I am looking into colocation services and was asked "what my market is." Does this refer to what my application is, what my requirements are or both?
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2It's another way of saying "What does your business do? What do you sell? What sort of thing will you be doing on our network that we're partially responsible for if it all goes wrong?" No colocation service wants their colo cabinet confiscated because the FBI's going after an illegal gambling op. – ceejayoz Jan 19 '18 at 16:34
1 Answers
As someone who worked for a regional ISP (hosting service as well) in the Pacific Northwest, we asked a similar question. It's really about trying to figure out if you are going to be of concern because your activities are illegal (e.g., online gambling), against the TOS (e.g., adult), likely to lead to spam (e.g., get rich quick schemes).
Hosting services have to protect their reputation, their IP addresses, and their other customers. If you take a look at their Terms of Service (TOS), you'll get a sense of why they're asking questions like that. You might see that the TOS prohibits stuff like this:
• Adult content
• Gambling
• Pharma
• Scams
Here are some examples of answers unlikely to raise red flags. By the way, audience in this context is interchangeable with market:
• We sell natural & organic candy.
• We sell Chia Pets to the community of Chia Pet collectors.
• My small business marketing blog is becoming more popular with my small business audience, so I've recently outgrown the shared server options.
In summary, the hosting service asks about your market to determine if you're likely to violate their TOS.
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