Register.com

Type:	Private
Industry:	Registrar
Founded:	USA (1999)
Founder(s):	Richard Foreman Peter Foreman
Headquarters:	575 8th Ave., 11th FL New York, NY 10018-3011, USA
Employees:	489 (2008)
Revenue:	51.70 M (2008)
Website:	http://www.register.com
Key People
David L. Brown, President Gary S. Michel , EVP and CFO Myles Trachtenberg, SVP and CIO

Register.com is a web hosting and internet domain register company based on NY, USA.

The company mainly sells registrations for general extension i.e. .com, .net, .org , .co , .biz and also country based extensions i.e. .uk, .us, .jp, .ca etc.The company serves an extensive range of customers from individuals and small businesses to large corporations, and it has more than 2.5 million domain names under its management.

The company also offers Email Package, website hosting, website developing, security solutions, internet marketing etc services. The headquarter of Register.com is in New York city and it has has branches in Baltimore and Halifix, USA, in London, England and in Nova Scotia, Canada.

History

The company was founded in 1994 by brothers Richard Foreman and Peter Foreman as an Internet Service Provider under the name Forman Interactive. The company changed its name to Register.com in 1999.

Register.com was one of the first five testbed Registrars for the competitive Shared Registry System announced by ICANN in 1999.

In 2000, Register.com issued an IPO and began trading on the NASDAQ under ticker symbol RCOM pricing its share at $24. In 2004 the company was listed by VeriSign as one of the top domain name registrars in the world.

Register.com parted ways with co-founder and CEO Richard Forman in June, 2003. Peter Forman, brother of Richard Forman and co-foundeder of the company assumed the president and CEO position the very same day. Peter Foreman resiged as CEO in February 2005.

In 2006 Register.com was sold to the San Francisco-based private equity firm Vector Capital Corporation for about 200 million dollars. David Moore was appointed as inturim CEO of the company by Vector Capital after the acquisition. . During his time, the company focused on cost reduction through better business practices and was successful in the process.

on November 1, 2006, register.com announced appointment of Larry Kutscher, as Chief Executive Officer of the company.. Under Kutscher, Register.com continued the strategy of supporting small business owners and entrepreneurs.

Kutscher served as CEO of Register.com until July 2010. In July 2010, Register.com was acquired by Web.com for about $135 million.

Products and Services

According to their official website, the products and services Register.com provides are:

• Domain Registration - registrations for general extension i.e. .com, .net, .org , .co , .biz and also country based extensions i.e. .uk, .us, .jp, .ca etc.
• Email Packages - Different packages for single users, multi-users, professionals and business entities.
• Website Development - Website design and development for standard website, ecommerce website, custom website etc.
• Security Solutions - Different kind of security solutions such as standard SSL, premium SSL, wildcard SSL etc.
• Promotional Services - Such as online marketing, email promotion, visitor clicks etc.

Awards

Register.com received frequent awards and recognitions for their role of pioneer business entity in Internet and web business. They have recived "An Outstanding Customer Service Experience" By J.D. Power and Associates for the year 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, "Shared Hosting Provider" By The Web Host Directory for the year 2008 & 2009, "Editors Choice Award" by HostingFindMyHost.com for the year 2009. They have also achived "#1 Shared Hosting Provider" award by The Web Host Directory for the year 2005 & 2006 "Users Choice Award" by Name Intelligence in 2005 and "Stevie Award Finalist" American Business Awards - 2005. They were rated number one in Top 10 Best Rated Website Hosting Reviews by Website-Hosting-Reviews.net.

ICANN Registrar Accreditation

In march 1999, ICANN Board posted the Statement of Registrar Accreditation Policy to implement a program for registrar accreditation for the .com, .net, and .org top-level domains. From March 11 to April 8, 1999, ICANN accepted applications from entities seeking accreditation to participate as one of the five domain name registrars in the SRS Testbed Program.

On April 21, 1999, ICANN announced Register.com was one of the first five testbed registrars for the competitive Shared Registry System. On June 7, the company began operations under this name as a paid registrar in the .com, .net and .org domains along with AOL, CORE, France Telecom/Oléane and Melbourne IT. Register.com is the first registrar to come online on 7 June.

Vector's acquisition of Register.com

Register.com launched very successful IPO in 2000 and was one of the pionneer companies in internet business for 4-5 years. However, during 2005 as demand for domain names slowed, Register.com’s revenues and market value fell significantly and the company began to face different challenges. The company developed a strategy to focus on small business and providing online services to serve that segment of the market but still kept underperforming in terms of revenues and on the stock market.

On August 9, 2005, Register.com announced that they signed a merger agreement for an acquisition by Vector Capital Corporation, a San Francisco-based private equity firm. Public share holders of Register.com receive cashed consideration of $7.81 per share in the merger. Following the merger, Register.com was once again privately held and was no longer listed on The Nasdaq National Market.

DDoS Attacks

On January 6, 2001, Register.com had a severe Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack that lasted for an entire week. It was the first major attack using DNS servers as reflectors.

On April 1, 2009, Register.com suffered another major DDoS attack, disruptingthousands of web sites. FBI and The Department of Homeland Security were engaged to help register.com to solve the issue. Services experienced different kind of problems for almost three days and the system was restored through counter-measures and minimized the disruption. Their CEO, Larry Kutscher, explains "For the past three days Register.com has been experiencing intermittent service disruptions as a result of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack – an intentionally malicious flooding of our systems from various points across the internet. We know the disruption of business this has caused our customers is unacceptable, and we are working round the clock to combat it."

Web.com's acquisition of Register.com

On June 17, 2010, Vector Capital announced an agreement under which Web.com will acquired Register.com for about $135 million.

Larry Kutscher, CEO of Register.com, said: "Since 2005, Vector has been a dedicated, hands-on partner working with our team to grow our business, maximize our operating efficiency and helping us become a preferred provider to small business customers. This announcement is the next step in the process of positive growth that we have achieved with Vector. Register.com's acquisition by Web.com will create an industry leader with the scale and breadth to further support small business customers in maximizing their presence on the web."

In his statement, Web.com president and chief executive officer David Brown said"We are very excited to announce our agreement to acquire Register.com, which will bring highly complementary products, sales channels and operating capabilities to Web.com,”

External links

• Register.com
• Web.com
• Vector Capital