First Telstra, now Optus chases SMB market

Stuart Corner
Monday, 20 November 2006 09:42

Your IT - Home IT

With Telstra making noises about ramping up its focus on the SMB market, Optus has unveiled a new range of products that it says are "specifically designed to remove the complexity and cost of establishing a small business online."

Products include domain name registration, web hosting services, email hosting and secure data back up. Optus is offering domain name registration from $25 per year; six web hosting plans starting from a basic $16.50 per month package to a professional $699 per month " sophisticated business-critical site package." A SiteBuilder wizard to facilitate web site creation is included in all web hosting plans at no additional charge. Hosted email is being offered from $5 per mailbox per month with built-in anti-virus software and spam filtering and regular backups. Secure data backup prices start from $132 per year for 1Gbyte. All stored files can be retrieved via a browser interface.

Optus says the new products are "a significant step by Optus in the small and medium business (SMB) market to offer customers a way to make the most of their broadband, and grow their business online in a secure, cost effective, and easy to manage way."

Stuart Tucker, marketing director - Optus SMB, said: We are committed to growing our share in the SMB market by offering compelling products and services and Business Online is another example of this.

Telstra has recently appointed Deena Shiff, managing director of small and medium enterprises, charged with building its business in this market segment.

She was profiled in a recent Australian Financial Review article which said: "When Sol Trujillo was appointed chief executive of Telstra last year he was shocked to find the carrier had no dedicated array of products for small businesses and no way of adequately servicing them. It was a major oversight considering Telstra has an estimated 750,000 of the country's one million small and medium sized business customers."

Shiff told the AFR that "Most corporations...find it hard to have close customer relationships with such a large and diverse group of customers...So, it was the natural thing for Sol to do to break them out." However, iTWire pointed out that this was the latest of many attempts by Telstra to increase traction in the SME market. moscomment}