Oliver Mauss

Company: 1&1 Internet Inc

Before joining 1&1 as the CEO, Oliver Mauss worked for Vodafone Group for eleven years, most recently in the UK as the Global Director of Business Product Marketing, responsible for Vodafone’s B2B products worldwide. Before that he held positions in marketing and business development at various telecommunication companies.  Mr. Mauss has a Ph.D. in Communications Engineering from the University of Aachen, Germany.

Tell us about your background and role in the company

I joined 1&1 Internet in the Spring of 2008, working from our office in Karlsruhe, Germany. As the CEO my main focus is on strategic development of the company as well as driving growth and profitability.

What are your main services?

1&1 Internet (http://www.1and1.com) is the world’s largest web hosting provider by known servers with over 7.8 million customers worldwide. 1&1 currently serves over 10 million domain names at its 55,000 server strong green data centers. 1&1 Internet is a subsidiary of United Internet Group, a public company of some 4,000 employees.

Founded in 1988, 1&1’s product portfolio caters to the home user, as well as the professional web developer. 1&1 offers a full range services such as domain names, web hosting, dedicated servers, virtual private servers, eShops and mail solutions. 1&1’s packages even include an array of free applications for developing and marketing a website, such as website building, marketing and communication tools. 

What makes your firm different from other companies competing in your industry?

The US web hosting market is highly competitive, full of providers trying to top one another.  1&1 benefits from over twenty years of experience and a 250 developer strong R&D team, which means we conceive a lot of our own technologies. Based on our experience, 1&1 offers reliable and scalable web solutions to ensure our customers’ success. Due to our scale 1&1 has the ability to deliver feature-rich packages at affordable prices for both consumer and business level web solutions.

Tell us more about your firm’s success story.

Being founded in Germany, 1&1 introduced its distinctive approach to the U.S. in September of 2003, with an innovative and aggressive promotion that offered three years of professional web hosting for free. Since the January 2004 launch of its complete product line in the U.S., 1&1 has registered more than 720,000 users; already making it one of the country’s top five web hosts. In September 2008, 1&1 opened a 55,000 square foot green data center in Lenexa, Kansas.The Lenexa Data Center works in cooperation with the Bonneville Environmental Organization and is certified green by Green-e Energy.

Widely regarded as the dominant web hosting player in the European market, 1&1 is headquartered in Germany, where it also offers products for mobile Internet access and DSL. Additionally, 1&1 enjoys a growing presence in the UK and France. In August 2007, 1&1 launched products in Madrid, Spain.

According to you, what are the most important questions a potential customer should ask a company before choosing a vendor like you?

It’s hard to speak so generally because we offer a wide spectrum of hosting products, starting with typical consumer products, from domains and homepages, to professional business websites and eShops.  But there are some general rules potential hosting customers should look for. One is how stable a company is, no one wants their website to vanish because the host closed shop.  Another important factor is what kind of technical establishment the websites/servers are hosted in.  Certainly, customers want a state-of-the-art data center owned and managed by the web host.  A server customer, who is highly invested, would not want to find their equipment is being run in an insecure location.    

What are some of the myths in your field?

There is one myth that we try to debunk by educating consumers about: that you don’t have to be tech savvy to create, publish and manage a website.  The biggest change in web hosting within the last ten years is that it’s become a step by step process to develop a website with no programming or real technical knowledge necessary.  We want to encourage all consumers to try their hand at having a website whether it’s to publish a hobby site or start an eCommerce shop.

How do you develop your skills in this continuously changing environment?

It’s important to keep up with trends, not only in the web hosting industry, but across the entire technology industry. For example, we’ve really taken pride in our green efforts.  While at first a web-based company is not your ideal green candidate, looking you will find with all the energy and power consumed in all of our data centers worldwide, there is a great potential to establish corporate responsibility.  All of our data centers run on green power, including our massive 55,000 sq-foot facility in Lenexa, Kansas.  Recently we purchased a former nuclear reprocessing plant in Hanau, Germany and plan to transform that into another 1&1 green data center. 

What do you see as the future of the industry, what will be the challenges, do you see any drastic changes?

For an increasing number of business leaders and entrepreneurs the Internet presents an important part of their business strategy. Nevertheless, I still believe there is a long way to go for the industry as far as offering ready-to-use web solutions. For that reason, I think there will be a dramatic change in the hosting industry within the next few years.  The change will reflect a shift from technically focused products, to complete business solutions.

Where do see your firm in the next 5 years? What about you personally?

Looking back five years ago we had just launched operation in the US, and today the US has over 700,000 customers and is in the top five web hosts in the US.  In that time we’ve also launched operation in Spain, France, and Romania. So if the past is any indication of the future we will continue expanding our reach to new markets and continue to research the needs of our customers in order to better tailor our products and services to fit those needs.

My personal target is to keep 1&1 climbing the rankings of top web hosts in the US. As for myself, I had the pleasure of joining the company in May of 2008, so there are a lot of things I have set to achieve within my role here. I am eager to implement those changes, but know that they will take time and effort. I feel fortune to be involved with a company that continues to grow and show so much potential.