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Interview: Rob Lovell, Managing Director - IARNA PLC    IARNA, PLC - "e-viagra for the Internet". When you use that kind of a catchy phrase on a web site, you have to deliver on the promise. HostIndex.com spoke with Rob Lovell, managing director at IARNA PLC, to find out how the company turns the words into action. Here's what we learned....   HostIndex.com: IARNA was founded in 1999 by a collaboration of British and Canadian entrepreneurs who saw an opportunity to create an innovative company, which was fundamentally different to others. How is your company different? Rob Lovell: Well IARNA specialises in providing custom solutions for businesses and developers. Rather than the A, B or C solution, we like to invest some time and get to know our customers to find out what they need to make their project a success. We like the personal touch and I think that makes us stand out from the rest. Being innovative means that you have to spend time in R&D, and by bringing in new technologies such as JRUN, ASPNET and other exciting packages, we can really open up developers' eyes and work with them to create fantastic, fast and reliable web sites. HostIndex.com: You serve the world through offices in London, UK and Toronto, Canada. What difference do you find in European and North America customers and their businesses plans, and how do you address those differences? Rob Lovell: There is no real difference in what customers want; the difference lies in terms of what they expect. US customers are generally more clued in and expect more from their hosts; whereas Europe has thus far been dominated on the whole by slower thinking companies. Now Europe is waking up, the differences between customers are negligible. We notice distinct similarities such as technology requirements, more people want to take advantage of ASP3 and Cold Fusion 5, mixed with SQL; so you could say the trend for database driven web sites and applications are increasing. <%getBannerByGroup("bottom_main")%> HostIndex.com: You offer everything from simple web site hosting to colocation services. Are the majority of your customers individuals wanting a web presence, small-medium sized businesses or enterprise-level clients? Rob Lovell: 95 per cent of our business comes through virtual web hosting, by which I mean the "off-the-shelf" virtual hosting packages that we offer. Much of this is broken into personal and small business users who find outsourcing their hosting much more cost effective and reliable than doing it themselves. We have reputation for providing customised solutions, so businesses come to us with any number of requirements, ALL of which we can meet. We have found that for colocation and managed servers most of our customers are SME's. We host some enterprise level clients such as Lycos Europe and Toshiba, but much of the upturn in the hosting market is coming from the SME's. They are the guys talking with the public and getting in the business. They outsource, bringing their needs to us and as a partner to them, we provide them with managed services, dedicated account management and all the bells and whistles you'd expect from a multi-national host. HostIndex.com: How do you ensure a fully managed hosting environment? Rob Lovell: The crux of running such an operation is really based on the quality of staff and support you offer for this type of hosting. As customers are expecting to outsource their infrastructure, they must be assured that as a specialist, we can do anything better than they can do themselves. This includes offering 24x7 emergency support, qualified and friendly staff to help if there is a question, and a fast and efficient network to gain high-speed connectivity. We have engineers on-site to make sure servers are up and the network is flowing. We also provide full remote access to our customers so they can reboot servers themselves, configure things from afar and generally empower themselves a little more than relying on another company totally. After all, why would a company come to you if you offered a poorer service than they could get if providing it internally? So by providing these key things and investing continuously in their development, customers do see the benefits and indeed refer other businesses to us. HostIndex.com: What services does IARNA offer that a prospective customer may not find with another hosting provider? Rob Lovell: As far as services go, we offer pretty much all the latest features, which is an understated practice. For instance, last week we upgraded our system to run JRUN 3.1, allowing customers to use this software, if wanted, on top of their accounts. We also offer the latest version and all the default tags on Cold Fusion 5. I think the ability for us is there because of our constant R&D. Some companies are afraid to offer software that has potential security holes. We, on the other hand, study and use the software ourselves and can use other ways to both support the software and keep security tight. So in a nutshell our key leveraging point is that we offer the best Windows-based support developers can get in the market, allied to dedicated tailored solutions, and a superb Internet network. HostIndex.com: What role does your reseller program play in IARNA's overall success? Rob Lovell: Our reseller program was launched with a view in August, to target developers and SME hosting companies who want to provide cutting edge value added services to their clients, without the start-up cost. I think from what we have seen it's been a booming success, with growth of our resellers up 30% month on month. Reselling certainly seems to be the way forward and customers are now looking to host more than one domain, so reselling becomes financially practical. I wouldn't say this represents our greatest success but it has contributed to our consistent growth and seems to be a trend that's getting bigger by the day. By continuing to provide non-branded features and empower resellers, they can be the route to the end-user circumventing mass marketing budgets. HostIndex.com: How will IARNA adapt to constant change in the needs of customers? Rob Lovell: As we have always done: listen. Customers can teach you a lot and saying they cannot is very arrogant. As a service provider you can never foresee everything or keep all the bases covered and it's vital to listen to those constantly using and evaluating your service, and to make necessary improvements. Using our own R&D we stay way ahead of the pack because we are constantly realising new packs, software and upgrades for the customer, so most of our improvements have been of the hardcore developer format, where specific tags, COM's or settings are required to power their applications and enable customers to evolve past simple html. HostIndex.com:  We appreciate your time. Thanks for speaking with us here at HostIndex.com.