With more than 25 of experience on the IT market, Arsys is a Spanish Company part of the United Internet group. the greatest European organization of hosting services and IT infrastructure solutions. Its headquarters are in Logroño but they have offices in Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, Bilbao and Valencia. It has more than 360 employees and 290.000 clients. Their objective is to help companies to comply their processes of digital transformation.

Arsys leaders the Spanish professional market of Internet presence services (domains, e-mail, websites, online stores, hosting), Cloud computing and IT infrastructure solutions (IaaS). It is specialised on personalized cloud projects design (public, private and hybrid, DaaS backup and cloud storage, managed security, managed kubernets), addressed to companies of all sizes and with the maximum guarantee of availability, performance and security. Their commitment with their clients, who accompanies in every step of their digitalization, from initial consultancy to final commissioning, is one of their main identity signs. All that with the best business support on the market.

In 2010, Arsys launched the first European cloud hosting platform and is among the leading companies in technology and innovation in our country. Nowadays, it manages more than 145.000 servers (physical and virtual) and its data centre has an innovative design which allows to adjust and adapt its infrastructure to the growing of the company, demand for services and economic situation. We have, among others, Tier III certification (Uptime Institute, guarantee an availability of 99.28%), ENS (Security National Scheme) , ISO 9001 (quality), ISO 27001 (security) and Cloud Infrastructure Operations Services of SAP. The company also maintains collaboration agreements with university and educational centres.

In Arsys we are worried about environment, security and privacy of data of our clients and doing ethic basis business. We think that economic growing has to respect the health of the planet, help to reduce inequality and promote social welfare, so that sustainability is one of the keywords on our strategy. We combine all the technological resources to offer more efficient services with highest ratios of energetic efficiency, allowing the responsible consumption of resources and decreasing the carbon footprint we generate. Our datacenter works with 100% renewable energies since 2015. It has the certification ISO 50001, which distinguish those organizations that incorporate systems to minimize greenhouse gas emission.

We talk with Maria García, SMB Online sales director

Which value brings to a company or institution to have its own domain?

It is essential to have a domain: it is our home address online and the first step to have a website and a professional email. Having presence online is important if you want to increase sales on your company, achieve new clients or introduce your products or services to the people on a efficient way.  And any company, institution or particular person who wants to be on Internet needs a domain to set its page on the map of Internet and to guide users towards it. Besides, it is also a good way to protect your brand on Internet and avoid malicious attempt of identity theft online.

That is why is very important to find the appropriate domain name. On the best case it could include the name of the company or relevant words of our business or even have influence on the SEO positioning of our web. If we use the name of the brand as domain it will be simpler to meet our visitors expectations and, by this, achieve a low rate of bounce and make the user stay more time on the page, two important factors when we talk about web positioning.

What attributes make a domain like .gal recommendable for an entity in Galicia? Why do you support he domain by including it among those you sell?

Local extensions help a business to be easily identified with the place where is developed and they also worked as a vehicle of shared identity with their customers. But besides those emotional elements, and as it happens with the name of domain, extensions bring undeniable advantages for the SEO on our web because depending on where the user s located in the moment of the search, the first results to show will be the pages with those endings, addressing more directly, to the objective public.

For example, if our company brings only service in Galicia, using a page with a local extension “.gal” will allow us easily positioning on the results the Galician users made (localized by their IP address). Undoubtedly, for all those companies with interest in geo-locate their business this is an indispensable elements and furthermore, that does not imply we cannot register our domain with traditional extensions as .com or .es.

What would you recommend a small company that wants to develop its digital business?

When it comes to getting started, going for something simple is the best place to start, because digital projects will be able to improve and grow over time. As we previously see, the first step is to find the most suitable domain name, design a responsive web adapted to mobile devices and comply minimal safety requirements.

And if, for example, we talk about an e-commerce, it could be a good idea do not complicate at the beginning our site with too much extras, crossing sales, accessories, coupons or thousands of references. It is practical starting with the main features of the catalogue and the most demanded options in order to gradually expand the offer and include photographs and description of the products.

What are the keys of a good e Commerce service?

First of all usability, then design. This rule has to help us to take any decision on the matter. As we said before, it goes for a basic design on which to work little by little, but be sure the web work and is usable. If it is usable, our visits will easily find what they are looking form and could buy, which is what it is all about, with no more clicks than necessaries. Being beautiful is always desirable, but not essential.

