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We recently had the pleasure of speaking with Mr. Robert Saunchyn of LFC Hosting. One can hardly escape being impressed with what has been established by LFC Hosting after reading this interview. LFC has customer service, the network and fully caters to the business class customer.
Read on for a recipe for success.... (for the customer)

1. Tell us a little about your background Robert.

Prior to beginning Loose Foot Computing Limited in December, 1996, I worked as a freelance developer consultant first developing standalone primitive applications for Internet development (HTML editing, web-based animation, etc.) for private sale and multimedia and climate data processing/analysis applications for the Canadian government, later moving into the development of web-based e-commerce, statistical, and miscellaneous other applications for clients in Canada, the United States, and Asia using web-based technologies, conducting training sessions with local development/Internet-related firms on the use of new web-based technologies (Perl, Java applets, Flash, etc.) and services (Windows and Linux web servers, etc.) and, for a year, assisting IBM with the coordination of a specialized local computer camp for teenagers.

From 1996-1998, LFC was strictly a development and programming house. It was during this time that LFC discovered the opportunity to capitalize on the tendency for small businesses to, after developing a Web site, look to the developer for guidance in the ongoing hosting, support, maintenance, and growth of the Web site. These businesses seek a complete solution that will give them the competitive edge but are seldom able to identify their precise technological needs. Many development firms were, at the time, offering a service with this in mind, but were, however, not equipped to develop and maintain the infrastructure of a large Web host. No large Web host to date had adopted this strategy.

Although we have remained a full-service company, upon discovering that Web hosting network administration and marketing better met the skill sets of our staff and stakeholders, LFC's new hosting service, based on the unique business-oriented model that was developed, and the LFC Hosting brand were launched in 1998. We developed our own in-house hosting network and began marketing hosting as our flagship product.

While operating LFC, I also, in cooperation with Andrew MacCorquodale (now LFC VP), planned and executed a successful two-day Internet/e-commerce-related trade show, E-commerce Expo Canada, in 1999 and 2000 in two Canadian cities.

After operating and growing LFC for approximately four years, my passion turned to marketing (first and foremost advertising and promotion) and management controls, my current primary duty at LFC.

In short, I have approximately 11 years of industry experience in the fields of stand-alone software development, Internet programming, web design and development, web hosting, electronic commerce, and transaction processing.


2. Tell our readers about LFC Hosting, your product and services.

Loose Foot Computing Limited (LFC) has been creating and hosting professional web sites since 1996. The LFC Hosting brand and its unique, business-oriented model was launched in 1998 and has been growing rapidly since due to its all-inclusive, customer driven approach to web hosting.

Specializing in the technical support of online business activities, rather than bulk web hosting, we provide innovative global electronic commerce solutions, excelling in speed, reliability, technical support, and in providing the advanced capabilities of the Internet.

Currently we host thousands of web sites for clients in over 50 countries and has doubled in size in the last six months, ranked the third fastest growing company in the province in Feb., 2002 and the fourth in Feb., 2003.


3. What has led to your success in the hosting industry?

I believe the reason for success in the hosting industry is three fold. Firstly, we consider customer service and support to be one of the most essential elements contributing to the success of any business so we have developed a very strong customer support structure. Our superior reliability, customer service, network response times, and the many innovative advanced features and developments go beyond a standard Internet presence and have made LFC a leader in the industry. Your business gains a distinct advantage over your competition by making full use of the many backend capabilities of the Internet.

Secondly, we provide a unique, highly affordable, business-oriented approach to web hosting. A whole array of non-standard features and capabilities that competing hosts simply cannot provide, even with their "e-commerce" level plans, are highly accessible and easy to implement for businesses of any size, providing you with new possibilities for doing business online. Our state-of-the-art connection and servers ensure rapid response times and thus no loss of visitors to your web site.

Our all-inclusive approach, with many free domain names, POP3 accounts, and essentially everything you will ever need to do business online, allows you room for expansion; there are no hidden fees, so you don't pay extra as your site grows. This differs from the strategies of most other web hosting companies, who 'capture' clients with a cheap package, then later collect various hidden fees for extra services and sacrifice support and reliability as another means of reducing basic package costs.

Lastly one of the major reasons for our success is our corporate stability and dependability in an industry that can be so volatile. LFC Hosting has been in the business of providing dependable Internet business solutions since 1996 and now services clients in over 50 countries. Our reliable on-site network was built with business in mind. Although, as with virtually every IT company, LFC was negatively affected by the economic turmoil over the last two and half years, it also opened up a window of opportunity for us. In fact, the majority of our growth has been during the last year, for several reasons

We are simply able to offer a higher quality of service with many more features, everything you need to conduct secure electronic commerce, at a lower cost overall than competing services.

