Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) company Qinetics Solutions Berhad is confident of making further headway into the regional Internet services market through greater sales of its domain name registry-registrar solution, RegistryASP.

According to its chief executive officer Tan Tuan Khai, the company views the solution as an important element in its effort to move up the domain name industry's value chain.
Already the effort is bearing fruit for Qinetics with the inking of a joint agreement with the Hong Kong Domain Name Registry Company Limited (HKDNR) in Kuala Lumpur last week for a .hk domain name registry development and maintenance which involves RegistryASP as a deployment tool.

"The registry development is based on RegistrySRS suite - a software infrastructure that is 100 per cent home-grown. The system incorporates our five years of knowledge, experience and technological research in the domain name industry. Apart from Hong Kong, Qinetics also secured interests from several countries around the Asean region," he said after the signing of the agreement.

Tan said the shared registry-registrar model is an essential step for country code domain name registries to face global competition and rapid development of the Internet.
Most country code top level domains (ccTLDs) registries of developing countries still rely significantly on manual operations to run their business, he said. These registries require a system solution capable of providing them with a comprehensive process automation tools and management applications that enable them to manage and maintain registrar connections to the registry.

Tan said Qinetics aims to provide registries an end-to-end solution to fully integrate and automate domain name registration, resolution and management services which will result in better efficiency in their business operations.

"We see strong potential in this area, especially among ccTLD registries, as they deploy similar system to their business operations.
"We expect to generate additional revenue through this offering to the registries while meeting their business operations' needs," he noted, adding that Qinetics is an accredited ICANN registrar with over 750 resellers in over 300 countries.

In addition, Tan said the shared registry-registrar model has been earmarked by various technical bodies and governments in the world as the ideal model to move forward in the next generation addressing plan.

For instance, eNUM, and evolving standard for the convergence of Internet protocol (IP) addresses and e.164 numbers (phone number), will be the shared registry-registrar model.

Meanwhile, HKDNR's chief executive officer Jonathan Shea said the future of the organisation hinges on the new registry infrastructure that will be developed by Qinetics.
"Firstly, with the new system to be developed, HKDNR can introduce new services and features to .hk domain name customers. Among these is the Chinese .hk domain name, which is currently under technical trial in Hong Kong. Secondly, HKDNR can further streamline and improve the registration process, making it easier to use for our customers," he said.

With new infrastructure, transactions between HKDNR and its partners will be further simplified and made more efficient. This is made possible through the use of the Extensive Provisioning Protocol (EPP), which is an international standard.

"Implementation of EPP will also enable us to connect to more overseas registrars, thereby extending our reach to many potential overseas customers," said Tan.