Alabanza Suite Automates All For Web Designer

The father-and-son team worked as programmers for the same company, and each was studying for a master's degree in information systems while balancing a family life.

But then they discovered Alabanza, a company whose automation software could make it easier for them to get their sideline business up and running.

With Alabanza's software, "the customer can come in, set up an account and start working on it while I'm asleep or at work," said Paul Schoolfield. "It's that easy."

Within months, the Schoolfields saw 20 to 30 customers each day signing up for their Web services. Almost a year after its founding in May 2001, the company, now called ITXDesign, is hosting Web sites for about 1,600 clients.

"We would never be able to manage all 1,600 of those clients down to the detail that is necessary without Alabanza, even if we didn't work full-time," said Don Schoolfield.

The duo is still studying and working full-time at their other jobs, and they're able to do so because Alabanza's suite of Linux-based Web software automates the process of developing, hosting and managing Web sites.

A point-and-click control panel lets the customer register and set up a domain name, then design a site using a free site-builder tool or packaged software such as Microsoft FrontPage, Macromedia Dreamweaver, Cold Fusion or Active Service Pages. From there, the customer can set up e-mail accounts, edit the site and add e-commerce capabilities.

As for hosting, Alabanza has developed tools that test and monitor servers, correct server issues and monitor disk space usage.

Billing and reporting is also automated, taking these functions out of the hands of the service provider.

Chris Berry, founder and CEO of The Host Group, Arlington, Va., started out as a reseller of another Alabanza partner, Nova Hosting. Partners often private-label Alabanza's services and resell them to other service providers.

After a few weeks, the partner told Berry that the Host Group was big enough to work directly with Alabanza.

"We grew so quickly because the fully automated billing, accounting and collection system cut out so much time as far as my workload was concerned," Berry said. "Because of that, I was able to spend more time on marketing and developing for and supporting the customer."

The Host Group, which began operations about two years ago, has about 2,000 customers to date.

Aside from the automation tools, partners are able to hit the ground running with an Alabanza program called Jump Start. The team helps the partner set up the servers and add the first clients to make sure there are no bugs, and also helps the partner register with search engines and puts the name of the partner on Alabanza's site.

Alabanza's austere beginnings as a start-up with only a few angel investors led the company down the automation path.

"We couldn't afford the strategy of throwing money at a problem to fix it," said Paul Zohorsky, president of Alabanza, based here. "We understood that we had to be cheap and smart and, in turn, save money and time ourselves for our partners by eliminating a lot of the processes [the customer had to deal with."

Alabanza has a data center in Baltimore that hosts 250,000 Web sites. Partners have the option of hosting with Alabanza, keeping the servers in their own facilities or remotely managing them on the customers' sites.

Partners are charged an infrastructure fee ranging from $500 to $900 per month,which includes 24x7 support,and $1 per month per Web site.

Alabanza is able to keep the cost of its services relatively low because its software was developed in a Linux environment, Zohorsky said. Also, partners and customers don't have to pay licensing fees for Alabanza's software.

What's more, Alabanza's choice of Linux recently led to an agreement with IBM to package Alabanza's software with the vendor's hardware and offer the solution to telcos, cable companies and ISPs targeting the SMB space.