4. What does the LFC stand for?

LFC stands for Loose Foot Computing, which is our legal corporate name. We not only provide the business community with superior web hosting but we also provide development and maintenance of websites and programming services. LFC Hosting is the hosting division of Loose Foot Computing Limited.

5. Tell our readers a little about your control panel, what does it allow users to do versus other control panels?
Our control Panel was developed In House by our development team using input from current users to design a Control Panel that is not only easy to use but allows its users unsurpassed administration of their accounts features.
Webmasters who are able to control every aspect of their web presence themselves have a key advantage. Programmatic administration is faster, more straightforward and drastically reduces the margin for error. LFC Hosting’s advanced automation eliminates many of the manual tasks typically associated with the maintenance of a website and makes self-help a breeze, giving LFC’s clients the distinct advantage over their competition. In developing our own Control Panel we have another distinct advantage over most other web hosts because it allows us to correct bugs the moment they are discovered and provide automation and administration of new technologies well before our competition.
8. Technical support is always important with website hosting. What types of support do you offer and to what lengths will you go to satisfy a customers needs?

We have taken customer and technical support to a level far beyond that of any other web host. LFC Hosting has set a support standard in the industry, a standard that has yet to be met by any other host.

We offer toll free telephone support including 24/7 emergency support, our world-class trouble ticket system, and live, online, technical support and sales chat round out the most comprehensive support system that you could possibly have.


6. From reading you customer testimonials, we can see your customers love your support capabilities. What was the most challenging support issue you have had to deal with and how did you resolve it?

I think the toughest one was a couple of years back when we were running Oreilly Website Professional as a webserver. We had a high profile client who absolutely needed IIS in order to run some of his MS specific code. Since we were already planning a migration to IIS 5 anyway we were able to offer him a temporary collocation solution while we did our upgrade. Ultimately we were able to help this client out and in the long run developed a very good and long lasting relationship with him.

7. The hosting industry has changed a lot in the last year, what predictions do you foresee for this coming year?

Rather than making predictions relating to emerging technologies such as WAP or .NET, I would like to discuss the evolution of web hosting from a business perspective, which has the ultimate effect on the industry as a whole and on the consumer.

Web Hosting at the present time is turning from a highly lucrative industry driven by thousands of three-month old startups willing to draw blood (or trade their reputation) for more domain name accounts, to an industry driven by the needs of business consumers: quality (that is, service level), dependability, and scalability. This is apparent when going back in time through the host review archives of “find-a-host sites”, which, only one year ago, were dominated by horrific reviews of (mainly anonymous) web hosts.

This trend, not unique to the hosting industry, is beginning to result in fewer, larger web hosts governed by customer-driven business morals

8. Do you have any changes or additions to your service in this coming year?

Exciting major improvements to our service scheduled for the next year include:

- A new removable drive-based daily backup and fast disaster recovery system enabling lower cost and more reliable backups, faster disaster recovery, etc. (almost complete)
- SSL over FTP (almost complete)
- Transition to Webalyzer for web traffic analysis (almost complete)
- New LFC Hosting monthly "techie" and business-related newsletters
- Full mailing list management using MailMan through the control panel
- New mail server and spam filtering system
- Partnerships with various firms to offer free added value services to our customers in the areas of secure transaction authentication and password protection, content/image serving and management, and services for resellers including billing, technical support management, etc.
- Free web-based Enterprise Manager for administration of SQL Server databases through the control panel
- Website promotion services including proprietary search engine promotion and PPC-based promotion
- Various state-of-the-art security Windows 2k/2003 security improvements
- Migration to Windows 2003, IIS 6.0, FrontPage 2003, etc.
- New LFC Trouble Ticket System
- WYSIWYG website editor with free website templates and content management through control panel
- Proprietary third-party billing processing services for resellers

9. Lastly, what is your favorite website and the most recent book you have read?

Actually I have two favorite websites, www.maccorquodale.com and www.blayone.com

I love to sit back with a good suspense fiction when I am not working and most of the time they deal somehow with technology or the supernatural. Right now I am reading By the Light of the Moon by Dean Koontz

Thank you for your time with us today Robert, we hope for your continued success and the success of all those doing business with you.

I think as we can see, that in the hosting wars, customer service and network reliability is winning. Companies such as LFC focus on what the customer NEEDS and is not competing based on the number of Gigs of space or how many emails they can cram into a plan, but more on the service that is delivered and strength in their network. We like it! A company that focuses on your true needs!