balticservers

It is hard to find a country on the map, where the information centre service provider from Šiauliai (Lithuania) - the JSC “Baltic Servers” – would not have any clients. At the beginning of the crisis the company expanded abroad and the advertisement in the “Google” search system helped to find partners and clients.
“The fundamental breakthrough happened when we changed our attitude. We cast a different look at Lithuania than companies operating only locally often did, we considered Lithuania as a part of the global market, not as a close market,” says the director of the JSC Baltic Servers (henceforth – BS) Remigijus Laurutis.
Before the crisis BS had a different name – JSC “The Information Avenue” - and its main activity was programming – people from Šiauliai created editorial and advertising accounting systems designed for the media, that were used by “15 min.”, “Vilniaus diena”, “Kauno diena”, and other newspapers.
“When the crisis descended upon us we understood that the programming business concerned with the media had stopped at least for 5 years, therefore we assigned it to a sister company JSC “Coral Solutions”. Whereas we concentrated on the other activity – the server hosting and the information centre services, because the demand of these services is only growing,” says Mr. Laurutis.
In 2009 BS established an information centre and over 2 years more than 1 mil. Lt was invested in it.
“In 2009, when we saw that the national economy was slowing down, we stopped all the marketing in Lithuania and took action abroad, there we searched for clients who would be interested in the server hosting service. We created a trademark comprehensible to the global markets - balticservers.com. We fired the managers who did not speak English and engaged in their place people who spoke fluent,” director names the lessons.
“Google” opened the door
The internet marketing helped to find clients abroad – the company advertised in “Google” and other internet advertising channels. According to Mr. Laurutis, starting and advertising campaign in “Google” is expensive (it cost BS 1.000.000 Lt per year) however it serves the purpose.
“Last year we had already about a half of our incomes from abroad. There we have about 2 thousand clients, spread all over the world, it is even easier to name the countries that we do not work with yet that those that we do: it is Japan, Tunisia, and Egypt,” he says.
Their clients are mostly the publication and Website creation companies.
“The main reason why foreigners lease servers from us is that we are located in Europe. For example, we are chosen by those, who have their own clients in this continent. Because if a company operates, for example, in Australia and its clients are based in Europe, it is irrational to keep servers in Australia – the data will be late and so on. Russian companies want to keep their data in foreign servers, because they worry about its safety if it is kept at home and so on,” names Mr. Laurutis.
According to him, the competition is brutal when working abroad, because thousands of companies all over the globe offer server hosting services.
“However there are millions of potential clients. We compete not on price, there are others offering cheaper services. Our superiority is flexibility,” emphasizes Mr. Laurutis.
The turn for the foreign countries obliged the company to gear up, to invest in modern technologies, to increase the safety of the data, and all that.
The team is also formed differently. This year the company will employ a Belorussian and a Pakistani.
“An international team helps to perceive the particularity of the individual markets and to serve the clients better. Moreover, this way we will compensate the lack of IT specialists that also exists in Lithuania,” explains Mr. Laurutis.
Others are up-and-doing too
“As far as I know, we are the almost only ones who work so widely abroad of all the companies engaged in similar activity in Lithuania. People here still lack the understanding that the internet marked has been already global for a long time,” says Mr. Laurutis.
Colleagues want to disagree with this position
Pranas Slušnys, the director-general of the company “Hostex”, says that “Hostex” has been providing the foreign companies with the data centre services already for more than a decade. The services are provided for clients from ten countries, mostly from Russia, USA, Canada, France, and Poland. Currently about 200 clients abroad are using “Hostex” services.
According to Mr. Slušnys, the major part of the income of “Hostex” comes from clients in Lithuania. However, the number of foreign clients and the part of the income from them are constantly increasing.
“The majority of our clients are based in Russia. A part of the companies in this country keeps the important business data in the centres in EU countries that are considered to be more secure. In this regard, Lithuania is very appealing, because it is located in a geographically comfortable position,” explains he.