ARI Registry Services

Type:	Private
Industry:	Registry Services
Ownership:	AusRegistry Group
Headquarters:	Level 8, 10 Queens Road Melbourne, Victoria 3004
Country:	Australia
Website:	ARIServices.com
Twitter:	@@ausregistryint
Key People
Adrian Kinderis, CEO Krista Papac, CSO Andrew Pink, Business Development Consultant Jack Simpson, Marketing and Communications Manager Axia Harrison, Marketing and Events Coordinator

ARI Registry Services was created in October, 2011, when AusRegistry International rebranded. The move was made to underscore its international focus, its brand expansion, and better appeal to non-Australian new gTLD clients. The Aus prefix may have made them appear as an Australian-centric company, despite the fact that they already had international offices and existing clients spread across 4 continents.

ARI Registry Services is the first registry to offer its clients the choice of a primary location for its registry services; the two locations are in Australia and the USA. The announcement of this service was timed with its rebranding announcement, and underscores their desire to be seen as a truly international brand. The move required deploying further resources and infrastructure to the USA, though they already had an office in America; it also received attention when it was announced as the services provider for one of the first official gTLD initiatives, GJB Partners' .jewelers.

Prior to the rebranding, AusRegistry International had made big moves in integrating itself as an industry power player. It had been chosen by a number of national ccTLD registries to support their respective services, had become involved in IDNs, and supported ICANN and other industry fora as a sponsor.

Background

The following developments took place before October, 2011, when ARI Registry Services was known as AusRegistry International.

Australian Experience

It seems that its affiliate, AusRegistry, focuses mainly on work inside Australia especially pertaining to the management of the .au ccTLD. It has renewed this domestic contract with the national authoirty, auDA, a number of times. However, AusRegistry International notes some initatives it has taken in the domestic realm as well, such as building the ENUM registry for the Australia Communications and Media Authority.

Involvement Outside Australia

They have become the domain managers for smaller nations in the Asia Pacific region, such as the small island nation of Nauru. These deals are necessitated by the lack of formal infrastructure to provide national management of ones own ccTLD. The Solomon Islands relied on AusRegistry to develop their registration process from 2004-2007. Nauru, like the Solomon Islands before it, hopes that their current deal with AusRegistry will eventually result in a national infrastructure that is able to take over management of the ccTLD.

They also provide consultations for the operation of South Africa's .za ccTLD, which is the largest ccTLD in Africa. They were responsible for consolidating the disparate registries for .za SLDs into one, central registry.

Expansion into IDNs

ARI Registry serves has recently been solidifying their reputation as an international registry, domain manager, and software developer. They have secured deals with Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates to provide software support for their respective registry services. It is the first company in the world to provide the support necessary to carry these countries' Arabic-based IDN services live, and facilitate the use of Arabic as a primary Internet language. Given these solid partnerships, AusRegistry is poised to continue to grow throughout the region and become a power-player in IDNs. The Omani Telecommunications regulatory body commented that “AusRegistry International met the evaluation criteria and were the highest ranked respondents to the tender issued by the [Telecommunications Ministry] for the provision of a new Domain Name Registry System for Oman. As such, [we have] chosen to partner with AusRegistry International to establish a new Domain Name Registry System for Oman that will provide benefits to the Omani community for many years to come".

New gTLD Services

AusRegistry became heavily involved in the promotion of new gTLDs in 2011, and they have focused their marketing efforts on promoting their registry back-end services. In September, 2011, one of the first public gTLD applicants, GJB Partners, announced that they would be contracting with AusRegistry for the back-end of their proposed .jewelers domain.

In November, 2011, the results of an ARI commissioned study on potential new gTLDs affect on SMBs in Singapore showed that 57% of them would be interested in branding with a new TLD, even at a higher price. However, it also found that only 18% of such businesses were aware of the forthcoming opportunity.

In January, 2012, ARI announced that they had signed contracts with 21 clients in the first week of the opening of the new gTLD program's application window. The majority of these were said to be Brand gTLD clients.

In February, 2012, one of the first public Brand gTLD ventures, StarHub's proposed .starhub, announced that they had partnered with ARI to provide their back-end registry services.

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