MelbourneIT

Type:	Public
Industry:	Registrar, Hosting
Founded:	Australia (1996)
Headquarters:	Melbourne, Australia
Employees:	690+
Revenue:	$200.1 million (AUD) (2009)
Website:	http://www.melbourneit.com.au/
Key People
Theo Hnarakis, CEO & MD Bruce Tonkin, CSO Daniel Bennett , EVP Gideon Culican, GM

MelbourneIT is a web hosting and internet domain registrar company which also provides related online business solutions products and services. This Australian company was founded in 1996 by The University of Melbourne to work with the private sector on IT projects. MelbourneIT has been listed on Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) since December, 1999.

As a domain registrar, MelbourneIT had a de facto monopoly on '.au' domain for several years and it was the source of half of its net income. It was one of the first five testbed Registrars for the competitive Shared Registry System announced by ICANN in 1999 and started register domain names under .com, .net and .org .

Head quartered in Sydney, Australia, MelbourneIT has 18 offices in 10 countries and over 690 employees worldwide. . As of October 25, 2010, MelbourneIT has about 4,291,483 domain names registered under its management. .

History

• 1996 The company was founded by The University of Melbourne to work with the private sector on IT projects. Professor Peter Gerrand was appointed as the CEO of the company..

• 1999 MIT was selected for competitive Shared Registry System announced by ICANN, and started to register domain names under .com, .net and .org..

• 1999/December MelbourneIT was been listed on Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) with a ticker symbol of MLB. . The company formed an alliance with American telecommunications group NeuStar about that time.

• 2000/October CEO Gerrand left MelbourneIT and was replaced by chief operating officer Adrian Kloeden.

• 2003 MelbourneIT acquires New Zealand's domain name registrar, Domainz, for NZ$2 million. . By that time, Domainz had more than 2.3 million domain names under management.

• 2004 MelbourneIT acquires European digital brand protection company, Cogent IPC for $4.5 million..

• 2006 MelbourneIT acquires the Webcentral Group for about $61.2 million.. It also acquires adigital recording services for justice and public safety venues providing comapny called For The Record in the same year.

• 2007 Melbourne IT acquires UK based domain management company, IDR Management Services. The acquisition has been speculated to be worth of about $2 million.
• 2008/May MelbourneIT announced the acquisition of Internet VeriSign's global Digital Brand Management Services business for US$50 million.
• 2010/May MelbourneIT acquires search-engine marketing business Advantate. Previously, Melbourne IT had 50% of Advantate's shares.

Businesses

Currently, MelbourneIT has the following brands:

• Domainz - New Zealand's domain name registrars which also provides Internet services to small businesses to help them succeed online.

• For The Record (FTR) - global provider of digital recording and content management solutions for judicial and civic venues.

• Melbourne IT Digital Brand Services (DBS) - helps corporations manage, protect and optimise their brands online.

• Melbourne IT Enterprise Services - tracks record of delivering enterprise-grade Internet and IT services to large organisations.

• Melbourne IT's Global Partner Solutions - supplies revenue-generating technical and support solutions for domain names and other value-added online SMB services.

• WebCentral - provides web hosting and Internet services for enterprise and small business customers.

Awards

MelbourneIT won "VMware Virtual Champion of the Year 2009" award on October, 2009. . The company also won "Microsoft Australia Hosting Services Partner of the Year award" for 2008; "Microsoft Asia Pacific Hosting Partner of the Year award" for 2007,2005 and 2003; Name Intelligence Users Choice award for 2006 and 2005; Microsoft Global Hosting Partner of the Year award for 2005 and 2004; different AHRI and Deloitte Technology awards. .

MelbourneIT to enter domain registration

The name MelbourneIT came from "Melbourne Information Technology International Pty Ltd" which was a commercial subsidiary of The University of Melbourne. The initial objective of the company was not merely to register domains but to demonstrate the University’s strategic leadership in working with industry and government in selected areas of IT. Robert Elz, senior system administrator in the University of Melbourne’s Computer Science Department was in charge of the registration process of .au domain at that time.

An article published in "Australian Financial Review" by Charles Wright made the authority interested about the commercial values of domain name registration. Eventually the condition demanded that the process of .au domain registration to be transferred to a capable commercial institution. Thus the administration of com.au names to the University’s subsidiary Melbourne IT by a non-exclusive license, to be reviewed after five years. . In 1996, Government of Victoria awarded a grant of $100,000 in return for registering the backlog of over 2,000 com.au applications free to the applicants. This money was used to build its first domain name registration software platform.

MelbourneIT started charging for domain name registrations in November 1996, at $100 wholesale and $125 retail. They also introduced different pricing plans and different criteria for domain registration process during that period.

After enjoying exclusive right to sell 'au' domain for 5 years, MelbourneIT signed a license agreement with .au Domain Administration (auDA) 12 July, 2001. It was reported that Melbourne IT's Chief Executive, Professor Peter Gerrand, claimed that the deal 'extended Melbourne IT's guarantee of exclusivity'. Later, the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Senator Richard Alston announced that the cliam was incorrect and the MelbourneIT's monopoly on .au domains will not be extended..

External links

• MelbourneIT

Intellectual Property Constituency