This is an article that appeared in May 2005 issue of Backbone magazine

It's 3 a.m. Do you know where your domain name is?

By Greg Michetti

When Marcel arrived at his FlangeCo office in Nisku, Alta., at 6:30 a.m. one chilly Monday last November, he was excited about the busy work week ahead.

Sure, his company had just shelled out $95,000 on software, and that was a big financial hit. Yet, it was critical for his company to integrate its downhole oil tool business software with the SAP or Oracle supply chain management systems operated by the big oil and gas companies in Calgary.

Better yet, the new software was slick.

Each morning, after a log on and e-mail check, users simply reviewed and selected the orders that could be fulfilled that day and forwarded them to a secure database location on the corporate Web site.

From there, the appropriate operational staff fulfilled the order, but anyone in the company with Web access and authentication credentials could track it to keep customers informed. The system had been working smoothly, with only minor hitches, for the past three months.

Sadly, this particular morning was different. E-mail was down, but after some snooping, Marcel’s controller/IT person determined that the internal network system was fine, the Exchange server was working and Telus, the local ISP, was not experiencing problems. By 9 a.m., though, the order system was still down, 22 operations people were waiting for their daily orders and Marcel had already fielded a complaint from a steamed customer in Ft. McMurray, Alta.

By 10 a.m., after a flurry of phone calls, including one to the Web designer who was now a systems administrator in Caracas, Venezuela, they discovered the problem: FlangeCo had let its .ca Internet Web site domain registration lapse. No domain meant the Web site was down and, worse yet, no e-mail.

WARNINGS MISSED
It turns out the domain registrar had sent warning e-mails to the contacts on file, but those people had left the firm in 2002.

Furthermore, the actual domain name was registered in the name of the person who set the network up five years ago. He, not FlangeCo, was listed as the legal domain name owner, meaning he was the only one who could make changes until FlangeCo proved otherwise.

Finally, by Tuesday night, after sending off company incorporation documents for four provinces, two notarized statutory declarations, a US$200 transfer fee and “ownership” letters from FlangeCo’s parent company CEO in Tulsa, the domain name, Web site and email were back up.

But the damage had been done.

FlangeCo had not only lost hundreds of orders and paid an unproductive staff for two days, but it lost credibility with its customers, some of whom wondered if the company had gone out of business.

WHAT HAPPENED?
If your business is big enough, you employ savvy IT people who effectively handle all this Web stuff. However, if your company is small or new to Web commerce, a FlangeCo-like disaster could happen, because your domain name will be lost if it is not properly handled.

Which brings us to Domain Name Registration Basics 101.

Domain names are initially registered and set up through a domain name registrar.

These are private or public companies which specialize in this business and are authorized and approved by ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. ICANN is the governing body that makes sure domain names are unique and that the Domain Name System (DNS) maps every name to its correct IP address. That ensures when a user keys in http://www.yourdomainname.com it actually goes to an Internet Protocol (IP) address like 123.456.789 and your company Web site comes up.

Most domain names are initially set up for a two-year period and different company contacts and e-mail addresses are associated with each account. For example, the administrative contact may be your company’s general manager, the technical contact is the IT person and the billing contact is the company’s accountant.

However, the person doing the initial setup often makes a simple, honest mistake: using the same name — usually his/her name — for every contact category.

A second honest mistake is made by listing his/her name as the registrant — meaning the domain name belongs to that person and not to the company.

Here comes the tricky part. All this is fine until the annual fees for the domain name must be paid. Naturally, your registrar is generally quite good at notifying you of the domain expiration — often, annoyingly so. And since your information is public, you also receive countless “better pricing, ease of use and long-term discount” e-pitches from different registrars, most of which hit a junk mail folder.

So?

So all renewal warnings can easily go to the same inactive, but never removed, e-mail account.

Now, correcting these contact details is possible but there are hoops. For instance, if you want to transfer ownership you must fill out a form, and in most cases, pay a transfer fee to the registrar. Prices vary; in domain name registrar Register.com’s case, the transfer fee is US$200, significantly more than the US$35 per year it charges to register a domain name, which in turn is far more than the $6.95 charged by many others.

INDUSTRY CONFUSION
Another complicating factor is commoditization, which is currently affecting the industry. Competition in the domain business is fierce and prices are dropping, which means getting your domain name purchased, registered and set up isn’t nearly as mysterious as it was just a couple of years ago.

When technology commoditization occurs, that means it becomes easier to use and we start seeing relevant pitches in mainstream areas like billboards, airline magazines and television. For example, Scottsdale, Ariz.-based domain registration firm GoDaddy.com spent US$2.4 million for a 30-second ad which aired during the first quarter of Super Bowl XXXIX last February.

The commercial featured an attractive, well-endowed woman (model Candice Michelle) wearing a tight, spaghetti-strap tank top. As she stands to address government officials in what appears to be a stuffy U.S. congressional-style censorship hearing, her right spaghetti strap snaps.

However, she quickly places her hand on the front of the tank top before things, um, spill out of control.

The advertisement, viewable at http://www.godaddy.com, was clearly a parody of Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” a year earlier. Although it did not appear to break any censorship rules and had pre-cleared the legal hurdles, the National Football League instructed Fox TV to pull the ads in the second half.

Naturally, the fallout from the ad gave GoDaddy.com and founder Bob Parsons exactly the type of advertising bang that works in a confused market.

According to RegistrarStats (http://registrarstats.com), a Web-based domain name tracking service, the timely ad helped the GoDaddy group rocket to second place in the industry.

The skinny on this? Keep your eye on this shrinking industry where mergers and marketing will be prevalent, because it does concern you more than you think. Check on your firm’s domain name status and pay attention to those notices from registrars, even the junkylooking ones. The shakeout is on and the few domain/Web companies left will be those which can deliver outstanding service with extremely low prices and a model for adding variable-cost features like bulk e-mail, shopping carts, Web site design tools and special arrangements for system integrators to consolidate their clients’ Web sites.

Web domains
ICANN http://www.icann.org