router immediately if the other goes down.

"Load distribution switches are also paired and another layer of bandwidth management devices reinforces the service," Hoffmann said. "Combining all storage in a single storage sub-system with a backup and a fault-tolerant heartbeat eliminates content synchronization issues by enabling every server to access all content."

Hoffmann said that when a company chooses Epoch to host their Web site, they are effectively putting their business in its hands.

"As such, we feel it is essential to offer a solution that mitigates failure," Hoffmann said. "Given that all technology fails at some point, our POD architecture overcomes this weakness by providing failover for the key Web serving components."

Partnership program
The company is looking to expand its market reach by embracing ISPs through the Epoch Advantage Partner Program. Hoffmann said the ISP partner pricing is discounted, so providers could make a few bucks from reselling Epoch services.

"The discount is dependent upon the volume of business," Hoffmann said. "List price for a shared hosting account is $25 per month, commerce hosting starts at $125, dial starts at $9.95, and email at $35 per year."

Hoffmann said Epoch's ISP Partners are well-cared for—perks include an 800 number and a dedicated account representative.

"Since our partners sign up to resell services in sets of 100 (hosting and dialup), this is an economically feasible offering," Hoffmann said.

ISPs that do not generate the sales volume that the partner program requires can work with Epoch's Strategic Channel Private Label Program. Epoch gives ISPs one-time commissions of 10 percent for referrals to Epoch. The company also has an EpochCenter portal that enables smaller ISPs to co-brand its services.

—End

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