ARI Registry Services

Type:	Private
Industry:	Registry Services
Ownership:	AusRegistry Group
Headquarters:	Level 8, 10 Queens Road Melbourne, Victoria 3004
Country:	Australia
Employees:	80+
Website:	ARIServices.com
LinkedIn:	[1]
Twitter:	@@ausregistryint
Key People
Adrian Kinderis, CEO Jack Simpson, General Manager - Client Engagement Tony Kirsch, Senior Manager, International Business Development Axia Harrison, Account Executive

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, as the "Aus" prefix caused concerned of making them appear as an Australia-centric company, despite their 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: in Australia or 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.

In October 2012, ARI announced the launch of a new service to offer DNS to new gTLD applicants and ccTLD operators. Their goal is to become the largest provider of TLD DNS services within a year of launching.

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 authority, auDA, a number of times. However, AusRegistry International notes some initiatives it has taken in the domestic realm as well, such as building the ENUM registry for the Australia Communications and Media Authority.

In October 2012, APTLD submitted a comment to AuDA in support of keeping the longstanding .au ccTLD contract with AusRegistry. CoCCA withdrew from APTLD after the submission of this proposal, asserting that APTLD backed AusRegistry on the basis of AusRegistry being one of its largest donors. Despite CoCCA's complaints, however, CoCCOA Director Garth Miller's view seems to be the minority view. Under the consultation of AuDA, numerous other registrars have supported the recommendation for AusRegistry to keep the contract.

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 one's 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.

In May 2012, the successful relaunch of Oman's ccTLD, .om, was announced. ARI Registry Services had supported the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) of the Sultanate of Oman in this project. Their partnership began in March 2011. This project also includes the launch of عمان., Oman's Arabic IDN ccTLD.

Expansion into IDNs

ARI Registry serves has recently been solidifying its 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' effect 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.

The company also secured the contract to provide back-end registry solutions for the .melbourne, .sydney and .victoria geographical TLDs and the brand gTLDs .afl and .iinet being applied for by the Australian Football League and iiNet, the second largest DSL Internet in Australia respectively.

In March 2012, It was announced that Directi, a 300+ million dollar group of businesses that develop various Web Products, was launching a new gTLD entity. That new company, Radix, applied for 30 new gTLDs, using ARI as its backend services provider.

On May 31, 2012, ARI Registry Services confirmed that it was able to secure a total of 161 contracts to provide back-end registry services to new gTLD applicants. Out of its 161 clients, 85 are being applied for as generic, 70 are brand and 6 are geographic TLDs. In a statement, Adrian Kinderis, CEO of ARI Registry Services said, "When applications opened in January, our target was to secure around 100 TLDs, so to reach 161 has far exceeded our expectations. Our goal was never to become the biggest, but we did want to be the best. I believe the results of our efforts and the caliber of our clients demonstrates that we are well on the way to becoming a force to be reckoned with." Kinderis said that his company is providing registry solutions for global brands and high-profile entrepreneurs within the electronics, media, telecommunications, automotive and banking industries.

Managed DNS Services

ARI Registry Services officially launched its managed DNS services at ICANN 45 in Toronto.

Comments Against Digital Archery

In June 2012, Kinderis expressed ARI's opposition to the implementation of ICANN's digital archery program, and called on ICANN to abandon it entirely as a solution to batching. According to him, digital archery is a solution to a problem that is uncertain. Kinderis suggested that ICANN include all gTLD applications in a single batch and go through the initial evaluation phase in one 12 month period. He said that his idea is supported by some of the large registry service providers, saying "We’ve talked to some of the big registries and they’re waiting for us to put this out so they can come to the party and support it. If they extended initial evaluation to 12 months, I think that would have the support of the ICANN community"

In a letter to ICANN, the company expressed its support of Melbourne IT's position against digital archery and requested ICANN to reconsider its proposed batching timeline and to examine alternative solutions presented by the ICANN community during the ICANN meeting in Prague.

Mr. Kinderis sent a follow-up letter to ICANN regarding the issue and reiterated that it is not supported by applicants and that batching will only "increase the likelihood of confusion, frustration and uncertainty" for them. He pointed out that applicants want a level playing field for everyone to move forward at an equal rate and he is positive that the ICANN community will support an extension of the initial evaluation process for a reasonable time (12 months) instead of the proposed 5-7 months initial evaluation per batch.

Other

ICANN CSO, Kurt Pritz, had his resignation was announced on November 15, 2012, by CEO Fadi Chehadé, with an undisclosed conflict of interest cited as the reason. The conflict in question was later reported as being a personal issue with ARI Registry Services.

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