This makes a lot of sense to me. It will definitely add some weight
to my decision about whether to jump on board with the Tucows Certs.
Thanks Darryl.
Regards,
Stephen
--- Darryl Green <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Product, partnerships, pricing....
>
> I/We/Tucows have spent the better part of last year thinking about
> these
> things. As you might expect, Equifax came up as one of our
> potential
> partners. We even considered going our own and creating our own CA
> (ultimately we rejected that idea because there is enough capacity
> in the
> market already, cost of investment is very high, and our time to
> market
> would be slow -- another interesting discussion for a different
> day).
>
> The following should give you some insight into our decision making
> process.
> In choosing our partner we evaluated, among other items, the
> following:
>
> 1) Quality of all Security Offerings (beyond solely web
> certificates)
> 2) Pricing (of course)
> 3) Understanding of our business model and willingness to respect
> it (i.e.
> let the Reseller own the customer relationship).
> 4) Commitment to the business
> 5) Experience in the business
>
> On the issue of quality, Equifax Certificates offer the same level
> of
> security and browser recognition as the Entrust Certificates.
> Entrust's
> cross-certification agreement with Thawte (for recognition in old
> versions
> of browsers -- see previous post or Introduction and Implementation
> white
> paper on the certs.tucows.com site for discussion on this) runs out
> one-year
> prior to Entrusts but I can't honestly say that that was a major
> contributor
> to our decision.
>
> On the issue of pricing... Equifax is very competitive. For us,
> this was as
> disconcerting as it was exciting. However compelling that story was
> it was
> overshadowed by the concerns we had around Equifax' commitment to
> the
> business, experience in the business and, most importantly, the
> willingness
> to respect our business model. Let me explain....
>
> Although Equifax understood our business model there are a few
> things we
> know (or at least can surmise that we know): 1) their core business
> has
> nothing to do with the Internet it is a credit rating agency (for
> the
> purpose of this discussion we will call it the "MotherShip"); 2)
> EquifaxSecure (the "away mission") is but a blip on their balance
> sheet/Income statement 3) At present, EquifaxSecure has to either
> be losing
> money or making very poor Return on Investment 4) EquifaxSecure is
> aligned
> to some degree with Verisign (see Press Release below). Herein lies
> the
> heart of our fears...
>
> At some point the Mothership is going to require an accounting from
> the Away
> Mission. If they are not making a good Return on Investment (ROI)
> at present
> then they will have tell a dramatic future revenue story (full of
> vision,
> buzzwords and meaningful gazes into the horizon, as if to say the
> future is
> ours for the taking). This results in two potential risks for
> Tucows and our
> resellers: 1) The Mothership doesn't buy into the vision and they
> drop this
> business... we and our resellers are back to square one but this
> time with
> some scarred relationships at the other providers and/or 2) The
> future
> revenue story is a story that goes directly to the end-user. In
> other words,
> if we teamed up with Equifax, and Equifax and Verisign teamed up to
> offer
> products directly to your customers (in violation of one of our
> cardinal
> principals) we would do everything we could to stop it but Tucows
> probably
> wouldn't do so well against two elephants (and, without fear
> mongering,
> neither would our resellers).
>
> Entrust, on the other hand, is heart and soul PKI (Public Key
> Infrastructure). They made their reputation selling PKI solutions
> to Fortune
> 500/Global 2000 companies. They were in the game as early as
> Verisign
> (originally a Nortel Subsidiary) but were playing in a different
> sand-box.
> Their technology and security practices are of the highest quality
> and there
> is no issue around their commitment to the business. About a year
> and a half
> ago they set up a division called Entrust.net to compete directly
> with
> Verisign for Internet security products. However (and I am getting
> editorial
> here), their sales/marketing organization and culture did not
> resonate very
> well with users of the Internet. This is where we naturally fit
> together.
> They understand our business model and have contractually agreed to
> abide by
> our business principles (neither Tucows nor Entrust will market
> other
> products and services directly to your customers). For those
> reasons we
> chose Entrust as a partner and hope to expand that partnership to
> other
> products and services (as always with your input).
>
> My apologies for the length of the post.. hope you find it
> interesting/informative and I hope it make you favour Tucows Certs
> over the
> competition. I welcome comments/criticism and feedback of all
> types.
>
> Thank You
> Darryl Green
> Product Manager
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
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