EIRCA Premium Quality H-Sphere Reseller Hosting

My Saturday mornings are usually started by a quick check of the previous weeks sales activity. That responsibility has passed this week to Simon as he starts his two week birthday vacation, so I decided to veg out a wee bit and read some hosting related literature. An article in The Whir’s magazine [Web Host Industry Review] caught my eye, not necessarily in a good way.

As most people are now aware, SWSoft recently purchased Positive Software, the developers of H-Sphere, from security powerhouse Comodo. The specifics of the sale aside [was it a sale, or was it a service swap?] the article in which Serguei Belousov discusses the purchase of H-Sphere, Ensim and the strange purchase of Sphera, Belousov discussed H-Sphere in an alarming way.

When Belousov was asked about H-Sphere, his answer was flaky at best, but disturbing also when stating that their goal was, in effect, to try and upsell and migrate H-Sphere clients in addition to raising the prices associated with licensing clusters and gaining maintenance and/or support contracts. Belousov stated, in a comment that he will no doubt live to regret next time he’s speaking to a large H-Sphere client, “We’ll try and encourage them to move to our different product lines, but we won’t force them.” Thanks, Serguei, I’m glad to hear that much though has been given to the idea that you’d force clients who have paid in to the ten of thousands of dollars, per year I might add, to abandon the product. Gentle persuasion is in our future, I believe, but Serguei forgets that when he purchased H-Sphere, he purchased the promises, contracts, handshakes and more that came with the product.

So SWSoft now wants to command the hosting industry? Fine, as long as they realise that we, the collective companies that now use his products, have the final say on what is introduced, what products will be successful and what products will fall by the wayside. SWSoft’s HSPComplete, for example, can not hold a candle to H-Sphere. He thinks it can, he thinks that he can convince H-Sphere clients to migrate to an inferior product and pay more money.

Irresponsible? Confused, maybe? You decide.

As a point to note, EIRCA has long been one of the biggest supporters of the H-Sphere product. Our commitment to H-Sphere remains as strong as ever, even if that commitment now involves convincing the new CEO that his best product is actually one of his most recent acquisitions, not the piece of software [Plesk] that is often referred to as “Bloated junk”.