Nucleus Inc. of Calgary, Canada has seen many changes from its start in 1990 as a BBS provider. In 1993 it became the first ISP in the Calgary area. Later on, it was one of the first ISPs in Western Canada to offer a broad range of value-added services to small business and home users, solidly establishing it's position as the largest independent ISP in the province.

" Being one of the early ISPs, we've had the opportunity to learn a lot about user needs. We decided to leverage our expertise in Internet technology and marketing to move beyond standard connectivity and hosting services", explained Dave Berzins, president of Nucleus. " Now we offer website design, technical training, Internet marketing consulting, network design, PC and network consulting. It's a value-added full-service approach and the change has really been successful in defining our market position."

One thing that hasn't changed at Nucleus has been their relationship with email vendor Vircom, whose BBS software helped launch Nucleus' original services. Two years ago, a business growing "by leaps and bounds" prompted Nucleus to survey newer Internet mail technologies. There were other mail systems with more features at the time, but in the end Nucleus decided to go with Vircom's new mail server, VOP Mail. " VOP Mail was new, but we knew that if they promised new features, they would deliver. Plus, their customer support was so fantastic. Once I had a support rep return my call, and it must have been midnight his time. He was calling from his home", Berzins reminisces.

In recent months, Nucleus has set up more than 15,000 mailboxes and 500 domains on VOP Mail, all running smoothly on one NT server. Nucleus confidently anticipates being able to handle forecasted growth, both in terms of capacity and administrative resources.

"Managing growth is not just a matter of hardware and network capacity", said Berzins. "Many people think in terms of 'how many mailboxes can I run on a single machine?'. Over time, I find that the daily costs of system administration and account management outweigh the capital costs of buying more hardware. VOP Mail has totally seamless integration to the VOP Radius server and to our billing package. The cost savings in this area have been terrific."

Nucleus uses Rodopi, a 3rd party billing software package. The billing database contains user account information, and is used for authentication by both the VOP Radius and VOP Mail systems. Accounts added to the billing system are automatically added to VOP Mail. If for some reason a VOP Mail account is not ready when the new mail user logs in for the first time, the mail server will authenticate against the billing database and create the new mail account on the fly. This means that all customer account administration is done via the billing system, and done only once. Furthermore, it means that it can be done at a clerical, rather than a technical level, freeing up costly system administrator time.

The biggest benefit by far for both Nucleus and its customers, thanks to the integration between VOP Mail, VOP Radius and Rodopi, has been the ability to delegate account administration to customers. Many fast-growing businesses have to move quickly, and can't afford to wait for their ISP to add, change or delete user accounts. Nucleus customers have the option to take control of their own mail, IP, and domain account administration.

"When a small business adds a new user themselves, they've handled a change in their business needs in a timely manner. We've gained a new account and it all gets updated automatically in the mail and billing systems", said Berzins. " The challenge is always how to grow in the most cost-effective way. Vircom has made user administration costs about as minimal as they can get and that allows us to focus resources on delivering higher-value services."