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Network Solutions

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Revision as of 22:41, 1 June 2011 by Andrew (talk | contribs) (History)
Type: Privately Held
Industry: Internet, Domain name registration
Founded: Herndon, VA, 1979
Founder(s): Emmit McHenry
Faisal Shah
Headquarters: 13861 Sunrise Valley Dr., Ste. 300
Herndon, VA 20170
Country: USA
Employees: 900
Website: NetworkSolutions.com
Twitter: @NetSolCares
Key People
Tim Kelly, President, CEO
J. Miles Reidy, EVP, CFO, and COO
Kamalesh D. Dwivedi, SVP and CIO

Statton Hammock, Senior Director, Law & Policy
Paul Diaz, Policy and Ethics Manager
Peter Kerrick, Customer Service Supervisor
Sean Kaine, Director of Product Management

Network Solutions, LLC is an Internet-centric company providing products and services targeted at the web. The company's product and service offerings include domain name registration, email hosting, website development, ecommerce products and solutions, web hosting, SSL certification, online marketing services, and website design services; they are particularly focused on helping small, and developing companies establish themselves on the Internet.[1]

The company's corporate headquarters are located in Herndon, Virginia, USA.

History

The company was founded in 1979 by Emmit McHenry, an entrepreneur from Arkansas; it began as a tech consultancy focusing mainly on applications development.[2]

In 1991, Network Solutions was awarded the contract to operate the domain name registry on behalf of the US Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA). The company's mandate was to register domain names in the .com, .org, .mil, .gov, .edu and .net, and this service was free of cost to customers.

In 1993, the company was the sole bidder for the contract for operating domain registry service for .com, .net and .org domains, from the National Science Foundation, the first company to do so,[3]. In those days, the functions of registry and registrar were performed by one single agency: Network Solutions. The company would hold the position of the sole domain registrar in the world for these three registries for six years, until 1999. The company was also given the contract of maintaining the central Whois database of assigned names.

The company was acquired in 1995 by the Science Applications International Corporation, SAIC. Two years later, in 1997, Network Solutions was listed at the NASDAQ stock exchange and acquired the symbol of "NSOL". Its initial public offering (IPO) managed to raise $67 million USD.

The control of Network Solutions changed hands in 2000, when VeriSign acquired the majority share holding at a price of USD 20 billion[4]. VeriSign resold the company in 2003 to the Najafi Companies, while retaining the .com domain registry business for itself. Network Solution's business changed from being a registry to becoming a domain registrar. Under the new management, Network Solutions launched an inorganic growth strategy by first acquiring InQuent Technologies in Toronto (Canada) in 2004, followed by acquiring MonsterCommerce in 2005. The company's ownership changed hands once again in 2007 when General Atlantic, a private equity firm, bought into the company.

Awards & Recognition

The company has been recognized for customer satisfaction excellence[5] for a fourth consecutive year (2006 to 2009) by J.D. Power and Associates under their Certified Call Center Program.

Governance

The board of directors at Network Solutions is comprised eight members, four of whom are representatives of General Atlantic. The board is presently chaired by Robert F. Callahan, in his position as chairman of the board and special advisor with General Atlantic.[6]

The executive team is comprised of seven members, with the CEO, Tim Kelly, also serving as director on the board.[7]

Domain Registrar Function

According to the statistics compiled by Name Intelligence, Network Solutions had registered a total of 6,678,361 domains by the end of 2007, making it the third largest in table rankings, with GoDaddy taking first position (21,683,746 domains) followed by eNom in the second (8,113,940). As of 2010, the company is host to 7 million domain names, 1,000,000 emailboxes and 300,000 websites.[8]

As a domain registrar, Network Solutions offers the following services:

  • Domain name search
  • Expired Domain search
  • Web forwarding
  • Domain transfer
  • Private registration

Affiliations

References