| Website | melbourneit.com.au |
| Blog | successbox.com.au |
| Category | Consumer Web |
| Employees | |
| Founded | 1996 |
| Verisign DBMS, 4/08 | $50M |
Melbourne IT is an Australian Internet company listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX:MLB). Formed in 1996, its primary business is domain name registration in most of the major national and global top-level domains. It also offers web and email hosting services.
The company is a profit-earning medium-sized (in the Australian context) Internet business, with 2004 earnings of approximately 4.5 million AUD (EBIT) on revenues of about 60 million AUD, and continues to grow steadily. It has operations in several European countries through the acquisition of Cogent, as well as a San Francisco office.
For historical reasons Melbourne IT had a de facto monopoly on com.au domain name registrations for several years, providing more than half of its revenues until April 1999 when ICANN awarded it one of the first five registrar licenses to compete with Network Solutions Inc in registering domain names under .com, .net and .org[1]. From December 1999, when Melbourne IT listed on the ASX, the registration of international domain names has dominated its revenues. Following deregulation in 2002, Melbourne IT lost its number one ranking as a com.au domain name registrar to lower-priced rivals, although it maintains a significant market share. Internationally, as an ICANN-accredited registrar, Melbourne IT is ranked around 5 in the world[2].
The company has attempted to diversify its revenue sources to reduce its dependence on domain names, introducing managed hosting products and consulting services. In 2006, Melbourne IT acquired WebCentral, Australia’s largest web hosting company.
Source: Wikipedia