Nowadays there are many tools to help us to build an online store without technical knowledge, but we must think the way of our electronic commerce is in the long term. Because this, my recommendation is to go for a solution that offers real customers service, which do not turn your enquiries into floating tickets never solved. On Arsys we offer a 24/7 service and we deal with more than 1.000 enquiries a day by phone, email or chat. The 40% of our staff is in one of our customers service. All that has also something in common with the future of your online store.

What can be done to improve the security and privacy of customers? Are we consumers aware of the importance in this issue?

Security is one of the main concerns of technologic companies. Any company or user should already be sufficiently aware, but the reality is that many time they remember to implement needed measures when they have to remedy a more o les serious problem.

If for instance, you have a website or an e-commerce you cannot work without a SSL certificate. It offers your visitors a safe website where personal data are always encrypted, improves our positioning and “says” the browsers they are directing a safe website.

Once we have that certificate we must be sure that all the programs we install on our systems and, especially those that support our website or online store, are conveniently updated. And finally, it is essential at this point to have a web backup to guarantee we are able to restart our business in the event of any inconvenience (cyber attack, accidental erase, etc.). A backup we could made extensive to the electronic mail and the rest of our business data.

And, of course, even it is an obvious recommendation, hardware and computer networks should be protected with antimalware systems, firewalls, anti spam filters, etc. We include a series of those elements on our infrastructure.

If we talk about presence online, a lot of people think that a social media profile is enough. Do you agree?

If we are talking about individuals, every case is different and I think that is difficult to establish universal rules. But in the case of companies, entrepreneurs, freelancers, or if your professional life depends on online, having a registered domain and a webpage are two essential requisites, even before our presence on social media. Those media, of course, could be perfectly linked to our webpage or e-commerce.

What can we do to attract younger generations to the domain world?

Young people have made social networks their way of being online because of the interaction capabilities that offer. But, sooner or later they need to have a presence online less conditioned by the immediate and where more elaborated contents, whether for school of professional reasons or , simply, channeling a hobby, they will have to address to a website or a domain name, which again, should reflect what they want to show. Initiatives can be designed to encourage them to experiment and design their own web without doubt, or even, thinking on new extensions which collect their motivations and encourage them to associate their name with these endings.

How is the market evolving after the pandemic? Is there a major need for online presence?

Undoubtedly. Pandemic has accelerated in more than 10 years our digital transformation. It has forced a lot of companies to arrive for the first time on Internet or update their presence online. And, among all, it has forced a lot of traditional stores to convert and transform their physical storefronts into e-business. In fact, that has changed the costumer behavior, accelerating significantly the expansion of the online comerce in Spain where, based on a report (European Ecommerce Report), the 70% of Internet users are already online buyers.

You have been 25 years on the sector. Which are your strengths and what do you offer to your clients after that time?

Llevamos 25 años en el mercado y eso nos convierte en una de las compañías con más experiencia de nuestro sector. Hemos llegado hasta aquí gracias a una oferta de soluciones innovadoras y accesibles que no ha dejado nunca de evolucionar y que ha sabido adaptarse al mercado y a las nuevas necesidades de nuestros clientes. Pero, sin duda, nuestro gran elemento diferenciador es nuestra vocación de servicio, nuestra implicación en los proyectos de nuestros clientes y la dedicación de un soporte que tiene su reconocimiento y confianza.

We have been on the market for 25 years and that makes us on one of the more experienced companies on our sector. We have come this far by offering innovative and accessible solutions that has never ceased to evolve and that has known how to adapt into the market and the new needs of our clients. But, without doubt, our main differentiating element is our dedication to service, our implication on the projects of our clients and the dedication of a support that has its recognition and trust.

What new trends do you see for the new year? More cloud services, immersive reality…

The cloud is an immediate present and future trend. The cloud moves the world, businesses, healthcare, leisure and entertaining, education… Consultancy firm Gartner predicts that this market will reach the spectacular figure of 400 billion dollars by 2022. Inside the cloud, its segment SaaS, the software as service, is the big driver of that growth. It started as an alternative for SMEs to access several certain that they could not access on a pay-per-use basis, and today,  99% of organizations works with an applicative in this modality of business.

Talking about trends, we could alto talk about the augmented reality or virtual reality, nowadays so topical. Will 2022 be the year of its consolidation? It is true this kind of experiences require specific device that most do not have, but it is also true that these are becoming more affordable every day. We would probably have to wait a few years for these devices to become commonplace in our homes, but it is true that the state of technology today is perfectly capable of beginning to transform the world of the web and online experiences.