Netregistry Group acquires Distribute.IT customers, assets

New South Wales-based hosting provider Netregistry Group has acquired Distribute.IT's customers and assets for an undisclosed sum.

The acquisition was completed today and means both Distribute.IT and Click n Go customers will be transferred to Netregistry's Cloud platform. .au Domain Administration (auDA) helped to broker the deal and had been in discussions with Distribute.IT and Netregistery staff overnight.

Netregistry chief executive officer, Larry Bloch, said in a statement that it had a great deal of sympathy and concern for the consequences to Distribute.IT staff, management and customers as a result of the infrastructure compromise which destroyed data, sites and email on four servers.

"Distribute.IT had a very solid reputation — that comes from doing a good job for a long time," Bloch said. "Without that, I’ve no doubt that this situation would be a lot worse. I want to remind customers of that excellence and ask for their patience and support as we work through the requirements to return services to all customers as rapidly as possible.”

Distribute.IT's hosting customers will be placed on the Netregistry's infrastructure at the Global Switch data centre, S1, in Sydney.

Bloch added that it would honour all payments for hosting at Distribute.IT and would also offer customers a free hosting service so they could upload their site and get their email addresses working.

One customer who has made the transition to Netregistry's domain is domain reseller and website developer Simjen.com.

According to Simjen's chief executive officer, Simon James, the company experienced "a smooth transition."

"We register over 50,000 domains a year so we needed a reliable company to accommodate our needs."

The Netregistry Group has also provided an emergency phone number for customers wanting to get back online - 1300 711 044.

Distribute.IT's blog website has not been updated with the acquisition news but an article from 22 June indicated that it had restored core reseller services including domains and secure sockets layers (SSL).

"We will be communicating with all resellers directly via email to confirm new passwords for all accounts, as we are changing these as a matter of process to ensure that your accounts are secure," the blog entry states.

Got a security tip-off? Contact Hamish Barwick at hamish_barwick at idg.com.au

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